I know that Texas doesn’t have a lock on court guns, or their kissin’ cousin, the BBQ gun, but someone always asks me what they are.

If you go the ivory option, have the ivory inlaid or scrimshawed. Floral patterns involving roses and the Texas flag are good, as well as the state of Texas, a tasteful rendition of a young lady, or long horn cattle. Any scene from the battle of the Alamo is a surefire crowd pleaser. For those souls living outside the Great State of Texas, the flag raising at Mt. Suribachi may be substituted for an Alamo scene, and anything involving Marines is acceptable engraving material.

I would advise that you stay away from morbid or dreary themes in your engraving — unless it is extremely well done.

The leather for your BBQ gun should be of a floral pattern, with the engraving a different color than the rest of the leather. The engraving pattern should extend to the buckle and any other metal hardware which should consist of silver and be polished bright enough to shave in, although gold is acceptable if carried with the proper attitude.

No BBQ outfit is really complete without hand-made boots made from the hide of a critter that is guaranteed to send your local PETA petter into orbit. Pressed jeans under a Western-cut jacket, with a bolo tie, and a black Stetson complete the ensemble. The bolo tie should have a chunk of rock slightly larger than a baby’s fist and the Stetson should have a hat band made from the cousin of the critter on your feet.

For some of the best examples of court and BBQ guns around, I strongly recommend visiting the Texas Ranger Museum in Waco, Texas.

LawDog

In my previous post, I attempted to gently express how irritated I get when someone with Left Coast plates jumps up with a Hollywood horse-hockey version of what some poli-critter in Newt Yack City, or Maryland, or Cali-Ore-Washing-stan would like the law to be and expects me to enforce it, and no questions asked.

LawDog

Tamara’s rant concerning west coast liberals invading her state is a near and dear hot button for me, but for a slightly different reason than Tams.

Ahem.

Good evening, folks.

Today I would like to rant about a particularly irritating habit I’ve noticed developing amongst the horde of carpet-bagging, mouth-breathing, bunny-hugging, veggie-gnawing, mono-synaptic, close-minded dacoits who are tip-toeing through my fair State like a horde of lobotomized, politically-correct, apron-hanging rhinocerii.

You. Yes, you. The weasel with the organic hemp clothes, the questionable hygiene, and the index finger inserted knuckle-deep in your sinus cavities.

Listen to me carefully. I’ll go slowly so that you may grok the entirety of what I am attempting to express:

‘Law and Order’ is a TV show. ‘The Practice’ is a TV show. They are written by brain-burned colleagues of yours who have about as much understanding of Law as an amoeba has of a tesseract.

And here’s the important part: The “laws” that Hollywood twists beyond all reason and sanity for the sake of drama are loosely — very loosely — based on New York laws. And California laws. Not, I say, NOT Texas law.

The next one of you invertebrates who tries to metaphorically beat me about the shoulders with a bastardized Hollywood version of a liberalized California Penal Code is going to get ridden out of the County on a rail. Covered with asphalt. And synthetic chicken feathers.

Write this down:

Texas does not have a law entitled “brandishing”. And even if we did, carrying your rifle from your pickup to your house would not violate such a dumb-bunny law.

Texas does not have any laws concerning the carry of shotguns and/or rifles. Yes, he can carry his rifle over his shoulder as he walks down the farm-to-market road. Deal with it.

Texas does not have any laws concerning ammunition. It is not against the law to have loose ammo in your vehicle. Or your pockets. Or in the change plate at church.

Texas does not register guns. Period. Suck it up.

Texas does not have the legal term “assault rifle”. It’s a rifle. It’s legal. Shut your pie hole and evolve into a spine.

Deputy Friendly will explain this to you once. Maybe twice. The third time he has to listen to your snivelling, whining, lying claptrap, he is going to turn into Deputy Irritated. This should be taken as a warning.

It should not be taken as a reason to refer to the Deputy as a “jumped up prison guard”; and I should warn you that threatening the Sheriff of a Texas County with the disfavour and/or wrath of a Mayor or a Chief of Police does usually get met with giggles.

If things were that great back whereverthehell you came from, why are you polluting my county, hmm?

We’re happy with our laws. Texas laws have worked just fine for Texas. If we wanted the California garbage they call a Penal code, we’d have moved to California. If New York is that great, I-35 is that way. Leave your daughters at the state line.

Oh, Sam Waterson nothwithstanding, Texas Law does not require a Breathalyzer to arrest someone for Public Intoxication. And yes, we know what marihuana smoke smells like. And yes, being stoned on mota, standing on a public road, trying to tell a deputy sheriff that a man doesn’t have the God-given right to carry his own damned rifle on his own damned property is pretty much a text-book definition of Public Intoxication.

Thank you for your attention.

LawDog

Our nutty little geniuses at DARPA have created a “neural implant” that would allow engineers to do wild and wicked things to a shark’s think box by way of remote control.

Some folks figure that the DARPA boffins have been reading a skosh too much cyberpunk.

*snort*

This is exactly what happens when you take three uber-geeks, one case of Ye Olde Panther Whiz, an Austin Powers DVD, and leave all of the above in a basement for the weekend.

The beta version sounds good. All sorts of detailed gobbeldy-gook about “detection capabilities”, “stealth surveillance” and other esoteric goodies.

I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that somewhere, buried in the plans, probably under a Three Letter Acronym, are designs for a “Frickin’ Laser Beam Attachment Point And Control Circuit”.

It’s there. You know it is.

LawDog

By way of the lovely Tamara from A View From The Porch, we discover this story.

For those of you who aren’t keeping score, Ms. Rachel Corrie was the brain-dead, umm – congitively-impaired, umm – what is the current term — Hero Of The Revolution? — who decided to listen to the advice of puppet-masters people who knew better than to risk their own pink skins, and knelt down in front of an Israeli bulldozer. The fact that said bulldozer was prepping to knock down a house being used to conceal a tunnel full of explosives, guns, RPG7V’s and spitball launchers not really being germaine to Little Miss Corrie’s thought processes FEE-EEL-ings.

Unfortunately, Little Miss Corrie chose to trust her companions. Which was the second worst mistake of her short life, because her little buddies then proceeded to videotape the slowly moving bulldozer as it turned Miss Corrie into crinkle-cut people patties.

Do note, Gentle Readers, the point about the bulldozer being slowly moving. (It must also be pointed out that since the bulldozer was being used in a war zone, the cab is armoured. the driver can only see out through a tiny slit, and was not able to view the area where Little Miss Corrie was placed decided to kneel. A fact that should not –and I will guarantee did not — have escaped those who planned this photo opportunity.)

Yes. Rather than taking three steps forward and jerking Little Miss Dumbass out of the way of the bulldozer, her Noble Companions decided that it was more important To The Cause instead to videotape her being killed. If they had taken the three steps and prevented her from becoming One With The Earth, it would have been, at best, a One Night Wonder. Her gruesome death is much more useful to The Cause.

Which leds us to the above referenced story. For those of you out there who aren’t as cynical as Your Scribe, the following may come as a surprise:

Those Who Chose Not To Get Sacrificed The companions of the erstwhile Little Miss Corrie have announced a memorial…

…wait for it…

PANCAKE FEED!

YES!

Was anyone who has dealt with revolutions, insurgencies and/or subversive political movements in the past actually surprised by this? Are there any students of history, or Machiavelli fanboys, who didn’t see this one coming?

These critters were out of the news. Their cause didn’t even qualify as parrot age liner anymore. What better way to get back into the limelight than by outrage?

And do not doubt: This is outrageous. It is causing folks to wax eloquent about the insensitivity of this stunt: Girl flattened by bulldozer = pancake feed. Goodness.

The blogsphere is reverbrating with bad jokes concerning bulldozers, pancakes and Orange Crush.

All of which serves to catapult those who stood by and did nothing while a SLOW. MOVING. bulldozer crushed the life out of a sacrifical lamb, and those who ordered this to happen for the sake of The Cause, all of this punts them, and said cause, back into the public eye.

If I were running this op, I’d do the same thing.

LawDog

I wrote this description of a dojo I visited in response to a question regarding “bad martial arts.” I’d like to go on record here as saying that I have spent some time in an aikido dojo many years ago, although one not quite as anal-retentive as the one I wrote the following story about.

He stops the class(?), waddles up to us and asks what we think we know. Bob respectfully (never insult an S&M practitioner in his own home) answers that we’ve studied kickboxing, some stick-and-knife stuff and a little bit of grappling.

Sensei opines at the top of his lungs that he will teach us things [wheeze] about the knife that lesser arts [wheeze] will never know. Or things to that effect. Student is summoned, runs up, bangs his forehead on the mat, runs off, comes back with a rubber training knife, bangs his forehead on the mat (what is it with the forehead banging?) and sensei tells him to attack.

LawDog

Well, went and treated myself to the movie ‘Ultraviolet’ this evening.

If you’re looking for live-action anime with modern Hollywood sterilized violence and a high “Nifty, neato, gee whiz!” factor, then you’ll probably like this movie.

If you’re looking for another ‘Equilibrium’, you’re going to be disappointed.

‘Equilibrium’ is one of my all time favorite movies, so you can guess where I fall on that spectrum.

I’m afraid that Kurt Wimmer is going to be one of these people that does his best work with a skeleton budget, but if you give him some money, he just goes to hell.

The special effects in ‘Ultraviolet’ were very neat. The CG effects were almost subtle, and the colour-changing hair and outfits well done; and the multi-dimensional storage added a nice touch of “Wow.”

Many, many OPFOR red shirts bit the dust — amid several mines worth of flying lead — the Head Bad Guy In Charge was sleazy and died, there were some memorable one-liners which will be showing up in .sig lines for the next couple of months, and the whole thing was set in a future Dystopia.

Oh, speaking of signatures, there was some of Wimmer’s Gun Kata here and there.

It just isn’t on the same level as ‘Equilibrium’. Mr. Wimmers’ first movie was many things: a story of a man learning to feel; an unsubtle dig at Big Government and the Nanny State; making choices; being human, and doing The Right Thing.

Some of the scenes where Cleric Preston is dealing with the completely unknown world of feelings are powerful: as he guiltily removes his glove to to touch a stair rail that a stranger had just touched, the terror when he realizes that he is enjoying a sunrise, the sense of loss when he hears Beethoven for the first time, all good stuff.

Punctuated by Bad Guys getting their butts kicked. And in the Climatic Final Meeting where Preston whacks the Chief Bad Guy, you’re rooting for Preston and it’s righteous when he whacks the Bad Guy.

In ‘Ultraviolet’, we just have Violet whacking and stacking Bad Guys. At the end, we’re rooting for Violet simply because she has a nice butt. Oh, she killed the Chief Bad Dude? Cool.

*sigh*

Also, I will have to admit that I was very disappointed not to see the ‘trapping/sticky hands’ close-in version of Gun Kata in ‘Ultraviolet’. That, my friends, is wizard gun work. Pity Mr. Wimmer chose not to use it in his latest movie.

LawDog

Well, as you may have noticed, I’m back.

And I’d just as soon not do another of these weeks anytime soon, thankyewverymuch.

Gran is … keeping her mud in a ball, barely. My great-aunt … not so much.

*sigh*

Had a nice service in a charming little chapel. I say ‘Nice service’ because the lead preacher managed to suppress the temptation to throw in an hour-long sermon, thus avoiding Mom having to explain to the guests why her senior child has the sky-pilot in a triangle choke behind the baptismal font.

Have funerals always been seen as an opportunity to convert some heathens and/or remind unrepentant sinners that they’re going to hell, or is this a recent thing?

Anyhoo, we got there kind of early and I was wandering around the chapel because I’m a paranoid SOB, and I discovered a kind of neat feature:

The left-hand wall was actually vertical slats, set at a 45 degree angle. Behind these slats was an entire other seating area. Anyone in this area could see the altar end of the chapel and the preacher through the slats, but no one in the general audience area could see them, or been seen by them. Matter-of-fact, if you weren’t looking too closely, you’d never know there was another seating area.

I figure it’s discrete seating for girlfriends, bookies, the occasional woods colt and everyone else who might embarrass folks in the general seating area.

Jolly decent idea, if I do say so myself.

Anyhoo, I’m back. I’m going to go have a couple of fingers of Maker’s Mark over an ice cube or two, watch some old movies, and I’ll see y’all later.

LawDog

I was a little hesitant about posting this one, as it pretty much has an ‘R’ rating. I needn’t have worried, though, everyone seems to have enjoyed it.

Ahem.

Big Mama had four girls, and of the four, Opal was the most like her mama, both in temperament and physically speaking. In other words, one of Opal would have easily made two of me, and I’m not exactly petite.

LawDog