My intimates are well acquainted with my recent knee aggrievement, mainly due to the non-stop bitching on my part.  Well, this crap has been ongoing for around two months now.  I’ve seen a quickie doc twice, once for anti-inflammatories and once for a cortisone shot, both of which helped for about two days.

This past weekend saw a return to unprecedented pain after a mere hour in the garden, so, in the interest of kicking things up a notch (and getting a decent night’s sleep for a change) I insisted on a referral to an actual ortho.  Today was The Big Day…popped in, got xrayed up, down and sideways, and consulted with the doc.  The pictures tell the story:

Well no fucking wonder.*

The diagnosis: incipient arthritis, some missing cartilage due to time and wear, and maybe lose some weight, hey?  Then they aspirated the damned thing (about a 5 on the Compares To Childbirth scale), pumped it full of cortisone, and sent me on my way.

Sigh.  I want my immortality back.

*Yeah, that’s not my knee. Sucks to be that dude, amiright?

A win?

Concealed weapons permit holders in Virginia will be allowed to carry guns into restaurants that serve alcohol provided they don’t drink…

Just who is going to be in charge of checking up on that?  And how?  Bartender-with-xray-vision tips?  Notes passed in gym class?

This is a nice story.  It warms the free-enterprise, capitalist cockles of my heart.

But it’s utterly full of spin.

Yeah, it’s a blog, and a blog for a conservative site at at that.  But it presents itself as news, even offering actual quotes.  It’s even reprinted as news by other outlets.  Only I can’t find corroboration of those quotes anywhere else.

And that makes me quite grumpy.

This is the time on in Sprockets central Florida when we dance start to mildew…

I have a biz trip of sorts next week, so last night saw a visit to the range to re-qual on the .40 Glock.  Pretty sure it went ok…

The real trouble comes after the range time, when you have to walk through the retail area to the exit.  This walk invariably takes about an hour to accomplish, due to the extraordinary number of pretties on display.  I was particularly enamored of a shiny Stoeger coach gun, I’m sure you can see why:

I was less enamored of the new Henry 30-30 however, since it weighs a metric arseload.  Still beautiful though.

One note to gun store employees:  when I ask you a question regarding a firearm, if you turn to my husband to make the answer, I will never spend a dime in your establishment.  I am fairly certain you cannot tell just by looking the relative level of my firearm experience, so assuming I’m just along for the ride makes you a sexist fuck.  I appreciate the fact that you probably have to deal with a good many fingernail-clicking, gum-snapping home skillets who are only interested in the pink guns, but when I ask you for a Schofield-style top-break, you can pretty safely assume I do not fall into that category, and bloody well look me in the eye to make your answer.  Just something to consider.

…then you’re not paying attention.   Choice nuggets:

• Meanwhile, the president of Mexico recently blasted Arizonans from the White House Rose Garden, no less, apparently counting on the president of the United States to go along with this demonization of one of his own states.
• But then she goes on to explicitly include workers who are not documented and to promise them confidentiality, i.e., de facto federal protection for their illegality: “Every worker has a right to be paid fairly, whether documented or not.”
• Each voter was given six votes, and the explicit hope was that Hispanics would give all their votes to Hispanic candidates, voting on the basis of race rather than policy.
• Instead, this administration promises to “kick ass” and put a “boot on their necks” until BP coughs up, say, $20 billion in reparations.
• Instead of putting a moratorium on the sort of deep-drilling procedure and pipe fittings that BP used, the Obama administration simply issued a blanket ban on all offshore drilling — as if the real intent was not to allow the crisis of an oil spill to go to waste in the larger environmental effort to reduce carbon emissions.

If your lip is not already curling, your fists not clenching, then you need to wake the fuck up.

You know, I don’t sit around and constantly think of liberals progressives as limp-wristed, cheese-and-wine-consuming, tweed-wearing, polysyllabic, manicure-having, pretentious twats, so it would be ever so nice if liberals progressives could at least make a small effort to not sit around and constantly think of Republicans conservatives as tobacco-chewing, gun-owning, pickup-truck-driving, monosyllabic, violence-prone, uncouth and unwashed.

Just because I want you to spend less of my money does not mean I’m too stupid to know what you want to do with it, nor does it mean my first impulse is to grab the nearest gun and shoot you in the ass, even as fun as that sounds right this second.   Ever so much more fun to excoriate you in a distinctly sesquipedalian fashion.

Point of reference.

“Are you alright?”

Not the usual query you’d receive when placing a service call, but damned comforting to hear from Brinks tonight when I called in about the message on the house alarm panel.  Have to appreciate professionalism in customer service.

Oh, and the complete lack of an Indian accent.

Well, I thought my Tweet was everything I had to say on the extraordinarily laughable concept of “animal privacy rights” but it seems that is not the case because I would give good money to A) know what doctorate Msieu Mills actually holds, and B) where the fuck is East Anglia.  I can see how being a “senior lecturer in the School of Film and Television Studies” might give one the illusion that one has Important And Smart Things To Say, but this waste of oxygen knocks the shit right out of that notion.

“It might at first seem odd to claim that animals might have a right to privacy. Privacy, as it is commonly understood, is a culturally human concept. The key idea is to think about animals in terms of the public/private distinction. We can never really know if animals are giving consent, but they often do engage in forms of behavior which suggest they’d rather not encounter humans, and we might want to think about equating this with a desire for privacy.”

Ok, Sparky, I’m going to give you a skosh of credit for at least acknowledging that “privacy” is a human kink (one typically installed by your friendly neighborhood cult religion), but everything else you’re saying is WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Let’s engage the logical bits of our brain, shall we?  Two animals meet, like the smell of each other, instinct takes over, etc.  Any notion of “privacy” these two might in the least entertain has absolutely everything to do with not being predated in the middle of a vulnerable moment, and nothing whatsoever to do with those crazy bipeds ogling the process.  Survival of the fittest, you freaking moron, not modesty, not shame, not any of the bullshit baggage you bring to your own fumbling attempts.

I have a feeling this entire “study” stems from an embarrassing incident in someone’s pants while watching monkeys at the zoo, and “publication” in this case is simply a cheap form of attempted therapy.

Dear Ionia School System Administrators:

This past week you suspended a 6 year old for making the shape of a gun with his pudgy little pitters, claiming it “made other students uncomfortable.”

As the mother of a previously-6 year old, I shall now elucidate for you exactly what engenders a state of uncomfortableness for a child of that age:

• Having to go pee pee.
• Having to go doo doo.
• Being kissed on the cheek by Susie.
• Being kissed on the cheek by Grandma.

Pretty much everything else is met with 100mph enthusiasm and the same lack of worry exhibited by a 3 month old Labrador Retriever.

I know at least some of you have to be parents, have observed the same relative unconcern and resiliency in your own young children, so kindly do us all a favor and stop “showing your asses” as my mother would say.  A kindergartener is not going to set off the next Columbine, you astonishing pack of morons.