Summer Wine Lyrics - Nancy Sinatra

Summer Wine Lyrics - Nancy Sinatra

Isn't it funny how a song will stay in your mind for decades, and hop onto your tongue for no good reason at all?

When I was in college, I subscribed to the Columbia Record Club. It was like a Book Club, every month they would send you a flyer of the current 'hit' records, and you could choose what you liked.

I had recently seen Nancy Sinatra in a movie (The Wild Angels) and her songs "Bang Bang" and "These Boots Are Made For Walking" were pretty big then, back in the sixties, so I chose to spend my dwindling funds on her latest LP.

Remember how hard it was to find money for anything more than Room, Beer, Board & Books when you were in college? I expect I spent $5.95 on this album, and that's significant bucks considering that at Gino's Pizza Parlor on 3rd and Van Buren would sell you three pitchers of beer for a buck on Wednesday nights.

I talked to my sweetie, SWMBO, on the phone tonite. She had just changed jobs, is looking for an apartment closer to the new office, and was pretty discouraged. I had suggested that we spend Saturday looking for an apartment, and Sunday shooting an IPSC match. "Poor Sweet Baby" I said.

What I should have said was: "I will give to you Strawberry Wine".

The N.Sinatra album I bought was "Nancy and Lee", and one of the most haunting of this surprisingly good album was Strawberry Wine. It was a duet-album with County Singer Lee Hazelwood, and it has NOT been converted to DVD, CD, or any other digital format. You can't buy the album, but you CAN buy it on the "Lightning Girl's Greatest Hits" album from Amazon for about $45.

Strawberries cherries and an angel´s kiss in spring
My summer wine is really made from all these things
Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time
And I will give to you summer wine
Ohhh-oh summer wine

Yes, I still have the LP. It is one of the reasons I'm contemplating the purchase of hardware/software inteface so I can transform my extensive collection of 33-1/3 Long Playing Records (LP's) into digital files.

Is there a point here?

No, clearly not.

You got a problem with that?

UPDATE: November 7, 2007
This "Summer Wine" post has been one of those 'one-hit wonders' that you occasionally get on a blog. I wrote it because I felt strongly about the subject, never expected to find that anyone else ever cared, and was surprised when I got so many hits on the post.

I just shrugged it off until tonite I got an email from a lady in the UK who actually sounded interested. She wanted to know, for example, if (in my experience) this song was frequently played in high-school proms in the 1967 - 1968 period. She hinted broadly that she had 'other questions'.

Full Disclosure: when I wrote this article I had the LP album in my hand. Since then, I have been unable to find it. Well, my stack of LPs is on the floor under my 'work station table' in the Front Room, and it's about 5' long. I can't find the album now, although I had no problems finding the "How's That Grab You" and "Nancy in London" albums. Too bad. Judging from the comments on the Amazon website, there is a lot of interest in the exact songs, and the sequence in which they appeared in the original album. I could get some major bucks from selling this album. I say this in full recognition of the fact that the re-issue of the album starts at about $65, and goes up to over $250 on Amazon dot com. (I won't bother trying to provide links here, just go to Amazon.com and search "Nancy and Lee".)

This album was re-released in 1990, and is currently available for under $8 as an "MP3" collection under the title "Fairy Tales & Fantasies".

I have not listened to this album for at least two years, but I bought the MP3 download tonite and in fact am listening to it now .... "Summer Wine" is playing. This is the third successive time I've listened to the MP3 download, and to the best of my memory this album faithfully reproduces every song on the album, and in the correct *(original)* sequence.

I'll keep an eye open for the original album, but for those crazies who think this is an important point, I'll say it again:
The Amazon MP3 download of "Nancy and Lee: Fairy Tales and Fantasies" is a faithful reproduction of the original album, in that it provides ALL of the songs in the same sequence as the original.

If YOU really really need authoritative confirmation, please email me (address at the bottom of this page) and make me an author. For enough money, I will search my LP collection again and, if I find the album, I'll give you the information.

Hell, for enough money I'll sell the original LP.

After all, I have the music and I can listen to it any time I want to. I don't need the LP any more.

Joshua Heldreth Apology

Ten Year Old Arrested for Giving Food to Terri Schiavo Apologizes




I've been putting this off because of the plethora of IPSC-related information which has been available during the past month, but I mentioned the article to The Gary during the Croc Match, and told him I was going to post it Real Soon Now (RSN).

No more delays. I think this deserves some attention.


Several months ago, I posted an article describing how several adolescent members of the Keys family were arrested because they trespassed . . . they attempted to bring water to Terri Schaivo after her life support was terminated. (Note broken links to accompanying photos.)

I mentioned that others were also arrested, but I didn't name them (because I didn't have their names). Apparently, 10-year-old Joshua Heldreth, eldest of 8 children, was one of those 'others'.

At the end of August, his punishment was decided. He was to perform 25 hours of community service, and write a 'letter of apology' to the management of the hospice in which Ms. Schiavo was being . . . slowly murdered.

Here are excerpts of young Joshua's letter of apology:

"I was arrested on Good Friday for trespassing on the hospice center's property . . . Not giving Mrs. Shiavo (sic) food or water was wrong. The reason I had to go on your property was because Jesus would do the same thing. It made me sad that she was so thirsty and it made Jesus sad too. I knew she would die without water and I am called by Jesus to be a defender of the defenceless. So I had to go on your property to try to bring her a drink."
(. . .)
"I am sorry that you didn't like that and wouldn't allow me to help save her life and one day you will have to tell God why. I won't be able to help you then like I tried to help her. I will pray for you every day . . ."

You can read the entire article by clicking at the link at the head of this post. Or, you can click on the picture to view the PDF of his original letter.

I don't know if young Joshua is really qualified to speak for Jesus.

But I think he speaks for many people.

And I know a Perfect Squelch when I see one . . .

"I am sorry that you didn't like that and wouldn't allow me to help save her life and one day you will have to tell God why. I won't be able to help you then like I tried to help her. I will pray for you every day . . ."

Blog Maintenance

Over the past couple of days, I've received notefication that spammers are touting their commercial websites in comments to this blog.

(You may not be aware of this, but every comment made generates an email to me. This allows me to know who is saying what. It does NOT tell me which article is being commented upon.)

I looked for the spamnotes in the current posts, and haven't found them yet, so I assume they're not going to be a problem for anybody.

Still, I don't like the idea of my blog being pirated by commercial interests. I would like them to stop it, but I doubt they will do so voluntarily.

Blogger.com offers two tools which would help filter out these commercial entries:

• I can require you to register before your comment is accepted
• I can require you to verify a non-text word (you've seen the goofy typeface letters before)

I don't know about you, but when I care enough about what a blog says, I want to have my say with a minimum of hoops to jump through. It irritates me whenever I go to a typepad-hosted blog, for example, and learn that I have to register before I can comment. Worse, I never remember my ID and password for typepad, so usually I don't say what I had intended. Instead, I just go away mad.

These commercial comments aren't so intrusive that they take up a lot of my time or yours, so for the time being I have decided NOT to make it more difficult to comment to this weblog. If you want to be known as anonymous, that's fine with me. I would prefer that you let me know who you are, but it's your choice. The downside, for you, may be that I don't know who you are so I (and other readers) don't get a sense of continuity if you comment more than once or twice ... unlike, for example, the hobo brasser and norm the ungrateful.

If the commercial comments become a problem for YOU, please let me know. I'll reconsider my decision to make it as easy as possible for folks to add comments.

But I really don't want to impede reader comments. As far as I'm concerned, what YOU have to say is infinitely more interesting to me than what I had to say. Besides, without reader feedback (comments), I don't know if anybody is really interested in what I had to say.

Sure, I subscribe to a statistics service so I know if people are reading the blog. That doesn't count for much, it's just numbers.

Here in Geekistan, we're People Oriented. We want to know who you are, what you think, and what you want to know more about. Anything that makes it more awkward, difficult or inconvenient for you to provide that much-needed feedback is not A Good Thing in my opinion.

What do you think?

ISP Angst

If you read my 'stuff' regularly, you know that I've been agonizing over the choice of a replacement for AOL as my ISP and a 56baud modem as my connection.

(You know you read this stuff, as well as I know it, cause I have your comments. You either read with the hope that I'll say something of interest, or because you are amused by demonstrated Lack of Having A Life, or because you are a masochistic S.O.B. I'm voting for Option "C".)

A month ago, I thought I had a real chance of getting a broadcast WiFi connection. When I called the ISP office, they said "Hey, no problem, we already have a couple of customers on your street!"

This was good news, because I live on a cul-de-sac at the edge of their coverage area. I figure, if the folks across the street (there are only 8 houses on the street!) have a connection, I'm a sure shoo-in!

No joy. They came out and made their WiFi receiver tests, and said they couldn't do business with me. I'm in, like some kind of Oregon Vortex.

Well, I knew that. But I had hoped that the Internet Gods would have cut me a little slack this time. (Foolish boy!)

My remaining choices were between QWEST and COMCAST.

I really don't want COMCAST. I have a TV, but it's not hooked up to anything. I use it to view DVD's, VHS movie tapes, and sometimes to view the tapes I make with my VHS Analogue Video Cam (which I haven't used since I bought the Geek Digicam, on my birthday last February.) S

The alternative seems to be QWEST. Good upload/download speed, about a half-GIG of data storage, and since I'm already a customer they're willing to make me a deal by 'bundling' my services. This means they take the landline, the voice-mail, and the caller-ID charges and discount them ten percent before they add another thirty bucks a month for DSL.

The other alternative (COMCAST, and it looks like a slow runner since every deal they've pitched to me through their snail-mail spaaaaaaam) doesn't seem nearly as attractive. Sure, they'll give me 6 months of service at $30 a month, but the price then jumps up to $60 a month and I have to take Cable TV also. That adds about another $45 a month, for a grand total of $105 a month even though I don't WANT Television Access.

So I'm waffling back and forth, thinking that I don't use my landline except for the 56baud modem thingie, and tonite I tried to pay my QWEST bill online.

I tried six times, and every time I tried to pay my bill with my debit card, the online bill-pay kept coming back to the same screen. No error message, no reason why it wouldn't complete the transaction.

So I called the one-eight hundred phone number, and they can't figure it out either.

Nice lady Rachel told me she would be happy to take the information over the phone so I could complete the transaction.

No word on why the online bill-paying function wouldn't work, so (after assuring her that I had no complaints about her service at ALL) I asked to speak for her supervisor. Told her that I was angry and frustrated and I didn't want to take it out on her.

Her supervisor, Darren, was entirely polite but said he was 'disappointed' when I said I was tired of the QWEST Quik-Step every time I tried to pay my bill online and offered to take care of it personally.

I asked him to take notes, and then told him that I had experienced repeated problems with their online bill-paying, and I was tired of it. I mentioned that I only used the landline connection for Internet connection through AOL, and I just couldn't see any reason why I should have to jump through hoops every month just to pay my bill. This wasn't the first time I had to phone the home office to accomplish this supposed 'convenience', and I was tired of it. I wanted to pay my bill, and I did. But as soon as I could, I planned to discontinue my association with QWEST and use my cell phone for personal voice communications . . . which was provided by VERIZON, their closest competitor in this area.

After I had paid my QWEST bill I did a NetScape search on COMCAST and learned that they couldn't give me ISP service at my address.

Boy, did I feel the fool!

Then I went to one of the secondary links on the search page, and found a third-party provider who could hook me up with COMCAST, provide a six-month discount, and give me free installation of a free modem.

So here's the deal: Free installation (I have to stay home for a half-day so they can install the FREE modem, sometime around the end of the month) and I pay $30 a month for six months. Then the price rises to $49.95 a month for 4000 baud download, 385 baud upload. Plus they give me 50MB online storage . . . which means I have a place to park a few of those MPG files I've been threatening you with for a while.

Let me see: I pay $30 a month for six months, then I pay $50 a month.

And I don't need QWEST, so I save the nominal $60 a month I'm already paying.

Also, I don't need to pay $30 a month for AOL to be my primary ISP. Instead, I can pay $10 a month for minimal service.

Old monthly bills: $60/month for QWEST plus $30 a month for AOL = $90 a month.
New monthly bills: $50 a month for COMCAST plus $10 a month for AOL = $60 a month.

Current expense: 90 x 12 = $1080 per year.
Expected expense: $40 x 12 = $480 per year, a savings of $600.
Next year and successive years: $60 x 12 = $720 per year, a savings of $360.

Besides which, I can save an extra $120 a year if I use one of the SEVEN email addressed available on the COMCAST subscription and completely dump AOL. That's an attractive alternative all in itself.

Not only that, but I get online Internet access from 6 to 10 times faster, and I'm liking that.

Bottom line, I don't have to deal with QWEST any more when bill-paying time comes around, and I may even be able to get rid of the annoying AOL service discontinuities, which happen from time to time.


Right now, even before I get the COMCAST DSL service, I'm looking at a significant monthly savings. Plus I get faster access, plus I get online storage.

The downside?

I have a lot of history with AOL, and I'm taking in terms of archived emails.

I think I can live without that.

Anybody have any downside anecdotal reasons why COMCAST won't work for me?

Not My Favorite Things

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things . . .

Maria's song from "The Sound Of Music" helps us over the hard times, because it lists so poignantly those small 'things' which must bring us small joys and bring a special dimension to our life .

Unfortunately, these are not a common part of our everyday life. What we tend to focus on are the small irritations of day-to-day life, and that is the subject of today's Geek Rant.

Getting up early to go to work, professional frustrations, we have learned to expect these unfavorite things and they don't make us feel bad. In fact, the worst days at work are those in which I don't accomplish as much as I would have hoped. Is it that way with you?

But the niggling little daily irritations started working on my as I got home, and checked my mailbox.

Argh! Circulars, advertisements, and things addressed to "occupant" (or even worse, bulk mailings from Safeway et all with not even a salutation.) These things are an irritation at best, an impediment to my peaceful life at worst. I found myself with a handful of flyers and newsprint-quality advertisements from stores I never shop in. At the trash can, I started to throw them away and somehow caught myself just before I threw them away. Tucked inside the grocery store flyers and bi-monthly Corvallis Disposal newsletters was A Bill. Great for me, that I can toss the junk mail (Snail-Mail's version of SPAAAAAM!) and in so doing fail to pay a bill on time. Great for my credit rating, and more especially great for imposing a late fee because I didn't know I had been billed. Later, I May have wondered why I didn't get a bill for the revolving charge card, but it would probably have been too late to get my payment in before the past-due date.

Do you hate Junk Mail as much as I do?

Later, as I settled into my comfortable computer-desk chair to check my email, the FIRST thing AOL asked me to do was to check my SPAAAAM filer for online junk mail. I had a half-dozen letters asking me to send them money, under one guise or another. Surprisingly, I didn't have a Nigerian Letter variant which suggested that they would share umpteen million dollars in a bank which had been been inundated by the New Orleans flood. However, I was offered some great deals on Viagra, Vitamins, and some stock tips which you gotta see to believe. Good heavens, they must think I am some kind of chump to buy into their trailer park trash. I haven't seen such transparent scams since an Encyclopedia Salesman found my wife's trailer outside the Fort McClellan, Alabama, post limits.



Do you hate online junk mail as much as I do?

After I cleared out THAT trash-pile, I started reading my legitimate email. It was a breath of fresh air when I got to Syd's regular "News From The Sight 1911" email. Syd, I truly enjoy reading what you have to say every couple of weeks, but you were outraged and I am outraged at the news. (Click on the link to see Syd's supporting MSM references.)

Here we have the Mayor of New Orleans confiscating weapons from law-abiding citizens. This is making my scalp crawl. I've tried to find some legal justification for this egregious measure, but it just isn't there. The mayoral dictate is patently illegal, unconstitutional, and the men and women who are required to enforce this measure are as uncomfortable with it as I am. Still, they have been placed under the command of a martinet, and an incompetent one at that. They're banging on doors, and busting heads, and handcuffing solid citizens because those same citizens can't depend on the police to protect them and their property, yet the police are taking away the means to defend the property.

Do you hate Mayor Ray Nagin as much as I do?

Here's what Syd has to say:

News from The Sight M1911

Volume 187, 9/14/05

With the stunning devastation of Katrina receding into sound bite memory for most everyone except those folks who have no homes to go home to, the storm of wind and tidal surges has been replaced by another storm of equal intensity, that of blame, recrimination, and partisan broadsides: The government didn’t do enough. It didn’t do it fast enough. It didn’t move fast enough because the victims were black. It didn’t move fast enough because the victims were poor. The Mayor blew it. The Governor choked up. The FEMA chief was inexperienced. The President was disengaged. Too much of the guard was in Iraq to respond quickly to the disaster. Etc., etc.

I can’t help but wonder if the lion’s share of the emotional voltage of this critique – beyond the obvious, that it provides an arsenal of ammo with which to assail George Bush – comes from the fact that Katrina has laid bare the foundation myth of the nanny state: the government will protect you; the government will fix your problems and heal your wounds. The event showed once again that the government really doesn’t do a very good job of protecting us. Maybe it should, but the reality is that it doesn’t. Those who took responsibility for their own safety and survival came through OK; those who trusted the government’s promise to take care of them were tragically disappointed. The message is clear. The state is not the messiah. When the chips are down, be ready to provide for your own security and survival.

For those of us who care a lot about gun rights, New Orleans is truly “the handwriting on the wall.” When citizens needed their guns the most, the mayor of New Orleans gave an illegal order to his police to confiscate the guns of law abiding citizens. Interestingly, I have yet to hear of a single instance of a law abiding citizen misusing a personal defense firearms to abuse another person, to shoot someone by mistake, or even to resist the illegal orders issued by the mayor. The gun threat from law abiding citizens was purely imaginary, unless, of course, you happened to be a looter. There were enough cops and guard to disarm the victims going into the Superdome, but not enough to protect them from predators once they were inside. We all need to take a few minutes to dig up our states’ emergency powers laws to see just what kind of ugly little surprises might be buried there.

Still, the news from N'Orleans isn't all one-sided. Relief workers are laboring under unusual conditions (no surprise to any of us), and one of the 'unusual conditions' is that they are being shot at (a GREAT surprise to most of us!).

Well, they may not be experiencing combat conditions NOW, but we've all heard/read the news reports of relief workers, helicopters, et al, taking fire while trying to save human lives and relieve human miser.

Man, that really sucks.

Just one more thing that's not among my favorite things.

UPDATE:

There's just one more thing to say.

You know I work at a college. Today, I was walking across campus on my way to lunch, and I saw something I haven't seen for a long, long time.

It was a girl. Long dark hair, brushed and gleaming in the sun. White blouse, emerald green skirt, carrying a handbag and wearing honest-to goodness shoes. No flip-flop shower sandles. No baby-fat pierced-navel tummy hanging out. No slouching, or shuffling, no androgynous indifferent teens-conformist looks. Just a healthy, confident, I-am-what-I-am young woman who obviously enjoys being a girl.

I stopped, and stared, and swore to myself. Look at that, a girl who looks like a GIRL.

By God! As long as there are a few young women who like themselves and have enough self-pride to stride across a college campus with her head held high, there's hope for this old world yet.

Next week, I intend to look for boys who don't have pierced bodyparts and who aren't riding bicycles or skating along on skateboards. I don't have great expectations, but I have high hopes that there is at least one man, and one woman, in this town of thirty thousand. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . they'll meet, and marry, and start a new generation of Americans who have pride of self and dignity to match.

Wouldn't that be something?

thirteen thousand

Although it is not important to everyone, I note that in the past hour my stats counter has logged over 13,000 visitors to this site since I began counting on December 15, 2004.

Your patronage is important to me, and I am grateful that the few dozen people who frequent this website choose to return again and again. Even if the only reason for your visit is to see what indignity I perpetrate next upon the authors of the IPSC rulebook or the English language, I'm glad you came to visit.

This might be called a 'vanity' exercise. I write because I have to, and because . . . uh . . . okay, that pretty much sums it up for me.

I don't write to my family as often as I should, because I don't know what to say to them much of the time. I get tired of saying "My job is about the same, I spent last weekend going to another pistol match, just as I did last weekend and the weekend before that, I am in good health and I hope you are the same." I know they get tired of hearing that, too. Because my interests are not the same as theirs, I don't write to them.

But perhaps my interests do coincide with yours, and so I spend my time writing to you. If you don't like what I have to write about . . . pffft! Don't read it. I wouldn't.

I've been spending a lot of time taking pictures at IPSC matches lately, and I've occasionally conned SWMBO into believing convinced SWMBO that it was at least as much fun to take pictures of IPSC matches as it is to shoot them. She will never believe me again, but at least she took a SLEW of great action pictures before she became entirely disenchanted with photography. She shot a club match this weekend, and had a great match despite her extended hiatus from competition. In recognition of her patience, I made a point of leaving the camera in the car. She appreciated it.

In appreciation of her great contribution to IPSC history, I would like to present a very short video she took a couple of weeks ago, of someone performing an unsafe act at an IPSC match, leading to a match disqualification. This isn't necessarily a criticism of the competitor. I came within a hairs breadth of making the same mistake, within a few inches.

In IPSC, inches matter. A lot.

Anyway, as I say I would LIKE to provide you with a short video, but I won't. I need to turn it into an animated GIF, and the software I have (JASCO Animator, part of the Paint Shop Pro 9 software package) is still new to me. It will take more time than I have available tonite.

The Hobo Brasser is a hard taskmaster, and as Communications Director of the Columbia Cascade Section he expects me to send him the Points Match Standings for the first Points Match of the 2006 season. I haven't got it done, due to circumstances I won't go into, and I won't get it finished tonite.


But I can get a good start on it, so that's what I'll be doing from now until bedtime.

Tomorrow is a school day, and I have a job to do.

Memories of 9/11

Nom de guerre: Rivrdog: Feeling good about 9-11

Rivrdog is a retired Multnomah County (Oregon) Sheriff's Deputy. On 9/11, he was on duty in the Multnomah County Court House in Portland. Today, he recounted his memories of that day, and of the months to follow. He made a difference in his home town.

I wish I could say the same, but I can't. I woke to my clock radio talking about airplanes having crashed into the Twin Towers, first the one, then the other. As I lay there, stunned, wanting to believe that this was a latter-day Orsen Wells radio play, I felt unable to move.

After I heard that the towers had collapsed, I got up long enough to go to the phone and call my office. I said I would not be coming to work today. And then I went back to bed.

A while later, I got up and dressed. Then I sat in my chair and continued to listen to the radio.

Around noon, my daughter phoned me from her home in San Diego. We talked for a while, relishing the human contact. We couldn't reassure each other, because neither of us were yet able to develop any reassuring perspective on the event. Still, it was good to know that we were both still there, still caring, still a part of one another's fragile, necessary lives.

After we said goodbye, I continued to sit there in my lonely room, listening to the radio. I helped nobody, it never occurred to me to call any other members of my family, or my friends. I was not an American, nor did I make a difference.

I just . . . sat.

I sat until the sun went down. Then I turned on the lights, and sat some more. I wasn't in disbelief, only perhaps in mourning. Even that was a small part of it, because I wasn't yet ready to feel anything.

The next day I got up and went to work.

Nothing had been decided, at least by me. All I was doing was carrying on. I went to work, and did my job. It wasn't that I particularly cared about my job that day, it's just that this is what I do, and I did care that someone wouldn't be able to do their job if I didn't do my part.

I hope my reaction, or lack of reaction, wasn't typical. My job didn't seem to make much of a difference in the world, but it was all I had that I could do. Days later I realized that this was all I COULD do, so perhaps my day of stunned non-being will be overlooked by the world.

Recently we had a similar national shock, cause by a natural disaster. The effects were no less in terms of property damage and lives disrupted. We have yet to learn whether the loss of life is more, or less. But (at the risk of seeming to be callous and indifferent to the deaths of my fellow citizens), I was able to function on some level. I got up, I went to work, I did my job.

The difference isn't in the effect; the difference is in the cause.

Hurricane Katrina is responsible for the damage in the Gulf States. This wasn't caused by man's inhumanity to man. I can deal with natural disaster, at least in a small and insignificant sense.

What I can't deal with is the deliberate slaughter of 9/11.

What I can't deal with, what I can't comprehend, is how supposedly rational human beings can deliberately kill so many innocent fellow humans, and justify it by a differing theological or cultural set of priorities.

I know so many good, responsible, admirable people. They would not be capable of unilaterally causing such untold human suffering. They could not inflict such a slaughter of innocents.

How could anyone believe so whole-heartedly in God, that they could justify such a horrible, inhuman act as we experienced (however 'vicariously') on 9/11?

What are we do to with a segment of society which applauds such inhumanity? 9/11 wasn't a natural disaster, against which mankind still, after millenia of technological advance, we still have no defense.

Technology seems only to present new means and opportunities for slaughter. It doesn't protect us from the same disasters we have experienced since time began: comets half distroying the earth, volcanic eruptions, earthquake, fire, flood, blizzard.

What do we have to protect us from our fellow man? God may be the answer, but today it seems again that God, or the false promises of false prophets using God as an excuse, is as much our enemy as the winds and the tides.

But however clement the weather this day, we hold it as a day of national mourning. And we wait. We wait for the next inhumanity to be visited upon us. We hope it will not happen, and it appears that this anniversary of dreadful death has passed us by for this year.

We pray it will not happen again, but with little confidence.

For the horsemen of the Apocalypse have visited on this day, and there is little reason to expect that they will not visit again in future days.

All we have, all we can do, is to do our jobs.

Some are more important than others, some are more meaningful, some are more helpful to others.

For those who went out and did their jobs on 9/11, and in New Orleans, December 7, and all other days of disaster . . . I thank you.

Rivrdog, you're a good man. I thank you personally. I thank you for doing your job, when that is all you could do, and I especially thank you for doing your job when you did more than was expected of you.

This is the kind of man who holds the torch of civilization, when those around him can do nothing more than sit, and listen, and watch.

The Original IPSC Target

Today I revealed The Grand Deception. Namely, that the traditional IPSC target has been designated "The IPSC Metric Design Paper/Cardboard Target" for at least 15 years.

This despite my repeated and loud protests on the Unofficial IPSC list and at least two IPSC-related internet forums that it was arbitrarily so designated when IPSC introduced the "Classic" target in the 14th rule book edition (2001). I wondered how long it would take for someone to actually look through the old editions of the rule books and find out the real name of the IPSC target before the "Classic" was introduced.

The answer is: four years.

The joke has gone on long enough. Today, "IPSC-GUY" called my bluff, and I have to admit that my outraged protest is entirely without substance.

IPSC didn't make up the name "Metric Target" just to distinguish it from the new "Classic" target shape. They used the real, official name which had already been in effect for at least ten years. (I admit I didn't realize this when I made my first protest. I didn't discover it until I looked it up for myself. But it has been an interesting experiment, making all that noise without anybody confronting me with the truth.)

Incidently, the original IPSC target was designated "The Item Target", not the "Metric" Target (even though the dimensions were printed in centimeters rather than in inches.)


Here's a picture of the Item Target, along with an alternative design called the "Boxed Option" target, from the 1st Edition (May, 1983) of the IPSC and USPSA rule book.
(Click on all images for hi-res images).



For your casual information, here's a look at the cover of the 1st Edition rule book.