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Classical Gases

Music

One of my weekly visits to the EeewwwChoob involves listening to musical theory maestro Doug Helvering’s take on various modern songs.  (I’ll link a few of my favorites below the fold at the the end of this piece.)

I was astonished that he had never heard of Mason Williams’s Classical Gas, truly one of the cornerstones of late-60s music, so I looked forward to hearing his opinion.

To my surprise, he didn’t just take in the original, but also a version by legendary guitarist Tony Emmanuel.  Not that I have a problem with listening to several versions of Classical Gas, mind you.

Anyway, here’s Doug’s take on the original and Emmanuel’s version.  (I’m not so sure about Emmanuel’s version, mind you, although the guy is a frigging legend and a virtuoso, so he gets a pass from me, in spades.)

And speaking of versions, did anyone know that Glen Campbell covered the piece as well, and blew it out the park?  Less successful was that of British violinist (and Thailand Olympic skier) Vanessa Mae, but at least her violin-playing is far better than her skiing.

So there you have it:  same song, played differently four times.  All good, really, because did I already mention that Classical Gas is, truly, a classic? Read more

And About Time, Too

Law and Order, Riotous Assemblies

Here’s one that perked me up and made my morning brighter:

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a woman on Wednesday who allegedly attempted to run over law enforcement with her vehicle amid immigration enforcement conducting a crackdown in Minneapolis.

Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said that the woman was shot in her vehicle in a residential neighborhood in Minneapolis.

The woman in a Honda Pilot SUV appeared to be blocking the road in front of an ICE squad. As agents approached the woman, she backed up and pulled forward. While pulling forward, an ICE agent in front of the vehicle pulled his service weapon. The agent fired at least one shot into the vehicle as he sidestepped the moving SUV. The vehicle then crashed into a parked car.

Good.  I’m sick of these assholes screwing around with ICE, and this was made all the sweeter by the fact that it took place in the People’s Soviet of Minnesoduh, which explains the reaction from local politicians:

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said regarding DHS’s explanation of the shooting, “So they are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video … myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is bullshit.”

He added that he feels “this was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying.”

“We have been in contact with law enforcement leaders, the Attorney General, and the Governor’s Office throughout the morning and are pushing hard for a local investigation which is the only way to ensure full transparency and review by our office. We will use every available lever to ensure a local, transparent investigation takes place,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement, FOX 9 reported.

Frey posted on X, “I am aware of a shooting involving an ICE agent at 34th Street & Portland. The presence of federal immigration enforcement agents is causing chaos in our city. We’re demanding ICE to leave the city immediately. We stand rock solid with our immigrant and refugee communities.”

…against the cops, yeah, we get the picture, you Commie bitch.

Of course, if our hero ICE agent were to be treated in the same way that career criminals are ordinarily treated by Moriarty, he’d be released within minutes.  As it is…

I want ICE to go into this festering cesspit of a city harder and yet harder, in greater numbers and with even greater resolve.  And if the “residents” get out of control such as happened in this instance, I want to see more gunfire.  Let’s see if these criminal supporters [sic]  feel that strongly about their case then.

Worshipping Laundry

Sports

In earlier times (i.e. last week), this bit of news might have made the files:

The Athletics, formerly of Oakland, are all excited about their impending move to Las Vegas. But they may have to change their name before they go there.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied multiple requests from the A’s for the names “Las Vegas Athletics” and “Vegas Athletics.” The requested trademarks were denied on the grounds the names were “too generic.”

As reporter Josh Gerben writes, “According to the USPTO, the dominant portion of each mark refers to a well-known geographic location (Las Vegas) while the remaining wording, ‘Athletics,’ lacks distinctiveness as applied to the goods and services identified in the applications.

“The examining attorney noted that ‘athletics’ is defined as ‘activities such as sports, exercises, and games that require physical skill and stamina,’ and concluded that the term directly describes ‘the purpose and feature of the applicant’s goods and services.’ As a result, the USPTO found that the marks merely describe a professional sports team located in Las Vegas rather than functioning as unique indicators of source.”

And then you can just fall asleep, assuming you haven’t already done so.

My take:

Back in the day, a sports team’s ethos was all bound up with their ties to their hometown and its fans.  Now?  It really doesn’t matter, because all the hoopla about the “storied franchises” and associated bollocks is tinsel on a dying tree.

As long as a team stuck with what made them unique — e.g. the Pittsburgh Steelers, a name which tied the team both to the city and to the industry which gave the place their ethos (not to mention that the name is kick-ass good) — then there was something to be said for the “brand”.

But if tomorrow the Steelers were decide to move to Shreveport LA, thus giving up everything — the city, their fans, the players, the history — that made them what they are, then why should they try to cling to the Steelers name?  Because without all the other stuff, all they are is, as Jerry Seinfeld so wonderfully put it once in an excellent rant, laundry.

Nowadays, very few players are associated with teams either, because instead of the players choosing loyalty to the team and the city which made them famous, they swap teams (or are traded) to the point where you need to look at their resume just to track their career path.  (Baseball management, by the way, has pretty much made a business out of treating players like disposable resources, and the players have responded in kind by treating each team as nothing more than a meal ticket, so I have little time for either teams or players and their problems.)

And thus with the Oakland As (not “A’s”, FFS), who once represented the city and neighborhood as the gritty working-class underdogs they always were.  So they want to leave Oakland and go play their little game in Las Vegas, but keep their nickname?  Hell, as I see it, the “generic” quality of their desired name(s) actually suits them just fine, because when they decide to quit Las Vegas for Tallahassee or whatever, they can just take their meaningless name with them.

Range Report: Ruger LC Carbine (.45 ACP)

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

I’ve kinda had the hots for this little gun since it first came on the market, so when I had a chance to exchange one of my “spare” guns for the LC a week ago, I jumped at it, and went to pop a few rounds off at the range yesterday, you know, just to make my acquaintance  I even bought a couple boxes of 230gr FMJ for the occasion, and two spare mags.

There are a lot of things to like about the LC:  the chambering (.45 ACP, ’nuff said), the compact size, the Glock 21 12-round* mags it uses, and of course the Ruger quality and reliability.  And yeah, it has all that.  I also found the trigger acceptable — about a 5-lb break but very crisp, and the gun was acceptably consistent in terms of grouping (given my shitty eyesight):  the bullets struck dead center off a sandbag at 25 yards.  (It also shot 4″ low out of the box, but with the front-sight adjustment tool I got that right.)

And it fed reliably — not a single jam or malfunction with either the FMJ or the various hollowpoint cartridges I tested it with.  Clockwork, brass ejected firmly etc. etc.

Mechanically, therefore, it was fine;  and on that basis I’d take it to war, so to speak, without a qualm.

But the “ergonomics” (as Mae calls the feel of a gun)?  Not so fine.

The recoil is excessive, even considering that it’s shooting the John Moses Browning .45 ACP cartridge and not a proper rifle cartridge.  That straight-though stock (more on that in a moment) slams the stock straight into the shoulder with considerable force.  Even when I popped an extra recoil pad on the butt, it wasn’t pleasant.

And here’s something I’ve noticed when shooting these kinds of guns (e.g. the AR-15 and others of the “chassis” gun type) while wearing hearing protection “lids”:  you can’t get a decent stock weld with your cheek to get the sights to fall naturally into your sight line.  That’s because unlike a regular rifle, there is no drop of the stock below the barrel line, so your ear protection (we used to call them “pots”) get in the way of your hold.

Now on my AR, you can see that my cheek does not need to come down onto the stock because I’m using a high-elevation red-dot sight.  But the low position of the pop-up iron sights on the LC makes life difficult, in that you have to re-position your head after every shot.

So basically, I’m going to have to put a high-rise red-dot sight on the LC, which I did not want to do because the aperture (Garand- or Marble type) is plenty accurate for me and to be frank, that’s one of the reasons for owning a short-range pistol-caliber carbine (PCC) in the first place.  Like a fork, you pick it up and it works.

I’m starting to regret selling my M1 Carbine, now.

Does this mean that the LC is going to be used only in the open air, when I don’t have to wear pots and just rely on earplugs — i.e. when I go over to TDSA twice a year?

Frankly, I’m disappointed because I was looking for a good answer to the question, “Do I really need an AR-15 ‘pistol’ for those social occasions?”

And the Ruger LC Carbine doesn’t seem to be it.  In my hands, it’s about a 50% solution, and I don’t like those.

Right now, of the two carbines I prefer to shoot the AR — and I don’t especially like shooting the AR.

Also, that “flared mag well” caused me to pop a blood blister on the heel of my right hand (for the first time in about forty-odd years) when I slammed a mag home.  Ouch.

*Glock calls them 13-round mags;  I call them 12 because it’s impossible to load that 13th round without that loading tool thingy.