St Crispin’s Day Open thread
I’m buried here at work (Blame the Bureau of Industry and Security) so here’s an open thread for you to talk bad about me and my lack of participation over the last few days.
Since it’s Saint Crispin’s Day;
Category: Open thread
Just took a huge Giduck…what other type of giduck is there?
Peking Giduck, for posers of Asian extraction.
Anybody talks bad about you Jonn is gonna get torn a new exit path….we got plenty of douche nozzles to talk about…
Or we could just start a nice exchange about BBQ….who doesn’t love a good BBQ and some nice frosty adult beverages? Corn bread and baked beans and fall off the bone ribs…and we are good to go!
Well, Jonn, I will talk bad about you. I still hate the schooling you gave me (and TSO) on the trap shooting line while you were half blind. Bastard!
The reason I bring that up is because tomorrow is the HHC Fall Festival of Mayhem! Woot!!! Sorry you guys can’t come up for it, the weather is gonna be great; partly cloudy and 44 degrees!!
I’ll try to send some pics to you in the AAR.
@1.
Giduck deep in my two-hole.
@3. Me. I don’t like BBQ. Actually, it doesn’t like me. I may as well chew the stuff in a bathroom and then spit it into the toilet, eliminating (pun intended) the middle man. I do, however, enjoy grilling. I do it year round using charcoal only. No gas for me, thanks.
I may join the Richomnd Hunting Club next year. They have 850 acres of available land, a restaurant and reasonble fees, plus a place for your gun dogs when you aren’t out on the prowl. They’re always looking for new members.
Great place for someone with a camera.
That should be ‘Richmond’ Hunting Club. Not enough caffeine yet.
Anyone know of a good (non-military) range in the Maryland/Virginia area that lets you shoot 50 cal?
so i may be the bad guy on this one, but i would like to get some people’s opinions on natural selection and when man kind decided it was smarter then nature. lately, bullying has been the biggest issue any one has ever faced and apparently is some sort of brand new never before heard of problem. For thousands of generations bullying was met with the victim either getting strong enough to stand up for himself or being to weak and falling by the way side. This is a part of natural selection where the strong rise to the top and the weak are culled out. Now, we want to punish the strong and pamper the weak. Our society has decided to cater to the weakest and the lowest of our children, and retard those who are capable of excelling. Being mean is now considered criminal, and the parents of a “bully” can now be charged with a crime? teen and child suicides are sad, but if you want to know who is responsible, do not look at bullies, look at the parents who could not teach their children the cold hard facts of life, that the world isnt a nice place and that they must be strong to make it. Children who are so weak that they take their own lives do so at the fault of their own parents, not other kids who are mean to them. Any one who has spent 10 minutes in the adult world knows that people will be mean. coworkers will stab you in the back at every chance to score brownie points with the boss, the boss will yell at you when hes in a bad mood, and you cant kill yourself every time someone is mean to you. We need to go back to teaching our kids to stand up for themselves, to be strong, and that there isnt always going to be someone to make everyone play nice. We are lying to our children and failing them as parents by trying to eliminate what has always been a part of… Read more »
@3 and @7: Being a Hawaiian, the only way to go for me is teriyaki with a sweet soy sauce and ginger marinade. The mainland BBQ flavorings are either way too tart or way too pungent/smoky for me.
I can’t pass this one up. http://news.msn.com/world/norwegian-hunter-misses-moose-shoots-man-on-toilet?gt1=51501
The message about BBQ above is actually for @3 and @6, although I’m sure Ex-PH2 has a keen interest in this gastronomical subject as well…
@9 – How far are you from Quantico? They allow folks on their open rifle ranges. I’ll check if they allow .50 cals and post the phone # to them if you want. I don’t know of any indoor ranges that allow them.
List your gas and/or diesel powered equipment:
1. 2005 Ford Explorer Red (fully loaded)
2. 1980 MGB Limited Edition (street legal & racing)
3. 1997 Heritage Softail Classic (custom)
4. John Deere LT-180 (17 HP, 48 inch mower deck)
5. Billy Goat Leaf Blower (10.5 HP B&S)
6. Honda Lawn Mower (self-propelled)
7. Toro Snow Blower (10.5 B&S)
8. Stihl Chain Saw MS-290(Farm Boss)
9. Ryobi Weed Wacker (2 Cycle, 26 CC)
10. Emergency Generator (secret undisclosed location)
@9. Yeah, it’s called West Virginia.
@ 10 Smitty
I am teaching my son not to be a bully. I am teaching him to stick up for younger or weaker kids. I am teaching him that he can protect himself and that he does not have to seek help first. I am teaching him to punch and punch hard!
I will also be ready with quick witt, a reasonable argument and a lawyer should anyone (mainly a school board or principal) wish to critize my parenting techniques.
I’m going to pimp the fish fry at the Lafayette (IN) armory on Friday 8 November again. Raising money for the FRG, Bear Hugs for the Troops, and wounded warriors. Good cause, good food, good time, come on out! http://laughingwolf.net/armory-fish-fry-come-one-come/
Smitty, the pecking order has always been there. I got picked on from the day I walked in through the schoolroom door. When I complained to my mother about it, she said they were just trying to get me upset. If they couldn’t get me upset, they’d find someone else to pick on. The kids look for someone they think is weak and vulnerable and that’s who they go after.
How would you like to be two years younger than everyone else in your class, but you’re there because you’re 6 years old and you can do everything up through 3rd grade level? That makes you nothing but a target, doesn’t it? So you either give in to it, or you look at them like they’re what they are, stupid little snots, and you move on.
No, these parents are not teaching their own kids to toughen up and deal with the reality that not everyone thinks they are wonderful. My niece (nephew’s wife) took her oldest daughter out of school to do home schooling because the kid was getting bullied. She didn’t say how much and what kind.
Yes, there’s too much ‘don’t touch my little darlings’ and not enough ‘it’s the real world, kid, learn to deal with it’.
The difference may be that when I was in school, kids were obnoxious and mean, but they weren’t making threats of physical violence. What goes now now is considerably worse. Someone needs to smack those kids around who are doing that, not just pass legislation on it, but the parents of those kids are not putting a stop to it, either.
@10. I’m not much on this natural selection business as it applies to humans but there is a particularly human trait that bears mentioning when it comes to bullying: compassion. The weakling may be incapable of stopping the bully alone but I’d venture a guess that many of us here have stood up to punks and bullies on behalf of others. And I don’t see anything amiss with that, either as between nations or individuals. I do agree that the bullying needle hit the STUPID range long ago and that’s a direct result of national education directives and those who mistake (purposefully) training for education.
Combat Historian, I do have an interest in BBQ ribs, but I find the commercial products far too heavily loaded with sugar, so much so that it overpowers the rest of the flavors. I’m going to try making my own in the blender, and use a mesquite seasoning normally used on steak to brown the ribs.
After that, I have to decide which is the better cooking method: the crock pot or the stock pot.
On extremely low heat, the stovetop method is okay and the tomatoes in the BBQ sauce won’t burn and stick.
@10 Ok I’ll bite (surprised by that I bet) bullying has been around forever, but this latest crop is aided and abetted by the people who formerly put a stop to it. Not sure where you grew up and if bullying was allowed to persist unimpeded on a daily basis in and out of school, but life was not like that in small town New England where I grew up. I was taught that America was the one place where even the rights of a single person could not be oppressed by the government. My great grandfather so loved that idea he got on a boat to make sure his family could live in such a place where each man was left to his own devices to succeed or fail protected by law from intrusion…. I grew up in the 60s and early 70s, where I went to school if you were caught picking on someone weaker than you a large former military teacher (Mr. LaFleur the english teacher) who stood about 6’5″ tall would jack your ass up against the wall and offer you the opportunity to tune him up instead of the 98lb weakling you chose…today many of these teachers are looking to be friends with these kids instead of being in charge because we’ve disabled the teachers ability to back hand these smart mouthed little bastards right off their feet. One of the best days of my life was beating a kid until his mouth and nose were bleeding after watching him slap a smaller kid and make fun of the smaller kid. As an adult I’ve had 4 instances where I saw a man “bullying” (domestically abusing) a woman in a public place and I’ve beaten the sh1t out of those men and loved every second of it….bullies don’t tend to be the stronger, smarter of the species Smitty, they tend to be the cowards and intellectually stunted products of bigoted parents some of them have the luxury of physical size but a taser in the abdomen and an expandable baton usually take that aspect away… Read more »
I guess I should also add that I do not believe humans are inherently good, I believe quite the opposite that we are inherently evil and will always do the wrong thing if allowed to do so free of restraint.
Our ability to consider that our evil acts don’t need to exist and that we could actually work to achieve a good and decent life that sets us apart from other animals. Most humans choose to ignore that ability to consider doing good and exist only as selfish, self serving animals seeking to acquire more and more for themselves regardless of the cost to others.
I like the example of the sheep, the wolves and the sheep dog…many warriors feel they are the sheep dog doing good by protecting the sheep from the wolves…the reality is the sheep dog is just another wolf who enjoys the conflict and the taste of blood. But the actual difference between the two is only that the sheep dog believes the sheep have value beyond their flesh for protein…
So if you are suggesting there are only predators and prey I might be inclined to agree with you. But I prefer to be the sheep dog instead of the wolf, only because some of the sheep are actually pretty decent to have as friends as opposed to having as dinner…
I suspect you think along similar lines, I believe your current concern is that the sheep might actually start thinking they’re wolves…and where does that leave us sheep dogs in the end?
@20 – AirCav, most bullying is based on perception. Someone LOOKS weak and in fact may not be weak.
@10
As someone who does a lot of very unpopular work in the bullying field, I think that the new focus on bullying came about the same time as the ‘it takes a village’ mentality of schools and the removal of parents from most of the educational process. When I was young, parental participation was pretty important (and common) in decent neighborhoods with fairly intelligent parents (it’s never been common in neighborhoods infested with crime, sadly). Bullying became the easy and intellectually dishonest (and lazy) thing to point to when children acted up; it couldn’t be because Timmy is an asshole or learned to be such from his home life, it’s because someone was mean to Timmy.
The funniest thing about it, to me, is the new swinging back of the pendulum, away from responsibility of the teachers to ensure no kid is bullied, with ‘Cyber bullying, yet another misnomer describing, in America, bullying the carries over from school. It’s not ‘cyber bullying’ if I go from bullying you in gym to bullying you on facebook, it’s bullying.
@10
I also feel like ‘special little snowflake’ syndrome plays into it somehow. The idea that every child is special and needs to be babied and nurtured and that every kid is going to be good at something blah blah blah. Truth is, there are very few exceptional people. Even fewer who are naturally exceptional. Most people who are 25 or older and exceptional at something spent a decade or two getting there through hard work, practice, and study, not through a teacher giving them participation ribbons.
The ‘everyone’s a winner’ mentality stifles development.
What is the problem?
Is everyone using biofuel or ethanol?
@24. Yeah, it’s one of life’s great joys to see a ’96-pound weakling’ get picked on and then (surprise!) whack the bejeebers out of the other guy. People often confuse physical size with mental and emotional maturity. I’ve seen more than a few young tough guys whine their way from the field of mano y mano battle.
@27. Your topic is too remote, Chief, that’s all. We have people do those things for us for which you need those machines. Sorry. It must suck not to be filthy rich.
By the way, talk about a small world. Took the family to Paris last weekend for dinner and ran into two other TAHers there. And did you know that my chauffeur and Ex-PH2’s are twin brothers! Crazy.
@10
I was bullied quite a bit in grade school and a little bit in Jr High, to include beatings at the hands of miscreants that couldn’t tie their own shoes or spell miscreant.
Sure, by the time HS rolled around I toughened up, became someone no one wanted to mess with, and made it a point to stand up for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves. So did that bullying make me a better person with more to contribute to the furtherance of society? No, it ruined a time of my life I would have preferred to enjoy in a more care free and peaceful manner, absorbed a lot of emotional and intellectual attention that would have been better spent on my education and personal development, and made me both jaded and cynical as hell later in life. In a nut shell I have to work at being nice every day, because it ain’t how I was ‘trained’ to be in those formative years.
In the pretty large box of tools we possess as a species, bullying certainly is not a terribly useful one, and it’s not analogous to natural selection either. Natural selection REMOVES traights from the gene pool via death more often than not. Bullying is just bullying, the physically strongest triumphing in a tyrannical manner over the physically weaker for the purpose of self-gratification.
Natural selection breeds directly for physical strength, cunning, and immediate environmental survivability. Natural selection does not necessarily directly breed for intelligence, compassion, empathy, or Long Term species survivability.
Now if you would like to talk about ‘breeding’ and its effect on the species, that’s far more interesting to me.
As someone said long long ago, “We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.” A later commentator boiled it down to, “Isn’t it sad that we give more thought to the breeding quality of our animals than to our breeding of our children.”
Crap, as usual VOV beat me to the punch as it were, and did a much better job of describing my own opinion. Lol
@31 I think that may be what underlies Smitty’s point that we are allowing those who produce nothing, contribute nothing, understand nothing, and live off of the fat of others to reproduce in higher numbers than those who contribute. That’s the real subjugation of the species, nature takes out the members of the herd that don’t feed themselves or get sickly and become unable to care for themselves. We humans keep those components of the herd alive and well artificially with no requirement from the useless member.
We are allowing the parasites to outnumber the hosts, that’s never a good plan…
@VoV, the bully is not always the strongest, but the stronger. Sometimes the strength needed to stop a bully is the intellectual acuity to find a friend that is bigger then the bully. I have no problem with the victim finding a sheep dog, that part of developing problem solving skills. Pampering the weak and not making them stand up for themselves, retards the growth and development of the children in our society. Dont come down on the bully, come down on the victim and make them be stronger. When the victim learns the strength to stand up for himself, the bully will be dealt with, be that through personal ability or finding that sheep dog. The sheep dog hre also plays a major role, as that is how many children will come to find their own strengths and rise to the top of their piers as leaders. when we intervene against bullying, and try to eliminate the entire event, it not only ensures the weakness of the victim continues, but stops the development of those around him. Point is, this has been an on going event for all history, and it has been part of the process for developing children into adults and preparing them for the “real world”. Instead of trying to intervene in everything, we need to just let it happen and work itself out. that seems to have done just fine for the past several thousand years, i have to be lieve it will keep working.
The fight against bullying goes hand in hand with the liberal ideal of cradle to the grave government care. When the children can not learn to take care of their own issues at young ages, they are incapable of dealing with larger issues as they mature. thus they need that government baby sitter and our society is further hooked.
I see your point, but I also believe those of us who are stronger and capable are supposed to defend the weak. Since the time of chivalry first rearing its’ ugly head we’ve been taught that some can’t defend themselves thus it’s our duty to do so…the knights of the realm are not supposed to be aiding and abetting the oppression of the weaker members of the lower classes….we’re supposed to protect them from evil and serve the common good…
I think I see a couple of bullying variants, the traditional dodge ball slams the slower, weaker, uncoordinated kids who get picked last for the game which I understand and agree with, not everyone is a star athlete the sooner kids learn that the better…but the other bullying is the hard core unceasing mental and physical torture of a weaker individual for no reason other than the bully thinks he or she can get away with it. I don’t much care for that latter aspect or the people who perform those acts or their turd parents who allow it to go unpunished. I was taught when I see those things I should stop them, and maybe provide a little punishment of my own to the perpetrator…
Guess it started there with the limeys and their sense of honor among the knights…
Hey MCPO, running or not? I’m going half past berserk right now. My pickup quit running like it should, and It’s been to four garages now. The first two couldn’t figure out what was wrong (didn’t charge me a dime, either)so the third was a dealership, who told me my transmission was shot, and they would install a rebuilt one for $3400. One call to a transmission shop confirmed that they could do it for around half that, and they’d diagnose the problem at no charge. The result? My engine and transmission were fine, my Catalytic Converters were plugged! So here I still sit with my thumb up my ass waiting for them to get done, and I’ve been without wheels for over a week, *AAAARRGGGGHHH!!*
I just wish I was finished with the rebuild on my 1947 Willys by now!!
Master Chief, to answer your question, other people are preoccupied with bullying and BBQ ribs.
However, as requested:
2001 Ford Escape V-6 – gas
Lawn mower – reel-type, human powered
lawn mower – electric, plugs into outdoor outlet
weedwhacker – electric, same as elec. lawn mower
Various rakes, brooms, etc. human powered
GE Diswhasher
GE XL gas stove
GE refrigerator
GE XL microwave over the stove
Black & Decker countertop convection oven
Proctor & Silex Crock pot
Crane furnace – uses natural gas
Water heater – uses natural gas
Sewing machine – electric, multistitch type
HP Compaq Presario SR21150NX computer – electric
Admiral countertop blender
Yes we are, and no it’s not. But the veiled current of thought in Smitty’s post is that bullying shouldn’t be cracked down on, and that the guilt for crimes against a person should be placed back upon the victims instead of squarely on the perpetrator.
I did nothing to deserve how I was treated as a kid. I was of above average intelligence, and paid a price for being a ‘late developer’ physically. I wasn’t “so weak that they take their own lives” because of my parents as Smitty puts it, a veiled reference to the bullied kids being so weak in their person that the bullies are supposedly doing them a favor, “toughen up or remove yourself from the gene pool” in other words, whether he intended it that way or not. I was immersed in an environment where no one was controlling the little future criminals that were making my life a living hell.
As despots the world over have proven, given the right tools and circumstances there are precious few ADULTS who can’t have their will broken by the systematic application of violence and intimidation, let alone kids. Is it those adult’s parent’s fault when they finaly snap?
“I see your point, but I also believe those of us who are stronger and capable are supposed to defend the weak. Since the time of chivalry first rearing its’ ugly head we’ve been taught that some can’t defend themselves thus it’s our duty to do so…the knights of the realm are not supposed to be aiding and abetting the oppression of the weaker members of the lower classes….we’re supposed to protect them from evil and serve the common good…”
i didnt disagree with that at all, that was what i meant about finding a sheep dog. children will often find others that they can go to for protection, those ar the sheep dogs and the ones that will emerge from among their piers as the leaders. we can not find those willing to step up on behalf of others and those willing to be leaders if we cut the entire process off at the knees
Smitty,
The evidence against your theory as outlined in the last paragraph of #34 is that those very cradle to gravers we all despise, also gift our society with it’s worst physical predetors. They certainly have learned how to take care of their problems, and not in a productive way. You’re weaker than me? Fine, I’ll just shoot you and take your shit. You’re a woman and smaller/weaker than me? Fine, I’ll just take what I want of your body and could really care less what you think about it.
Yep, let’s ‘not come down on the bully’, that’s a great idea.
And if you think the older ways of societal conflict resolution were the most effective, you’re turning a blind eye to the social and economic advances of the last 100 years, a very short period of social, economic, and technical advance that has not ever been seen in human history. It’s all as a result of the changing social awareness of the need to get along to get ahead as our population density has increased.
@jacobite, i fully blame the parents of “victims” when their children commit suicide. i feel that it is their pampering of their children that allows the weakness to fester and grow, culminating in the absolute act of weakness, suicide. tell your kids to toughen up now so you dont have to bury them later due to suicide.
MCPO:
1987 Formula Firebird
2003 Chevy Suburban
1980 Dodge Winnebago
1989 Dodge Ram 150
I now realize that half of my vehicles are older than me.
Jacobite, there are aspects of society that change for the good, and those that change for the worse. taking the problem of bullies away from their piers handicaps the growth of those children. you can cry about how bad you had it as a kid all ya want, it made you stronger and you had to figure out how to over come it. if you had a soft cushy childhood, would you be who you are today? the world is not a nice place, we are lying to our children trying to tell them it is. someone being mean to you isnt criminal, it is part of life, shit happens, move on. you said it made you cynical, i say it stopped you from being a victim.
I think the one thing you are forgetting in the bullying discussion is that we humans are apex predators and we are only a few genetic steps removed from the other primates.
In fact, bonobos and chipmanzees are the next closest primates to humans, and chipmanzees are well-known now for their propensity to aggression and violence. They hunt other clans. They kidnap the babies. They commit murder within their own clans as well as cannibalism. They pull nasty jokes on each other. They’ll beat the crap out of each other over bananas, and if you give them a noisy thing like an gas can with a few rocks in it, they will use it as a means of bullying all the others around them into submission. And they get nastier and meaner and more predatory as they age. And yes, they use weapons and tools, and they can kill a human with their teeth.
There’s not a whole lot of difference between us and them, just the habitats and toys. We have opposable thumbs. They don’t. We have skeletal structure that allows us to walk upright comfortably. They don’t.
The aggressiveness and predator instincts that humans possess have allowed us to survive and propser in hostile environments and drive out other predators, but we have yet to overcome our basic predatory nature.
So, despite VOV’s cynical view, we aren’t inherently evil. We’re the byproduct of millions of years of survival in an environment that demands that we be who we are, and yet, in this culture of ours, it’s frowned upon to even admit to wanting to go deer hunting in the fall.
@36. Those cats are terrible. Some years ago, while residing in one of those uber blue states, I committed the leftist equivalent of a mortal sin: I knocked out the clogged bees hive and put the cat back on. Car ran great.
At #36 check your state regs, some older cars are optimal or not required to have cats. Joe
I saw a contest box at the local grocery store. Fill a slip out, put in box, maybe you win a prize.
The prize is 10 cases of Colt 45 (16oz), 100 burgers, you and your friends and Billy Dee Williams. Yep, you heard right. Billy Dee will come hang out and cook out with you.
I stuffed the box.
The man, the myth and the legend. I was also hoping if I won I could invite William Shatner as well.
Awesomesauce!
That speech has never and will never get old. Kevin Branagh is brilliant.
Bullying story,,,, or anti-bullying. My Son played 4 years of football for one of the better teams in San Diego County. He was always a popular kid. In his freshman year him and another kid were goofing around and my son got hit in his gonads by the guy with a bookbag. My son ended up having one of his testicles atrophying. The Football team and actually the entire school knew about it. The kid that him was overweight, had a harelip and wasn’t well like by anyone. He had a reputation for doing mean-spirited shit to people. What he did to my son may or may not been intentional. In the eyes of his team mates and other kids Robert( the kid’s) name was due for it. There was no vengeance ever taken on him though.
Two years later, when my son graduated I finally met Robert.
He looked the part of the high school freak. Fat, hare-lip, acne and greasy long hair. One of my sons introduced him as “the guy who hurt Chris”…. Robert looked and me then at my Son and said “Yes, and he forgave me the next day”.
There was some much gratitude, respect and admiration when how he said that and the way he looked at my son that it made it one of the proudest moments of my life.
Apparently the day after the incident my son got with the football team and all his friends and specifically told them to not pick on Robert. He could have Robert’s life miserable but he took the high road.
Backpain:
1. 1 Oxycodone
2. 1 Diazepam
3. 1 Flexorol
4. Double shot of Bailey’s on the rocks.
5. Lay down!
Do not repeat as neccessary.