Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 493650)

I feel like this story could use an editor.

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 493651)

If an editor was involved adder would get a rejection letter. No offense.

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan (Post 493625)

I'm on the close hand to hand combat with blunt and/or sharp instrument team when the zombie Apocalypse comes.

Originally Posted by taxwonk (Post 493649)

No, they most often shoot them at the doghouse, which is a scale replica of the real house, while reclining in the hot tub.

Originally Posted by Not Bob (Post 493658)

Great opening scene from Larry McMurtry's "Texasville," featuring one of my favorite fictional characters from 20th Century American literature, Duane Moore, expressing middle-aged angst (and frustration with falling oil prices) by using a .44 Magnum to turn the doghouse into splinters. (Was the doghouse a miniature of the McMansion built by his wife? Can't remember, but who cares?)

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 493664)

It's nice to see Mitt Romney out on the stump lecturing poor people about their failings again.

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 493624)

As a person who’s gone a lifetime of assiduously avoiding supporting the NRA, my present understanding is that one can pay a daily or hourly fee at a public or private range without resulting in a net benefit to Wayne LaPierre, BUT many ranges and sportsman’s rod and gun clubs require NRA membership in order to become a member — something about NRA death and dismemberment insurance, no doubt. So he can’t become a member. But paying $10, particularly at a publicly owned range, isn’t going to empower the NRA. I welcome corrections from anyone who sees it differently.

Unless he means he doesn’t want to support the NRA by enriching, even slightly, a person or business who is then more capable of donating. Because if that’s the standard, you’re pretty much going to have to displace yourself from Texas again, or “go freegan.”

What’s a person with a big fucking family ranch doing at a gun range, anyway? I thought people in Texas just fire their guns out the bathroom window to salute the dawn.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 493669)

A lot of the ranges around here are NRA in spirit as well as ties. But VFW ranges aren't (and you can usually just step from the bar outside to the range and fire away without the ice in your drink having time to melt on the way). I'm not aware of public ranges here, but I guess the concept doesn't surprise me.

Originally Posted by taxwonk (Post 493671)

When I lived in Will County, one of the five "collar counties" surrounding Chicago, there were at least three public ranges within 10 minutes of me. You could also rent anything from a competition .22 revolver to a modified AR-15.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 493635)

HUGE 2 on that "Thank you for your service" bullshit. It's hard to verbalize just why it is so annoying, but I cringe too.

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch (Post 493683)

I agree with this.* That said, I have on several occasions bought drinks for US soldiers, particularly when seeing them in Europe. I'm not sure why, it just feels like the right thing to do.

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 493607)

Well, that's rich. I guess it depends on your perspective and that's kind of the entire point, isn't it?

You can easily make a movie about Confederate soldiers who save their buddies from Union soldiers in situations where they are extremely outnumbered or who are the subject of awful tactics by the Union army. If you remove the whole point of the war and just show what's going on on the battlefield with no other real context then you will surely have many people watching the movie who look at the main characters as heros.

Now who's turning this conversation into a yes/no proposition? Of course we were fighting some pretty evil people. But, Shirley, there were Iraqis who were involved because they wanted to take up arms against an army that had no business being in their country.

I am completely with you. I think, next to "literally," it's the most over- and incorrectly-used word in the English language.

TM

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 493686)

A good friend is in international supply chain management and travels a lot on business. He has frequent flyer account balances in the millions. He belongs to a group called Upgrade Soldiers that has pledged to always trade a first class seat with anyone in an American military uniform. (The airlines are under some pressure to upgrade soldiers if there’s an empty seat, but obviously they can’t displace a paying fare without consent.)

Nobody needs to do any “hero”ing or other bullshit. If I flew first class often enough (ever) to be able to do this, I’d like to think I would.

(Until the day I’m at the gate and see a service uniform and go, “Aw, crap.”)