Does it always have to be about football?

Senator Brownback's misapplication of metaphor is a more grave insult to the language than his failure to invoke Wisconsin's athlete named Faahhrv.

It also takes down a peg or two my consideration of Sen. Brownback for the position of chief executive of the Republic. He's technologically illiterate.

"Blocking and tackling" does not refer to defensive techniques in the game of American football--or if it does, that is a recent misappropriation of the term by linguistic thugs, cutpurses, and pitchmen. It is far older than that, a reference to the use of ropes and pulleys ("a block and tackle") to lift heavy objects. In modern times, it is used to signify drudgery, the repetitive tasks that do not demand raw strength so much as perseverance along a simple plan, one pull on the rope after another after another. It connotes slow progress. Blocking and tackling does not leave one exhausted so much as it leaves one sore, having traveled through several times more in length of rope than has the weight that was lifted.

In comparison, the blocking and tackling of football are glamorous, instantaneous, bruising spectacle. An angle of attack gone wrong, a misplanted foot, and an athlete's career can end.

It's a geek-vs-jock thing, and as jocks would have it, the world turns around jocks. Another term for "jock" is ambitious.

In Kansas, of all places

I just watched the first episode of Jericho. Only one observation of the show that sticks with me as improbable: no fat women.

There was a deaf girl. There was a school teacher on the bus with some likely internal injury---that didn't kill her after being stranded on that bus for hours and hours---she was kinda hot. The ex-girlfriend who drove over the crow corpses, she was hot. Heck, at my age the mayor's wife and protagonist's mom, she's passable. Any of them could fit down the aisle of a commuter aircraft without spilling someone's coffee.

Not one diamond-shaped quarter-tonner. Not a single one. I don't recall a fat guy, either.

And I didn't notice a Kansas accent.

Kinda hard for me to suspend my disbelief for the rest of the show, y'all.

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It has arrived!

My first shipment of 6.5mm Grendel ammunition has arrived. At about $.70 per round delivered, it'll be a while before I have a SHTF-adequate quantity. Midway gets my money.

But in what shall I shoot it? That's another post.

One of my suppliers

In my K'lash building of late, I've used several parts made to order from "one of the guys on the boards."

After placing another such order recently, one "guy on the boards" has been particularly effusive in gratitude for the business. Only fair that I bring him to light here.

So hotbarrel, please take a bow. Quality kit and shamefully low price, he does it for the fun. The only way to reach him, that I know, is to join the gunco.net board and look for him under that name, 'hotbarrel', and PM him.

By all means, do, if you're taking up the (endangered) craft of home Kalashnifacture.

Happy happy, Joy joy!

Examination Scored

Congratulations on passing the NREMT cognitive examination. Your passing result on the cognitive examination will remain valid for a one year period from the date of the examination, 4/x/2007 (provided you meet all current requirements for National EMS Certification).

Please allow 2 weeks for the NREMT to mail out results letters.

Quote for the day

. . . changes in corporate law cannot eradicate poverty or materially change existing distributions of wealth, except by impairing the creation of wealth. Changes in corporate law will not clean the environment. And changes in corporate law will not solve the labor question. Indeed, the only changes in corporate law that will have a substantial effect on such issues are changes that make the world worse, not better.

HT Instapundit. And what, exactly, is "the labor question"?