Wednesday, March 01, 2006

William Conrad


If you are an old guy, and you listened to Radio on Thursday Nights ("The Lone Ranger") and Sunday mornings after church ("Gunsmoke"), you know who William Conrad is.


If you only watched television, you know him from "Cannon", which revealed him as Santa Claus with a Gibert Roland pencil-thin moustache.

But William Conrad was much more than that.

He was ... "The Voice" before James Earl Jones and Star Wars, and even before Don LaFontaine.

Picture Orson Wells, and you have almost the complete image.

For me, his most memorable role was as the narrator of "Leiningen and the Ants", a dramatic story which Charleton Heston later portrayed in a movie.

As much as I admire Heston, and as well as he played the role, I have to say that Conrad's vocal presentation was more dramatic, more profound, and more inclined to put me on the edge of my chair.

In fact, you can buy at least some of Conrad's performances here. (I did, and I'll be anxious to get them so I can listen to him while I post later articles here.)

Perhaps this article was initiated by a fit of nostalgia, and I'll be the first to admit that Thomas Wolf was right when he suggested that "you can never go home any more", meaning that when you go home ... it isn't the home you remembered.

It may be disappointing to actually sit through hundreds of hours of William Conrad reading scripts and books in MP3 files.

But I don't think so.

And if it happens that IS boring, I'll never say so.

William Conrad is the king of radio drama, with the possible exception of the recent books on tape narrator Frank Muller.

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

In Dutch with The Dutch

Cartoons: The End of Europe’s Tolerance? - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com

Do you remember when The Dutch use to be Mister Saturday Night of the Continent? Mister Nice Guy.?

You know, wooden shoes, tulips galore, Zuider Zee means we're all in this together, Dutch Boys holding back the flood waters with a single digit for the Greater Good, Dutch Masters such as Rambrandt, Celebrate Diversity?

No more.

Today, they have stolen the Look&Feel of Peter Finch in "Network". They're hanging out of the gabled windows screaming "I'M MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE!"

They're tired of the riots.

They're tired of having their commercial products boycotted, their embassies burned, their expatriate citizens being assaulted.

They're tired of having foreigners demand that they no longer exercise their freedom of speech.

They're tired of having their movie makers shot, stabbed and exsanguinated on the newly mean streets of Amsterdam.

They're tired of having immagrants ("welcome to our shores!") preach hatred of their culture, their moral values, and their religion.

It is as if they had taken in a homeless person (in the millions), to nurture and to include in their family, and now they find they must protect their back from the alien knife when their only intention was to offer sanctuary and succor to a guest.

As of today, in The Netherlands it is not permitted to speak any language except the home language in public. The burqua may not be worn in public. (No word yet on jewish skullcaps or Catholic crosses.)

Muslim Imams must be 'vetted' to insure that they accept the values of the indiginous culture. Those who don't seem to embrace the rights of their hosts are educated in the 'normal' values. If the imams don't pass the test, or who later demonstrate that they have disingenuously avered an acceptance of the moral values of the country while privately rejecting them, are required to leave the county as unsavory characters.

No more will they allow Imams to preach sedition and revolution and Jihad in the mosque.

No more will they allow muslims to riot, burn and pillage for the sake of religious fervor.

No more will they allow muslims to import young girls, keeping them pent up in 3rd floor apartments and failing to learn acceptance of Dutch culture and language.

No more will they allow immigrants to rape with impunity, and indulge in 'honor killings'.

No more will they allow immigrants to divide their country because these 'guests' refuse to accept civilized values.

The Dutch are taking their country back. If it insults imported extreme religious priorities ... well, too bad. It's their country, and they didn't fight the Nazi's just to save their country and culture for a latter-day fascist invasion.

I say, good for them.

It's about time they acted like they had the cojones to assert the worth of their own culture.

If the immigrants don't like it, they can rethink the reasons why they moved there in the first place.

Extreme situations call for extreme measures, and continuing with their "Mister Nice Guy" persona in gthe context of this assault from within just ain't working for them.

The immigrants who make the extreme effort to move to a new home, and then choose to undermine the structure of that new country, risk reaping the whirlwind.

The whirlwind is now in force, and it has no patience for seditionists.

So be it.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Oh -- My -- Gawd

Michelle Malkin: THE MOONBATS PLOT A COUP

Michelle Malkin via Analogue Kid.

I can't say anything. Neither can AK or MM. This scheist speaks for itself.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Grunt Whining, Grunt Cooking

In 1969, I was a platoon sergeant in a "Grunt" platoon.

"Grunt" means U.S. Army foot soldier, nobody special.

Not Marines, certainly. Absolutely not Special Forces (Green Beret) or "Special Operations Group" (S.O.G.) or Rangers, or Delta Force. Not "Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol" (LRRP), not Airborne or even Military Police or Cavalry or Artillery ... we were Infantry, The Queen of Battle. The Sharp End.

Look at the U.S. Army, eliminate the elite units, take away any glamour or esprit de corps or special training and tactics, and what you have lift is Grunt Infantry.

The Airborne folks had a special name for us: Straight Legs. That means we didn't even parachute into a battle. We walked in. And when the battle was over, those that were left walked out.

No glory, no transportation, no dates with the Donut Dollies or Canteen Girls or Nurses. If you watched "China Beach" on television a decade or two ago, you didn't see us except as the guys on the stretchers.

Well, the amenities often DID include helicopter rides. If we were to be inserted into a hostile area, we rode helicopters. If we were wounded during that activity, we got a helicopter ride back to the rear ... if we were lucky, which we usually weren't.

Before I begin to sound too much like a whiner, let me emphasize that nobody expected any more than this sort of "oh, by the way" treatment. We were almost 100% draftees. Cannon fodder. Reluctant soldiers. The losers in the Draft Board lottery. We didn't want to be there, they didn't particularly want us there, but they (the guvmint) needed warm bodies so they sent us to fill out the ranks. Our best usage was to draw fire away from the GOOD troops.

We were surly, undisciplined, uninformed afterthoughts in the war of attrition. If we lost the war, it was because nobody expected any better. If we won the war, it was because we happened to be there in support of the Marines, or because we received exceptional support from the Green Beanies and outstanding intelligence from the LRRPS and tactical advice from the Rangers.

We didn't get anything from the Green Beanies or the Rangers, and the LRRPS let us walk into ambushes rather than to chance revealing their position by warning us.

That's okay, we never expected anything better and I can live with that. Support was a concept, best illustrated by 8-day "reconnaissance" patrols that they sent us on (similar to kicking a hornet's next to see what happened) during which they sent in a helicopter every two or three days to give us ammunition, C-rations, and 5-gallon plastic water bottles.

Never mind that in that tropical jungle environment, where we moved 10 kilometers through dense foliage every day and set up ambushes at night, we drank more water in a single day than we received in resupply each insert. We had enough food, and we found enough water, and we survived.

Mostly.

We didn't care about the glory (which we didn't have) or the supply (which we didn't have). If your boots rotted during a mission, they would usually send another pair out to you eventually. It may not be your size, but you got new boots. Trousers ripped and embarrassingly exposed? No problem, another pair of pants will be forwarded from the Slop chute (an admittedly Navy term, but appropriate.) Again, one size fits all.

Food ... was an issue.

Ultimately, food was the ONLY thing we really cared about. Well, and our Sundries Pace (SP) issue, which came twice a month. We got razor blades, writing paper, candy and chewing tobacco. Most important, we got cigarettes for free! I wasn't a confirmed smoker until I served my tour in RVN, but I've never been able to permanently kick the habit since I got back to The Land of the Great PX, and had unlimited access to cigarettes ... at greatly increased prices!

We would send back a wounded man from time to time. Regrettable, but not important. One time we sent back a man who, while fording a stagnant stream, had picked up a leech. Nothing new about this, we forded a lot of water hazards every day and leeches, ants, centipedes, flies and other insects were our constant companions. Unfortunately, this leech had crawled up into his penis, and by the time our boy reported it to the company medic (another draftee with a total of three months of medical training), it had almost disappeared into the penis in question. The medic had called in a 'Dust Off' (medivac), and the helicopter pilot complained vehemently because he had a Priority Dust-Off and the patient walked to the helicopter unaided. The pilot was accustomed to PDO patients being carried on board,bleeding; not walking with no visible injury. No matter that the leech would have invaded the patient's liver within 24 hours and killed him in another 12 hours. We were just Grunts, and ignorant, so they eventually let it go without further comment.

No problem, we can handle it. Chopper pilots are very polite and accommodating when they land in a circle of armed men, all weapons trained inside the Landing Zone at the Senior Pilot of a helicopter.

Every week or so, we got to walk to the "Red Line" (representing a road on a map) to where we would, sooner or later, be picked up by trucks to return to base. Or, if we were within 10 kilometer of the base, we would walk back to the base. It was considered "extended reconnaissance" to walk back to the base, and A Good Thing as long as you weren't the people who had been in the jungle for a week and had been living off rice-paddy water (requiring halogen application for an hour before it could be drunk, to kill the parasites) and usually uncooked C-rations which were left over from WWII.

All of this is a preamble to the central thesis: Food is Important to Grunts!

During the one-night-a-week (average) when we spent the night within the confines of a protected perimeter (Night Defensive Position, or NPR: a semi-permanent base camp which included a Mess Hall), we got a dinner and a breakfast of reconstituted whatever's. Reconstituted milk, reconstituted eggs, reconstituted juice, reconstituted mashed potatoes, etc. In the civilian world, we would call it powdered whatever. No food value, very little vitamins, very lilttle minerals, mostly powdered water. The water was chlorinated. Do the math, and it's perhaps not surprising that we honored Joseph Lister for his contribution to our well-being because that was the best water we got for months on end.

But the food that we ate was the food that we carried on our backs. If we were very very lucky, it wasn't all the egregious C-rations, and that's the point of this entire essay.

C-rations were "Canned Food", and everything we got was in a can. Think of dog food with out heat or flavor. The least appreciated was Ham&Lima Beans. Actually, it wasn't bad unless you got a can with a great huge glob of pork fat and very little beans or ham, which happened to me one night as I attempted to eat a can of 'Ham & M*therF*ckers" in the dark. If you find a can of ham fat during the day, you can meld it with other meals to provide value to otherwise bland meals; by itself, I can attest that a mouthful of cold ham fat has little to recommend itself, except as an experience you can use to gross out your friends for decades to come. What do you do? You choke it down: that's the only food you're going to get for 12 hours, and you have many rivers to cross before more food is available.

Personally, I traded "the good stuff" (canned peaches, for example) for "Ham and Eggs" meals. The value of Ham&Eggs is that it has a certain modicum of not-entirely objectionable taste (think reconstituted eggs with spam flavoring --- yummy!) whether it is heated or not.

Speaking of heating, we didn't have stoves. We didn't have heat-tabs, which go with the cute little stamped-metal stoves and heated one canteen cup's worth of coffee, or whatever. What we had was C4 explosives. Everybody carried a one-pound chunk of C4, which was roughly equivalent to 1.5 pounds of industrial dynamite. But it wouldn't explode if you put a match to it; it required a percussion effect to explode. If you lit it, it would just burn with a fast, blue flame. That was enough to heat a canteen-cup full of coffee, or hot chocolate, or a can of C-rations.

Actually, it wasn't enough. You had to cut off a 1" square chunk of C4, and heat your can. Then cut off another 1" square, ditto. And do it one more time, to get a canteen cup of liquid to where it was luke-warm, and thus drinkable. It wasn't actually "drinkable" because it hadn't actually boiled. But it was hot enough to dissolve instant coffee or instant coffee, which was all we had.

Unless we had ... something special.

We often "worked"(patrolled) with members of the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam -- ARVNs.

They had even worse rations than we did. They had rice, usually from Texas. Sometimes they had mackerel (sp), which is a terribly oily fish and was what the NVA and the Viet Cong had for meat. We couldn't get that from them, but the ARVNs would usually trade rice for C-ration.

That's right: their diet was even poorer than ours, and they considered our C-rations to be a delicacy, because it included Meat. Sorry bastards thought a can of Ham & M*ther-f*ckers with a glob of fat in it was a delicacy. They would trade almost anything on the one-in-ten chance of getting a glob of fat because it was it was an improvement on their regular diet. The sad part of it is, they were right.

But they had rice, which we did not.

Before every mission, we tried to find an ARVN who had a pound of rice or two to trade for C-rations. It didn't always happen, because usually we considered the ARVNs to be politically unreliable,k and avoided them. We were desperate for a variation in our diet, though, and we actively sought them out prior to another mission.

Because we never had a cook-pot, we also (to our everlasting shame, because we KNEW that nobody would understand) hunted through the garbage pits of the mess hall for #10 cans which had been cleaned before disposal. We knew that they were filthy and germ-ridden, but the only alternative was to use our helmets as cook pots, and the resulting stew invariably tasted of olive-drab paint. Also, the helmet stank forever on from the residual stew-orts, because we had no means of cleaning cooking utensils. Remember the lack of potable water?


On an ideal mission, we would set out with the following:
  • a large tin can to cook in
  • a pound of rice
  • several C-rations which prominently featured meat. They were never the SAME meat, so we had a different taste every meal.
  • Enough water to make a rice stew. Usually, it was water we retrieved from a bomb-crater. It was usually fairly fresh rain water, but not always. We could not afford to use drinking water for cooking. Or washing. Or shaving, or any other use.
  • There would be a tactical situation in which we would be able to build an actual fire, using wood, and keep it going long enough that we could boil the components of the rice stew.
There were usually four or five members of the patrol (usually a short squad, rather than a platoon), who kept themselves supplied with one or more of the following condiments:
  • salt
  • garlic salt, or garlic powder
  • Java Black Pepper
  • McMennahin's Tobasco Sauce
  • Italian Seasoning
  • If you were very very lucky, Onion Salt or Onion Powder
Here's the recipe, for a small portion (we didn't have the pot capacity for more, or the heat source to heat more between movement end and dark) of Rice Stew:

  • Four Cups of water
  • Two cups of rice
  • as much meat-dishes as you could find in your butt-pack; usually two 8-ounce cans
  • any fat or oil that you could find or scrounge
  • any salt that you could find or scrounge (not included in SP packs, so Ham&Eggs was prized as much as Ham&Lima because it was intrinsically salty)
  • Lots of Java Black Pepper
  • Lots of Hot Sauce (Tabasco)
  • A healthy measure of Garlic, Onion, or any other pungent herb available
  • As much Italian Seasoning as you could talk the "Italian Guy" out of, for a disproportionate share of the meal.
Serves two, three, four, six ... as many as had contributed to the meal. Often it was heavily watered (from disreputable water sources) to make it go farther. The guy who had to sacrifice his helmet as a cook pot typically got a larger portion, but that was a bad trade-off because, as previously mentioned, it either tasted like olive-drab paint or had been used before and reeked like rotting food. We trusted the paint-smell more than that which we got from previously used helmets, which explains the value we place on large cans from the Mess Hall Garbage Dump. (I am, to this day, convinced that the Mess Hall staff at November 2 Night Defensive Position made special efforts to wash and disinfect #10 cans before disposing them in the dump in recognition of the hight probability that they would be used to serve American Troops in the immediate future.)

As we sat around a dying campfire (always before the sunset, so we wouldn't reveal our position), we use to tease each other about being back in The World and preparing this sort of meal for our family. The visual images included crouching on top of a stove while the pot burbled on the burner, half-naked and reeking, chattering a monologue in which every other work was the F-word, oblivious of the sensibilities of our intimate family. We are voluntarily ignoring the stench of Olive-Drab paint from the the new GI Helmet we're using as a Crock Pot, because we know that the smell from a 'used' pot is even worse.

Strangely, I made a pot of GI Rice for my wife during a R&R leave of absence in February, 1970, while we re-established our relationship in Honolulu, Hawaii. She liked it. I was comfortable with my meal for the first time in that month, although I admit I easily ignored the temptation to squat on the stove while cooking.

Why am I telling you all of this useless War-Story history?

Because I still make this dish for myself on a monthly basis, and I have a pot of GI Stew on the stove even now.

It's cooking in a Revere Ware Dutch-Oven. The rice is probably from the same ranch in Texas as provided it to the ARVNs in 1969, but I have more confidence in its cleanlilness. The Garlic and Onion are flaked-version from CostCo. The water is filtered through a Brita refrigerator pitcher,all of the seasonings come from jars with the "Spice Islands" logo on the label. It will be served with either Ritz or Nabisco crackers, or fresh-toasted Sourdough Bread from San Francisco (with Tillamook Creamery Butter spread) on the side.

The Tabasco sauce, however, is from New Orleans as before.

Some things just don't allow substitutes, no matter what the circumstances.

Negligence: Las Vegas Officer-involved Shooting Video

I don't know if I've ever actually posted the video, but I do know that I cited it in March of 2005.

In case anyone is still interested, here it is.

Essentially, during an arrest in Las Vegas, Nevada, a suspect was being cuffed by a deputy sheriff in a parking lot while being covered by another deputy with a drawn pistol. During the engagement, the covering deputy's pistol (Glock? Sig? hard to tell) discharges, striking the asphalt pavement near the prone suspect. The suspect and the arresting officer are noticibly disconcerted, if I may be forgive the understatement.

Fortunately, nobody seems to be injured and the covering officer immediately holsters her pistol. One wonders a lot of things, such as whether the covering officer really needs to have her pistol drawn and pointing toward the suspect ... but that is a matter of departmental policy, and I'm not conversant in this area.

Watch the video, draw your own conclusions, but I note that you're probably as poorly informed on departmental policy as am I. Still, when a firearm discharges, we might be forgiven for jumping to conclusions in regards to the degree of negligence which might be involved.

QUALITY OF THE VIDEO:

It comes across as rather rough on my computer, you might be well advised to download it before you play it because of transmission interference. If you don't get a 'clean, smooth' copy let me know and I'll see if I can find a file version that isn't 4th or 5th generation.

Target Barn Shooting Bag

For my birthday, my Sweetie (SWMBO) bought me a brand new red Range Bag from Target Barn.

While my bag is red (as is SWMBO's T.B. Professional Range Bag), it's available in four colors: Black Blue, Green and RED!


My old Dillon bag was green, and I was ready for a change. I have too many things in Dillon Blue already, and Black is so ... common. I had started campaigning for a red Target Barn range bag for my birthday as soon as I bought one for her, last year. This year she remembered and bought one for my very own, bless her heart. I'm not saying she feared that I would steal hers, but I did admire it and I'm sure she just wanted me to quit drooling on hers.


The "Professional" grade range bags from Target Barn come with a couple of great accessories. Included in the $69.95 price is a brass bag and a pistol sleeve.

The brass bag has a plastic snap-on clip so it readily attaches to your range bag. There's a drawstring at the top, so brass doesn't spill out when you unload it from the back of your Jeep, and the bottom is a mesh that drains foreign debris (such as dirt, sand, fir needles, etc.) and water. MAJOR factor in brass-bag selection in Oregon.

The pistol sleeve has a zipper on the side ... not on the top ... and is big enough that a STI Competition pistol with C-more sight and compensator fits comfortably inside and you can still zip it closed. I'm reasonably confident that any IPSC pistol will fit as well inside this commodious bag. There's a side-pocket which zips closed where you can store this pistol sleeve, although unfortunately you can't zip the side-pocket closed when the pistol sleeve is inside it ... in order to accommodate the oversized pistols, the pistol sleeve is too tall to allow the outside pocket to close with the sleeve inside it. However, it does fit completely inside the main compartment (see below) without interfering with the operation of the double-zipper that closes it.

If you don't want to store your pistol sleeve inside this pocket, it works great for storing two of the Dillon small utility boxes ... I use them for First Aid supplies and Tools & parts ... and a small timer.

On the outside wall of this zip-pocket is a smaller zip-pocket, perfect for storing flat items such as score sheets, match booklets, rule books or notebooks where you can record notes for your future memoirs.


Another feature of the T.B. Professional Shooting Bag is a side pocket with magazine loops stitched to the inner wall, holding as many as 7 double-stack magazines. I also use it for storing a small KleenBore Pocket Cleaning kit (PocKit), and a couple of granola bars for snacks. I get hungry during a match.

On the exterior wall (inside the pocket, protected from the elements) of that same zippered side-pocket there's a strip of elastic material with stitching at half-inch or one-inch intervals which allows you to insert pens, pencils, knives, screwdrivers, squib rods, chapstick (or lipstick) tubes, cleaning rods, etc.


The main compartment is the length of the bag (16-1/2" less padding) and easily eight inches wide. There's room for earmuffs, belt, ammunition, camera, gloves, snacks, a plastic zip-bag of cleaning rags and small towels, and a whole lot more. There are side-pockets, accommodating the pistol sleeve (with some difficulty) on one side and a large staple gun with a box of extra staples in the other side.


There are small zippered pockets on the ends. I keep a folded disposable rain poncho in one end, and the other end contains a "snake" bore-cleaner,
a small bottle of oil and a four-ounce squirt bottle of MP7.




ALL of the walls of the Target Barn "Professional" Range Bag are padded. almost everything seems to be double-stitched. The material is heavy Cordura (or ballistic) nylon. The padded shoulder strap is fitted with STAINLESS STEEL pressure clips for sure, easy removal and installation. The clips attach to large STAINLESS STEEL D-rings, which are triple-stitched to a heavy (Cordura or ballistic nylon) strip which runs under the bag from one D-ring to the other, between the double-walls of the main compartment, so the weight of the bag and its contents is supported not by the bag fabric, but by this heavy strip.

The large D-rings provide a place to hang the brass bag, and any other containers you wish. I have a couple of extra brass bags, and I use at least one of them for holding a bottle of water. I also have various protective eye-glasses in cases which attach with clips. Some of the clips aren't large enough to encompass the thickness of the D-rings, but I have circular key rings which I use as an intermediary link between the clip and the D-ring.

My Dillon bag had plastic clips between the shoulder strap and the bag, and didn't provide a place to hang brass bags, eyeglasses, water bottle holders, etc. I clipped them to the zipper pulls instead, and broke two of the zipper pulls and one of the zippers because I stressed them beyond the capacity for which they were designed. This is not a problem with the Target Barn bag.

The Target Barn puts two thick, heavy plastic strips at either end of the bag, to support it on whatever surface you choose to place it on. These don't really keep the bag out of the mud, but they look like a very sincere token gesture to protect the contents from ground moisture.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT:

The bag isn't perfect. I would like to see it a half-inch taller. This would allow the pistol sleeve to fit easily into one of the interior side-pockets of the main compartment, and perhaps even into the large side pocket, without interfering with the zipper.

It might even allow 170mm magazines to fit into the magazine-carrier side pocket.

Even if this dimensional change isn't implemented, I can live with the pistol sleeve fitting imperfectly into the side or main compartment.

The biggest downside is the inability to accommodate long magazines in the magazine carriers. This could be resolved by either moving the series of magazine pockets lower in the side-pocket, or leaving the bottom of at least a couple of the magazine slots open at the bottom, so the long magazines could slide farther down and clear the zipper.

However, neither of these limitations detract significantly from the over all convenience and usability of the bag. It was designed to be a small, light bag that meets most of the requirements for most shooters, and it accomplishes that goal admirably.



For those who feel they NEED a larger bag, Target Barn also offers the Tournament Bag ($135) with larger dimensions (23x10x14" high!), greater capacity, but the same great durability, quality and accessories ... except the "pistol sleeve" is replaced with a "pistol bag", and the water bottle is included!