New toy: Russian M44 Carbine

WWII era Russian carbine. Manufactured in 1944. It has an built-on bayonet that can lock forward or on the side of the gun. Chambered for 7.62 x 54R.

Yes, I finally found a local gun dealer. Now all I need is a shooting range membership and some ammo.

Trading Spaces - for my wife

Because I know she liked this show.

Who knows, maybe we'll get lucky and she'll show us her boobs on-camera this time. (Rumors were that she was let go due to her faux-striptease for an AIDS benefit and her wallpaper clad TV Guide photo shoot.)

Mana Potion

Somebody decided to market an energy drink to all of us World of Warcraft addicts.

MANA

I'm tempted to order some just to try it and then save the bottles with colored water inside for a fun decoration on my dork-shelf.

Blogs and jobs

Somebody asked recently if I feared prospective employers finding my blog and not hiring me because of it.

No.

First of all, any anal-retentive company that doesn't want to hire me because I feel free to exercise my RIGHT to free speech can go fuck themselves. I don't want to work for them anyway, as I already work for an oppressive bunch of douche-bags. I'm looking to find a less stressful and annoying job, not to have a heart attack at 32.

Secondly, because my name happens to be Jeremy Star, if you Google me, you will find a shitload of Ron Jeremy links. Apparently Porn Star Ron Jeremy is ranked higher on Google then I am. Huge surprise, I know. My Linked In profile comes up on the first page, but that's basically on online resume, no dirt there. You'd have to dig pretty hard to actually come up with this blog. Again, if you're that determined to dig up dirt on me, I probably don't want to work for you.

The Toyota and the Guardrail

We took my wife's car to our local Toyota dealer yesterday to have them inspect the damage and give the insurance company an estimate. I am guessing, as I was before, that it is going to be totaled. The body guy from the dealer did a quick inspection and asked my wife how attached she was to the car. As I suspected, it looks like the car suffered a decent amount of frame damage.

"What did the cop say caused this?" the body guy asked my wife.
" A guardrail, " my wife answered.
I looked at the body guy and said, "Hell of a guardrail, huh?"
He laughed. "Yeah, you gotta watch those bastards, they jump out and attack in packs."

My wife's car

Notice the paint scraped off the top of the spoiler, consistent with an impact from something above the car's spoiler level, like, say, a fucking semi.
Yeah, a guard-rail managed to hit three sides of the car to cause all this damage. That's some brilliant police-work there.

My wife was in an accident yesterday

The suddenly icy roads caused her car to spin out of control at around 50 miles per hour. She spun in front of a tractor-trailer, and then came to rest at the guard rail on the right side of the road.

My wife is ok. She is a little bruised, but otherwise uninjured.

A state trooper decided to ticket her, after making her wait on the side of the road for two hours before he showed up. Speed inappropriate for weather conditions. Nice. Hey asshole, I know it's the end of the month and you want to make quota, but why don't you try serving and protecting instead of self-serving and projecting. Speed inappropriate? There were dozens of accidents, people lined the roads. You weren't there. How the hell would you know?

My second point of contention with officer dumbass is that he claimed that my wife was not struck by a vehicle, but rather the guard rail. Really? A guard rail scraped all the paint off the top of the spoiler? It crumpled the entire back end of the car? I hope you don't ever want to be a detective, because man are you unobservant.

Obviously I plan to fight this trumped-up ticket in court.

And they wonder why people don't like the police...

Del Toro to direct The Hobbit

STORY

Sweet. If Jackson isn't able to do it, at least they picked a director that isn't going to bone the whole project.

Target, Bloggers, PC Hell, and Inflated Egos

There's a story in the NY Times about how Target tells a blogger to "go away". The whole "story" is a built up mound of BS.

Basically it boils down to this: Some mom who maintains a blog about the impact of marketing on children overreacted to a Target add featuring some woman in a snowsuit lying on top of the Target symbol. This mom's complaint was that the woman's crotch is in the center of the target. She wrote to Target. Target basically sent a form letter that said that they don't respond to inquiries from non-traditional media outlets. (i.e. bloggers and the like.) The reason being that Target has a limited budget that they would rather focus on ads and TV/magazines/newspapers.

Media being media, this got blown way out of proportion with headlines about how Target hates bloggers, etc.

My observances:
1 - Lady: Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Seriously. The woman was fully dressed in snow gear that in no way implied a sexual reference. You could pick anything in any ad and claim it was marketing sex to children, but you'd just be a fucking nutter looking for attention. Oh, wait...

2 - Attention bloggers: You are not as important as you seem to think you are! I've read a lot of blogs, I maintain one of my own. I also write professionally. I can tell you right now that even some of the top rated blogs are full of shitty grammar and spelling, and that the "news" they purvey is just as muddled and biased as any cable TV news. Try to deflate your egos a bit and realize that Target wasn't attacking your worth. (Although I certainly would.)