Largely Personal Scatterings

     I’m in a strange place this morning, for miscellaneous reasons some of which might become evident as you proceed, Gentle Reader. I don’t have a coherent subject in mind just now, as is usually the case when I light off on a piece for Liberty’s Torch. All the same, I feel the usual (for me) compulsion to write, so here goes nothing, or as close to it as my mental calipers can grip.

     Among yesterday’s wanderings was a trip to a local Federal Firearms Licensee, Front Line Training Center of Bohemia, Long Island, to pick up a shipment of ammunition from CheapAmmo.com. FLTC is exactly what its name makes it. It offers all manner of courses, including (of course) firearms-related courses designed to train the shooter and keep him on the right side of the law. The folks there are friendly and accommodating. Among other things, they perform no-fee transfers of firearms and ammunition. That’s something you won’t find very often.

     In reply to a question from me, one of the staffers there informed me, gloomily, that New York’s permitting mechanisms for would-be handgun owners now compel a new applicant to wait three years at minimum. I can’t conceive of a good reason for such a delay in conceding a man’s Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. Then again, this is New York, and there’s no state in the Union that’s more hostile to the Second Amendment and the rights it guarantees.

     Frankly, there could never be a better reason for exterminating the whole race of politicians, throwing their corpses into a mass grave, and closing the grave with dogshit as a warning to aspiring successors. For I tell you truly, there is no such thing as a politician who really wants to see Us the People in possession of arms. No matter what any of them says, they fear us – and the greater our potential, the greater their fear.

     Our Newfoundland, Joy, has been fragile this past year. Yesterday she endured her third surgery of the year, this one to correct a serious umbilical hernia that our primary-care veterinarian swears “just appeared.” I was exceedingly dubious, but rather than alienate the poor woman I let it pass.

     This is the downside of giant-breed dogs. They have significant medical problems: heart murmurs; hip dysplasia; easily wrenched leg and foot joints; and a propensity toward doggie arthritis that doesn’t trouble the smaller breeds nearly as often or as severely. And in keeping with those vulnerabilities, their lives are short. Newfs average about ten years on Earth before going back to God.

     Yet they’re the most loyal, most affectionate creatures known to Man. It hurts worse than words can express to have to say farewell to one of them…and I’ve been through it twice already.

     Que sera, sera, as my ancestors used to say. Yet in my darker moments I find myself half-hoping that Joy will outlive me. I wonder what the odds are.

     Long Island was once a green, open, and thinly populated place. That made it a retirement destination quite as popular as Florida today. The saying then was that if the retirees and the potato farmers were to evacuate in a body, only the insane asylums and their, ah, residents would be left. But that was long ago. Well before Robert Moses, at any rate.

     Today the Twin Counties of Nassau and Suffolk –why twins? We have absolutely nothing in common – boast an aggregate population of over 3 million persons. That’s enough to make this piece of terminal moraine feel a trifle crowded at times. One of those times is the daily rush hour.

     The roads here are at capacity, if not a little beyond that. The situation is so bad that a serious accident on an important commuting road can stop traffic completely for hours. The C.S.O. and I were caught in one such stoppage yesterday evening. Being long-time Islanders, we’ve learned how to tolerate such delays, with the usual amount of grumbling. But on that occasion, we had a post-surgical Newf in the car with us, and she was not equally disposed to tolerate it.

     This is another downside of the giant-breed dogs: when they barf…well, never mind.

     The “COVID lies” now stand revealed in their entirety. There’s not one shred of truth remaining to any of the claims that were made in the course of the pandemic. All the following statements have been verified beyond a reasonable doubt:

• The virus was made in a lab in China.
• It was no more dangerous than the common influenza virus.
• The same demographic cohorts were the ones most endangered.
• The lockdowns and closure of the economy were far more destructive than the virus.
• The cohort least endangered by the virus, minor children, were the most negatively affected by the lockdowns.
• Face masks did nothing to impede the virus’s transmission.
• The “vaccines” were a fraud and worse.
• Governments at all levels and around the world saw the pandemic as an excellent opportunity to seize totalitarian power over private persons and their enterprises – and nearly every one of them did exactly that.
• In keeping with the above, governments are straining to perpetuate the “emergency” not for the sake of anyone’s health, but for what it let them get away with.

     I regard Anthony Fauci as a murderer by indirection, as is every politician who seized upon his “expertise” as a justification for oppressing us. The Usurper Regime in Washington should have been removed by force and its capos subjected to public trials for their crimes. Yet we left it intact. We hardly even penalized its state-level henchmen.

     Draw whatever conclusions you like about the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. I’ve drawn mine.

     The day before yesterday, I wrote:

     I’ve come to dislike the word need almost as much as the word should. “Why do you need an AR-15? Why do you need a Mercedes S550? Why do you need a wife…a home in the suburbs… a Newf… a lawn tractor…a five-computer network…a supercharged, chrome-plated, fully gurgitated, Escher-certified three-pronged blivet?” He who takes need questions seriously, rather than dismissing them with a grimace and a growl, has admitted a hungry predator to his life, one capable of consuming his peace of mind and eager to do so. My advice? Don’t.

     Since then, I’ve received a few queries of the more plaintive sort. I’ve delayed answering them until now, but the time has come:

• Yes, I own a three-pronged blivet.
• Yes, its legs are threaded for ambihelical hexnuts.
• No, I no longer have the nuts or the rectabular extrusion bracket that came in the original kit.
• No, it’s not for sale.

     And I don’t care how badly your fresnoid needs one!

     In closing, Happy Saint Nicholas of Myra Day. Saint Nick was, of course, the “original Santa Claus.” To celebrate the occasion in proper style, throw a bag of coins through someone else’s window. (Make sure the window is open first.) It’s time for breakfast here. Perhaps I’ll be back later. I might make more sense after I’ve eaten, but don’t count on it.