Eternal brood the shadows on this ground,
Dreaming of centuries that have gone before;
Great elms rise solemnly by slab and mound,
Arched high above a hidden world of yore.
Round all the scene a light of memory plays,
And dead leaves whisper of departed days,
Longing for sights and sounds that are no more.

Lonely and sad, a specter glides along
Aisles where of old his living footsteps fell;
No common glance discerns him, though his song
Peals down through time with a mysterious spell.
Only the few who sorcery's secret know,
Espy amidst these tombs the shade of Poe.

---

Got a hit this week for "poe acrostics" so I thought it would be a good time to post some Saturday Night Poetry.  For my own attempt in this vein, check out The Ghost On the Beach.

Cartoon Network is going to start showing the run of the Trinity Blood anime again starting tonight.  That is all.

Finally got around to watching all the Outdoor Channel gun shows that I tape on Wednesday. I hit the fast-forward button quite a lot this time because a lot of that stuff just doesn't thrill me.  I mean, watching a shooting match on TV is about the same as watching someone fish.

I do always get a kick out of the torture tests they've been doing on Guns & Ammo Television.  This time they grilled an XD9 (not loaded, of course) on a charcoal grill while also grilling some chicken.  They gave the gun four minutes on each side.  This one was a little more interesting than usual, since I own an XD40.

The only apparent damage was from the actual contact points of the polymer with the grill.  Otherwise the heated air inside the grill didn't seem to have much effect.  The most noticeable damage was that the magazine would no longer stay seated.  They had to tape it across the bottom to keep it in place.  They also taped the grip safety and vised it down to shoot with a string on the trigger.  Everything still worked.

Some people might hate them for doing these things to perfectly good guns, but it's not like someone else is being deprived.  And this time at least, it was only a 9, so...

Now online at Free Constitution.

The button that inserts a link in comments isn't working again.  I don't know what did it this time.  But I guess I'll have to work on it again.  The really annoying thing is, last time its malfunction was caused by something that didn't have anything to do with html links or the comments.  So I don't expect the problem to make sense this time, either.

UPDATE:  Been tinkering.  It's almost certainly the Flooble expandable content scripts.  I knew it wouldn't make any sense.

UPDATE 2:  Fixed.  Had to get rid of the Flooble scripts and go back to the small scrolling windows for the blogrolls.  I guess there's just certain things you can't do with the base template without whacking out that button.

UPDATE 3:  I also updated the blogroll today, more or less.  A few that seem to have gone silent a long time ago were deleted, some were just marked "private" so they don't show up on the public list until I can decide if I want to delete them completely or not.  So if you disappeared and you still consider yourself active, let me know.

Wayne LaPierre, May 1, 1999:

First, we believe in absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance, totally safe schools. That means no guns in America's schools, period...with the rare exception of law enforcement officers or trained security personnel.

Wayne LaPierre, May 18, 2007:

You don't decide the Second Amendment doesn't exist, you don't deprive Americans of their right to keep and bear arms, and you better not think you can get away with it if you try.

In a way, I feel sorry for ol' Wayne.  He must have a mighty sore crotch from riding the fence like that.

Some insights by J. Shaftoe.  Via JPFO.

Think about it this way. If you worked at the post office, and someone said “We don't need mail anymore. We've got email now. It's faster, cheaper, and easier.” How would you feel? How would you respond to someone who told you that they can do your job better than you can, and that they don't need you anymore?

Now imagine that instead of delivering mail, you deliver security. Or, at least, you think you do. And now someone is telling you that they don't need your elaborate machinery of justice, because they have the right and the ability to deal justly with their attackers themselves. Your entire career, which you pursued at great expense, has been declared second-rate compared to three pounds of forged steel and springs.

Makes you a little afraid, doesn't it?

Read the whole thing, of course.  I've held this belief for many years.  There are people like Shaftoe describes, then there are those who do it for power, not just to protect their miserable livelihoods.

And what about those who are of good conscience but are simply misguided?  They don't exist.  Never have.  If they were truly of good conscience they would see the truth and cease to willfully spread lies to get their way.

Found some nice pix of the Mateba auto revolver.  I did not know that there was a .454 Casull version.  Alucard would approve, I'm sure.

UPDATE:  For the benefit of readers who aren't particularly familiar with guns, or with this gun anyway.  There must be at least one of you.

Most revolvers are not "automatic" in any way.  With a single-action revolver, the cylinder is rotated to a fresh chamber when the hammer is pulled back, then the trigger is pulled to fire it.  With a double-action revolver, pulling the trigger first rotates the cylinder and then fires it.  The Mateba auto-revolver uses the recoil of firing to rotate the cylinder to a fresh chamber.  The first shot must be double-action, but the recoil action also cocks the hammer so following shots are single-action.

Another thing that sets it apart from traditional revolvers is that it fires from the bottom chamber of the cylinder rather than the top (check the pictures to see what I'm talking about).  This must give it a very different kind of recoil from traditional revolvers.

And needless to say, I would really like to get my hands on one.

Honestly, I don't go out of my way to find stories bashing Guiliani.  They just keep falling into my lap.  I have a feeling that if I actively tried to avoid them, they would sneak up and whack me in the butt to get my attention.  I don't know how anyone with conservative or libertarian leanings could even think about supporting him.  He is neither conservative nor libertarian, and like most members of America's elite ruling class, he's a crook.

Rudy Giuliani's much-publicized but misleading put-down of Ron Paul during Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate should have been tempered by a report that Saudi Arabia, the country that spawned most of the 9/11 hijackers, has been one of Giuliani's lucrative foreign clients. However, Fox News questioners Chris Wallace and Wendell Goler did not bring it up.

Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that the same Associated Press story that named Saudi Arabia as a Giuliani client listed News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, as another Giuliani client. This AP story, which was not disputed by Giuliani or News Corporation, was carried on the Fox News website.

This writer had raised questions about Fox News' co-sponsorship of the debate, based on the fact that the company had a relationship with Giuliani when he was mayor of New York City. But now we know that the relationship has continued into the period of time that Giuliani has been planning a presidential run. It is an obvious conflict of interest.

[...]

The exchange with Paul over 9/11 might have been seen in a different light if Hannity had asked Giuliani about why, according to the AP report, his firm represented Saudi Arabia. But that was a taboo topic.

Equally important, it turns out that Paul's point-that the 9/11 attacks were linked to U.S. involvement in Iraq and the Middle East-was factually correct. Osama bin Laden's 1996 "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places" specifically mentioned the situation in Iraq, blaming the U.S. for the impact of economic sanctions on the Saddam Hussein regime. Bin Laden accused the U.S. of "aggression" against Iraq and the record shows that his anti-Americanism was motivated, at least in part, by the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia.

Yet, Giuliani claimed "I don't think I've heard that before," in reference to Paul's citation of some of these facts. One would think that "America's Mayor" and "Mr. 9/11" would understand the genesis of the attacks that took almost 3,000 American lives.

But since he is one of the Chosen as anointed by the holy media nothing he says or does can be wrong.

Via The Agitator.

ADDENDUM:  Ah, Michelle!  Remember the old days, before you became part of the MSM?

ADDENDA #2:  Welcome to Blogonomicon, your friendly neighborhood libertarian fever swamp!  So Paul is some kind of looney because:  "...I never automatically trust anything the government does when they do an investigation because too often I think there's an area that the government covered up, whether it's the Kennedy assassination or whatever."  I suppose this means we must automatically trust everything the government does or we'll be lumped in with 9/11 Truthers.  Such a masterful "I was incorrect, but he was incorrecter" worthy of the NYT or WaPo.  Oh well, Michelle, it was fun while it lasted.

All in one place at Damn Interesting.

No bazookas, unfortunately.

L. Neil Smith explains why I am a "single issue  voter."

If he doesn't want you to have the means of defending your life, do you want him in a position to control it?

If he makes excuses about obeying a law he's sworn to uphold and defend -- the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights -- do you want to entrust him with anything?

If he ignores you, sneers at you, complains about you, or defames you, if he calls you names only he thinks are evil -- like "Constitutionalist" -- when you insist that he account for himself, hasn't he betrayed his oath, isn't he unfit to hold office, and doesn't he really belong in jail?

It isn't long, read it all.

Via Kent McManigal.