The Wandering Minstrel

This is definitely the weirdest thing I found on the internet today . . .

I was looking for something entirely unrelated to this poster, but thought it was pretty good so here it is. What the world needs is more armed females dressed in pink with an aptitude for self-defense. The Better Half is one of those females that sometimes wears pink who has such an aptitude, but she would be indexing her trigger finger until the moment of truth.

I thought I would dig out the source for the countdown timer and make it count the days, etc. until the new Congress is seated on January 3rd. Don’t forget, however, that the current Congress can do a lot of damage before then.

The Harrison Ford “Rick Deckard” hero blaster from Blade Runner, predicted to draw bids between $100,000 and $150,000, was among the 1,100 pieces of Hollywood memorabilia auctioned by Profiles in History April 30 and May 1, 2009. Ford’s hero blaster nabbed a winning bid of $270,000 to top the items at the auction. That’s considerably higher than the pre-auction estimate.

Found at SyFy’s Blastr site. Clickable image.

How about our collection of black guns for black Friday? At the top is the Remington 870 security shotgun. The row below that is the Glock 30 (Fat Man), S&W 442 with rosewood grips (Rosie the Riveter) and a S&W 908. Finally, on the bottom is the Glock 26 (Little Boy). Magazines for the three semi-auto pistols are also shown.

The Better Half and I celebrated black Friday by staying home. Oh, don’t get me wrong, we did a little shopping but that was over the internet. We ordered some DVDs, an Arizona Highways 2011 calendar and I ordered some Christmas and Birthday items for The Better Half, whose birthday is on Christmas eve.

We have some grocery shopping we need to do but we postponed that until Saturday.

A friend sent this in an email the other day about the fastest airplane ever and a Blackbird Pilot’s account of events . . .

One day, high above Arizona, we were monitoring the radio traffic, of all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers to check his ground speed. ‘Ninety knots,’ ATC replied.

A Bonanza soon made the same request. ‘One-twenty on the ground,’ was the reply.

To our surprise, a Navy F-18 came over the radio, with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was.

‘Dusty 52, we show you at 620 on the ground,’ ATC responded.

The situation was too ripe.

I heard the click of the RSO’s mike button in the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, he startled the controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace.

In a cool, professional voice, the air traffic controller replied, ‘Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground.’

Priceless!

I imagine the Pilgrims would have used something like this . . .

Have a great Thanksgiving!

The Better Half and I went to visit her sister and her Mom today. It is Mom’s birthday, so we took her a card and gift.

On our way back to the house, we caught a glimpse of a red Chevrolet in Tip’s parking lot. The hood was open and I figured it would be worth a trip around the block to let The Better Half get a couple of pictures.

This is a 1958 Chevrolet Bel Air coupe. This one had the Continental Kit installed. Very shiny, very clean and very nice. Clickable image. The Better Half also got a picture of the side view of this nice ride.