Anyhoo.

A fellow officer (here-in after referred to as “Sgt Krunch”) has recently unearthed some treasure and has informed me of this find.

Way Back When, a certain newly-minted supervisor reassigned to the Detention Centre decided that shift pass-along should be sent out as e-mails to make sure that every supervisor would have a hard-copy of the events that had transpired on his shift.

My Sheriff now knows that I write this blog, I have gone to the Chief Deputy and asked if it would cause any heartburn if I were to re-post these shift summations for your edification.

He has replied that as long as I anonymise them, there won’t be a problem.

So.

I will load up at least one shift summation every other day for the month of September. Maybe more, we’ll see.

If my Gentle Readers find these summations amusing, all I ask is that you pop over to ADs site and donate to Kilted To Kick Cancer. (If I can figure out how to post the links here, I’ll pin a KTKC button on my sidebar. No promises.)

For those who don’t know, Kilted To Kick Cancer was founded to raise awareness of male-specific cancers — and funds for research of same.

People keep telling me how amusing my writing is, and begging me to write a book.

Here’s your chance to put your money where your mouth is: read the summations, and if you like them, donate what you’d spend on a book to do a good deed.

(And you might send good thoughts towards the general direction of my Sheriff and my Chief Deputy for basically telling me that my blog is perfectly okay, and to start writing again.)

“I love this! The patchouli doesn’t smell like filthy hippie; more like manky, slightly pongy hippie!”

Long pause.

“Are you laughing at me?”

Nope, darling.  Not in the least.

Alas, it didn’t take being used as a Distraction Device as well as its’ predecessor — not well at all, come to think — and never did succeed in receiving e-mails.

Commensurate with my new duties came — yet another — firm “suggestion” by the folks what sign my paycheque as to upgrading my personal communication device.

*sigh*

So, this morning I wandered into my local wireless center where a drone with a Corporate Smile looked up my account on the store computer, frowned and murmured, “That’s not funny” and summoned the manager.

Said worthy appeared, looked at the screen, frowned, and started hammering keys until I stated — apropos of nothing: “Yes, I have thrown my phone at inmates.”

Both drones looked at me for a loooong time, and then the manager-type looked at his underling. Underling sayeth, “He wants an upgrade.”

Manager thinks long and hard before stating (rather firmly, I thought), “Not an iPhone” and buggering off to the back-room. Probably for a cigarette and a soothing shot of booze.

Long story short, I have turned in the Lobotomy Plus™ for a brand-spanking new Samsung Rugby Pro™.

And spent two hours at home, shutting off the superfluous stuff. Kee riced all my tea, I DO NOT want my location continuously updated to various social network sites, thankyewverramuchly, nor do I need suggestions as to restaurants, motels, clothing stores, Points Of Interest, and anything else I might be traveling within half-a-mile of constantly plinging the screen.

Initial impressions are that this thing is a brick. When the drone told me that it had a “reassuring heft” I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean that with a proper wind-up, it it may move from Distraction Device right into Less-Lethal territory.

Supposed to be Mil-Spec. We’ll see if it’s ‘Dog-Spec — which may be a considerably more stringent standard. The jury is out.

Apparently the post I had here was the result of a very elaborate hoax.

Sigh.

*snort*

The entirely predictable result — well, predictable to anyone who knows human nature, the Internet, or has a passing knowledge of the movie/video game/music business in general — was that a significant number of netizens cocked snooks in the general direction of the Department of State, and about ten squillion copies of the 3D gun hit the torrents about three microseconds later.

I’m pretty sure that today a whole bunch of folks are irritated by having to pick gun designs out of their pirated music and porn downloads, but macht nichts.

The whole excitement involving the 3D gun raised an eyebrow at Rancho LawDog, but not much else. Oh, it’s interesting, in a techie sort of way, but anyone can buy a CNC mill (or get access to a machine shop) and do the exact same thing, but in metal instead of plastic, with less chance of explosive disassembly, and pretty much the same bite out of your wallet.

Hell, the original FP-45 was pretty much designed to be manufactured by an assembly line consisting of three trained chimpanzees with hammers, a shop steward who had enough brains to pick his nose without giving himself a lobotomy, and a UPS truck.

The STEN gun was a little more intricate, requiring some familiarity with the location of the nearest plumbing warehouse.

Since I’ve personally seen a 3rd world blacksmith with a charcoal fire, hand tools, and a donkey make perfectly-functional copies of late 19th Century and early 20th Century rifles and pistols; and a brief search of the Internet will turn up the saga of the gentleman who made an AK47 in his garage out of a shovel and a $30 barrel blank — well, the whole Fed.gov melt-down over the 3D pistol just goes to reinforce my view that the critters who are allegedly running this country don’t know a single bloody thing about history, human nature, smithing, guns in general, the history of guns, or engineering.

Matter-of-fact, this whole sorry episode is going to be another footnote in the annals of history that future scholars will point to and say, “This was the period of time in which the Government of the United States consisted solely of people who didn’t have any business running anything more complicated than a lemonade stand without adult supervision.”

I swear, it’s getting to the point where someone needs to walk into the next session of Congress with a malacca cane, give every single Congresscritter and Senate-critter five good strokes and send them to bed without their supper until they start acting like bloody adults.

Growl.

Today the First Tree Rat of Spring stuck its’ head out of the eaves for a Bullseye Cosmic Weather Report and took a 20-grain Super Colibri twixt the running lights.

Miss Praline, who knows what the swearing-running-grabbing Magic Skwirl Stick means, was waiting for the little furry bastard and nailed his carcass in mid-air.

Miss Mochi, however, is new and does did not know what the commotion was about … until Praline smacked her up side the head with a graphically deceased skwirl while making sure the tree-rat was properly Done For in True Terrier Fashion.

I swear, I almost heard the ‘click’ when the light went on her little dachsie head.

All of a sudden we’re having a major tug-of-war between the 15-pound Jack Russell Terrier on one end and the 17-pound dachshund on the other; I’m trying to find a place to lay the rifle and yelling, “Drop it!”, the two of them decide that rotating around each other is the best way to frustrate Daddy; and on the deck Chuy rolls over to let the sun warm his belly fur.

Smart dog, Chuy.

Giving up, I lightly (I hope) toss the Henry into a thick-ish patch of weeds (I really should mow the blasted lawn, but it does tend to make nice padding) lunge and grab Praline. Praline, being the sweet-natured little thing she is, drops her end of the skwirl.

This … may have been a miscalculation on my part.

Mochi is every bit as sweet-natured as Praline, however, Mochi is a guttersnipe. Mochi had a hard, hard life before we got her and Mochi understands that one simply does not give up that much free protein.

She pivot-turned, drew a bead on the entrance to her extensive network of tunnels under the Morgan building and kicked her “skattle, skattle, skattle” into afterburner. And I’m here to tell you — short as that little things legs are, under proper motivation she can flat move.

Since I am not gormless, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s on her mind — get the goodie into the Dachsie-cave where Daddy doesn’t fit and it can be enjoyed at leisure — so I take about three steps and do a running dive, both hands up and block the entrance.

Knocking the wind out of meself in the process, I might add.

Up on the deck, Chuy gives a sedate sneeze and luxuriously scratches his back.

Mochi bounces off my out-stretched hands, blinks, recalculates, and we’re for a full-on sprint around the Morgan building. Somewhere in the third (maybe fourth, it’s hard to keep track when you’re wheezing that badly) lap she meets Praline coming around widdershins and there’s a full frontal collision.

I take advantage, skid to my knees, scoop up Mochi and her prize and …

… discover just how strong the jaw muscles of a dachshund are.

Chuy rolls over and stretches leisurely.

Somewhere in-between the “Mochi, drop it!” “Praline! Not! Helping!” “MOCHI! Give up the [redacted] rat!” I finally get her jaws parted, and out of sheer desperation I fling the skwirl over the fence.

And there is peace in my kingdom. I stagger to my feet, pet the pups, pick up the Henry, and …

… In the tree above my head is another sodding tree rat. Shaking his metaphorical fist at me, cursing my lineage until the end of time, and running …

… for that damned hole in the eaves.

It was a Zen moment. The entire world narrowed down to that squirrel’s ear. My weight came down on my right foot, right hand pulling the rifle into my shoulder. Left thumb eared the hammer back. Squirrel bouncing off the end of the tree branch. Smooth exhale of breath. Rifle tracking. Focus moving from skwirl ear to front sight, brief close of right eye — front sight exactly where it needed to be. Smooth pull on trigger.

The squirrel abruptly cartwheeled in mid-air. Up in Heaven Col Jeff Cooper grunted appreciatively, angels sang sweetly, and the sun shone down on me. Bee-yoo-tee-ful shot. Couldn’t have been done better in a Hollywood film.

Sigh.

And then that tiny little voice in the back of my head yelled, “Oh, you’re a silly daft bugger, ain’t’cha?” as two furry rockets, one ginger coloured and one white, shot past me.

How-ever-the-hell many dusty minutes later, I’m down on one knee. I’ve got the skwirl by the tail with my right hand, I’ve got Praline trapped under the deck with my knee and I’ve got Mochi snaffled by the collar with my left hand —

— and Chuy scratches himself happily behind one ear, strolls over to the side of the deck, meditatively removes the rather-bloody carcass from my hand and jauntily ambles towards the open door of the house. Presumably towards his very favourite nest on the bed containing Herself’s Very Good, Multiple Thread Count sheets and other good linens.

Sigh.

Gawd.

I [redacted] hate skwirls.

Ben Goldacre later named this article one of the “Three all-time classic bogus science stories” in his book Bad Science.

Andrew Wakefield ignored data, manipulated evidence, presented fraudulent results, and basically lied his arse off for this article — and apparently all for the sake of a paycheck of less than 500,000 pounds by lawyers looking for evidence to use against vaccine manufacturers in civil litigation.

Wakefield’s fraud was discovered — unfortunately not before a drastic drop in childhood immunisations resulted in severe, permanent injuries and death in children throughout the UK from easily-preventable measles and mumps — and Wakefield was pilloried, stripped of his medical licence and had to pay a goodly amount of legal costs for other people.

Not nearly enough in my opinion, but there you go.

Any-the-hoo. Researcher lied, kids died, researcher exposed: Truth and Justice win out in the end …

… except for one dancing monkey on this side of the pond named Jim Carrey — apparently famous for making his butt talk (how apropos), genitalia jokes, and a rubber face.

Mr Carrey seems to have decided that the medical expertise gained by making ones’ butt talk (and medical fraud such as that perpetrated by Andrew Wakefield) should be tied to any fame that he does have for the purpose of scaring parents into not vaccinating their children against easily-preventable, life-altering childhood diseases.

Wrap your mind around that, Gentle Reader.

So, the news that this particular butt-talking dancing monkey has decided to apply the same level and variety of cogitation and rational thought to the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States as he has to childhood immunisations means …

… not a whole hell of a lot to me.

If anything the pure chutzpah of a man who is perfectly okay with children getting — or dying from — measles (one of the leading causes of death amongst children globally), but is having a conniption fit over me owning an AR-15 is mildly amusing.

I’ll wager that the sum total of people killed by privately-held AR15s last year is a fraction of the number of children who died from complications of measles in the same time frame. Yet Jim Carrey wants parents to stop immunising — saving — children from this disease.

Shut your piehole and dance, monkey.