Category: Guy Stuff

Things that make men go “Oooooh!”

Where Are They Now?

Pussification Parade, Toys

Via Reader Old Texan in his Friday email, I see this lovely little thing:

…which leads me to ask:  whatever happened to cap guns? 

I grew up with the things — I mean, that one on the pic could have been the one I had as a kid, except my gun’s ur-nickel plating was long gone through much pocketing and abuse.  And my poor mother had to deal with my constant nagging each Saturday morning (when I got my paltry allowance) to take me to the hardware store or drugstore to get five rolls of those excellent caps (which would last me till, oh, Sunday afternoon;  I haven’t changed much).

I’d assumed that they’d been declared illegal because eeeevil guns, and caps ditto because EXPLOSIVE MATERIAL!!!!  but I see that plastic ones (eeewww!!!), die-cast revolvers and even cap roll guns are sold through Amazon.  Sadly, the first two of these use “ring caps” which are terrible because boys can’t create mini-explosive devices out of them, as we did with the cap rolls when I were a Lad Of Extreme Mischief.  (I should point out that my Dad showed me how to do this, which says it all, really.)

But can you buy ring caps or paper roll caps through Amazon?  Silly rabbit, of course you can’t, no doubt because you have to fill out ATF Form #4376-5-3 or some such bullshit before such a sale can be “allowed”.

I think you can still buy the cap rolls at Tractor Supply stores and ring caps at Big Lots! (note: they are out of stock in both outlets).  But wait:  what have we here?  Aaahhh, Tin Toy Arcade to the rescue:

 

I have to say, though, that relatively speaking, those guns are Colt Python-expensive, for toys.  Especially when you can get the Real Thing for a little more than three times the price:

 
…and the plainer .22 LR-only version for little more than double:

…as used by Daughter as her first gun.

But let’s not go there.

I suspect, by the way, that societal pressure is forcing these lovely cap guns to be disappearing fast because We Cannot Allow Children To Play With Violent Toys.

What a load of old bollocks.

Not Australia This Time

Guy Stuff

…but in Austria:

An Austrian supermarket was evacuated after the store manager reportedly spotted a banana-loving spider capable of causing permanent erections in men.

The Penny shop in Krems an der Donau, 45 miles west of Vienna, remains closed since Tuesday over fears of the four-inch black and red spider.

Emergency services were called and warn the spider, still at large, may have been a highly venomous Brazilian Wandering Spider, known to reach Europe by hiding in bunches of bananas.

The creature is one of the planet’s most venomous spiders, and bites can be fatal after causing hypothermia, blurred vision, convulsions and, in some cases, erections. The spider’s venom is even being studied for use in erectile dysfunction treatments after it was found that a bite from one of the spiders can give male victims a painful four-hour erection.

Speaking as someone who as a young teenager suffered from an almost-permanent condition like this — thank you, Adolescent Hormone Flood* — this is actually no laughing matter.

So quit giggling, you maniacs.

Is there any good to be had from Third World countries other than as a place for massive and sustained nuclear ordnance testing, I ask myself?

Probably not;  but then the same goes for Australia.

*Anecdote time:  back in boarding school, one guy (no names, just in case) actually had a massive and sustained erection — so much so that after nearly a day of torment he went to see the school nurse.  She smacked it on the tip with a metal spoon — yes, I know — whereupon he emitted a truly splendid and seemingly-endless ejaculation all over her and himself.  That wasn’t the expected nor desired result, of course, but at least his woody subsided.  When later asked by someone whether he couldn’t have just had a wank to achieve the same end, his reply was immortal:  “What, in the fucking biology lab?”

3 Questions That Shouldn’t Need Answering

3 Inexplicable Things, Guy Stuff

Every so often one will come across a question to which the answer is self-evident, but someone’s going to ask it anyway.  Here’s an example:

1. “When you find a rusted-out old kitchen knife, why not just toss it out and buy a shiny new one from Williams-Sonoma?”
— because nothing looks as fine as a well-restored blade, not just in appearance, but in its intrinsic history.  Need proof?  See here, where some guy with mad skillz goes after an old cleaver.

Here’s another one:

2. “Why would someone spend $170,000 on a replica of an old car?”
— because as long as the replica has been manufactured by engineers with all respect for quality as well as heritage, it’s worth it, and not the least because the originals require not just stupid money, but insanely-stupid money available only to Russian oligarchs, software company founders and parvenus like Jeff Bezos (also criminals, some overlap with the aforementioned).


(watch the second video at the link…)

Here’s another question of this ilk (but by no means the final one):

3. “Why is The Repair Shop such a popular TV show?  All they do is restore old junk.”
…it’s not “junk”, it’s heritage, history, treasured artifacts and sentimental objects.  To watch Steve Fletcher fixing an old clock, Will Kirk restoring an old piece of furniture or even those two old pink-haired biddies bringing wrecked toy dolls and teddy bears back to life is to see and feel the joy of a miniature triumph of life over death.  If you are not moved by that, you are a foul, crass and cynical human being.

The overall answer to all the above questions can be summed up in one word:

Craftsmanship.

It’s a rare talent (and becoming rarer still when so many people are seduced by cheap, fragile and nasty knock-offs from China or Eastern Europe), and if we hold on to no other custom, craftsmanship is worth everything. To quote Oscar Wilde’s words from Lady Windermere’s Fan :

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.

I know I’m always teetering dangerously close to the latter, but all I can say is:  guilty as charged.  Especially where beauty and craftsmanship are involved.

Universal Appeal

Guy Stuff

Conversation between New Wife and her husband:

NW:  You remembered that we’re going to [male friend’s] birthday party tonight?
Me:  Uh huh.
NW:  What are you going to get him for his birthday present?
Me:  A decent pocket knife.
NW:  Oh come on.
Me:  What?
NW:  He probably doesn’t need another one.
Me:  Of course he does.  No man ever has enough knives.
NW:  But I’m sure he has lots already.
Me:  How many knives do you think I have?
NW:  Yes, but you’re strange.

Anyway, here’s what I got him, a Case Mini-Trapper with a “chestnut bone” grip:

It’s nothing fancy — I’m too poor to buy him a quality knife like an Al Mar — but would any of you turn up your nose at this little present?

Final thought from New Wife:

“But if you buy yourself another knife while you’re shopping, I’ll use it on you while you’re sleeping.”

Chicks…

Quick (unpaid) endorsement:  I got the knife at The Cutlery Collection at the Willowbrook Mall in Plano, and spent half an hour chatting with Karl, the owner.  If you live in the north Dallas / Plano / Frisco etc. area, buy all your knives from him in future.  He’s our kinda guy, but the Covidiocy nailed him, big time, and we can’t afford to lose businesses and people like him.

It goes without saying that if I had the money, I’d probably drop at least a grand there, so nice is his collection.

Conflicted

Good Stuff, Guy Stuff

I have to say that I’m on the side of the dad in this one:

Father, 41, ran over two 15-year-old boys who were ‘bullying his son’ before repeatedly driving over one of the boy’s legs

Here’s the thing:  as a parent, you’re often helpless when your child is being bullied — the “authorities” (school admin, police, whatever) are frequently helpless or indifferent to what’s happening to your child, of course you’re not allowed to confront the evil little shits responsible, and I’m all too familiar with that feeling of impotent rage that builds and builds when you’re rendered incapable of protecting your children.

So as I said, I’m already empathetic about this dad fucking up the bullies.  But what pushes me all the way over to a “Well done!” attitude is this:

The enraged father-of-three had hunted the pair down after his porch window was smashed by one of their group and they fled the scene.  After the group vandalised the family home that night, Connolly’s son chased after them and Connolly got into his car to look for him.

And finally, there’s this:

One of the boys was treated for fractures to his foot with metal plates inserted and skin taken from his thigh.  ‘There will be permanent scarring to the foot and the thigh as a result of the surgical procedure.  He was not able to bear weight on his foot for six weeks and will have permanently reduced mobility.’

Good.  The feral little fuck deserves to be reminded, daily, of why people shouldn’t be assholes — my only quibble is that every one of the group of bullies won’t suffer the same fate, because they should.

Our Hero Dad was originally charged with attempted murder (!!) but common sense prevailed and he’ll only be charged with assault etc.  Still, he’s facing some serious consequences.

I’d like to say that I wouldn’t have done what he did, but I’m not so sure.  Protecting your family and property is so deeply embedded in the male psyche — despite all efforts of Modern Woke Society to eradicate it — that sometimes we men have no choice in the matter.  Deplore it all you want, it’s an inescapable fact.

Fixed

Guy Stuff, The Gun Thing

Several people wrote to me — close to a dozen, in fact — all offering help in replacing the broken extractor from my battered but much-loved Inland M1 Carbine, and to all those people, please accept my sincerest thanks.

However, Longtime Reader Hank T. not only offered to replace the busted part, but to show me in person how simple a job it is — ha! — provided that one has the proper little G.I. tool which acts as a third hand.  As he lives less than an hour from my apartment, that meant not having to send parts to different parts of the Lower 48.  So yesterday I went over to his place, handed over said broken carbine, and within a half-hour the whole thing had been stripped, cleaned lubed and oh yes had received a new extractor.  It works!

I’m bending the truth a little here in describing the above as a half-hour job, because while the operation itself only  took about half an hour, I spent close to three hours in his workshop because he has all sorts of wonderful bangsticks in his possession.  And you know what that means, right?  I had to hold, and caress, and work the actions of said guns one by one because I’m a gun molester lover and the easiest way to make me purr is to hand me a beautiful gun with an exhortation to “just try that trigger”.

Drooling, lots of drooling, followed.  But clearly my orgasmic cries had disturbed Hank’s darling wife, who came to the workshop to see what all the fuss was about, and that added an hour onto the whole thing because a) she’s a darling and b) she has traveled to many of the places I have, so much experience-swapping took place.

I love to spend time with my Readers on a one-to-one basis, because while you’ve heard many of my stories and adventures on this back porch, I haven’t heard your stories and adventures, and I drink that stuff like I would a fine single malt.

And when I get a renewed gun out of it, as I did here, it’s all the finer.  I am the world’s worst gunsmith because I’m not mechanically-minded (rather the opposite), and I have no patience with inanimate objects — not your best qualities for a gunsmith, I think we can all agree — so I far prefer to hand my problem over to someone who knows what he’s doing and (as in this case) has the proper tools for the job.

So many thanks, Hank, and yes I absolutely want to spend some time at the range with you.  Let me know when you’re free.