Culture

Peek-a-Boom! Halloween 2007


happy-glockoween

My new Glock 30 .45ACP Pistol sits on a spooky table tapestry that shows up around this time each year. You can click on the image for a close-up view.

Once again, the leaves are falling and the pumpkins in the patch are ripe. It’s the time that all restless spirits set forth in their annual ritual of calling on the living – and demanding treats. Since the fifth century BC, Halloween has been celebrated as a cross-quarter day, a day halfway between an equinox (equal day / equal night) and a solstice (minimum day / maximum night in the northern hemisphere). With our modern calendar, however, the real cross-quarter day will occur next week. Visit Astronomy Picture of the Day for a spooky Ghost Nebula and more about Halloween.

We’re looking forward to the visitations of all the little goblins and spirits at our door tonight. We plan on posting some spooky pictures here tomorrow.

Art Deco Architecture

art-decoOne of the first things visitors notice upon arriving in Avalon is the Casino Building, Catalina Island’s most recognizable landmark. The round, white building raises the equivalent of 12 stories, and is surrounded by the sea on three sides. Built in 1929, the Casino – which is actually not a gambling hall but “a place of entertainment” – played host to dozens of big bands through the 1930s and 1940s. Guests danced the night away to the music of Glen Miller, Harry James, and many others over the years.

The Casino Building is a stunning example of original Art Deco architecture. It has been well maintained over the years and has also undergone much restoration, both inside and out.

Read more about it at Catalina Island Journal. Click the image to enlarge.

Guns, Kids, Medics and the Left

caduceusCertain pediatricians now employ the practice of asking kids if “Daddy has a gun,” and, if the answer is “yes,” they follow-up with questions about weapons in the home – legitimate or not. I infer from this that they must think children with gun-owning parents have some sort of health risk.

Let’s consider some numbers:

In the U.S. in 2003, there were 28 accidental gunshot deaths among 10 year old or younger children. There were an estimated 90 million gun owners and about 277 million guns nationwide at that time. There also were 40 million (or so) kids under the age of 10 in 2003. So actually a small percentage of children were killed or about 0.00007 percent (1 child for every 1.4 million) – still way too many, but a small percentage. This also translates that only one gun out of every 100 million guns was involved in the death of a child that year.

warthogAccording to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1400 kids are killed yearly by automobile accidents, either as passengers or as pedestrians. Why not ask if Daddy owns a car? 90 kids are drowned in bathtubs annually – should we put locks on tubs? Space heaters, swimming pools, bicycles, toxic cleaning agents, skateboards and a host of other common articles are factors in child fatalities. When you add all these “health” risks together, the health risk of a gun in the household is not only dwarfed, but practically eliminated. Why not ask about other known-to-be-dangerous items?

Kids are not so much at risk from guns as they are from parents with habitual substance abuse, violent criminal records, domestic violence and such. Pediatricians should zero in on whether children have parents who are people who would use guns violently, not if “Daddy has a gun.”

Of course anti-gun fanatics and leftists are arithmetically challenged, preferring hyperbole to statistics. Crusading for children, it seems, is a favorite ploy by the left, except when it comes to crusading for abortion wherein children are intentionally killed for the sake of “health” or “convenience.”

Interview your health professionals (after all, they work for you) and see if they have an anti-gun agenda – if they do, FIRE THEM!

And OBTW (oh, by the way) if the country goes to a national health care system, certain anti-gun politicians (Hillary!) will assign a health professional(?) to you – you will have NO choice in the matter, since free trade and competition are the enemies of socialism.

Look In the Ammo Bucket

. . . to see these beautiful Winchester 9x19mm Luger Parabellum rounds. Parabellum is from an ancient Latin credo – “Si vis pacem, para bellum.” Translated, it means “if you seek peace, prepare for war.”

Damsel took this artistic photo last weekend when we were doing gun maintenance after our weekly target practice. I use the big version for a computer background picture.

parabellum-rounds.jpg

Island Patrol

When you are on an island, everything you consume has to be barged over from the mainland. In the case of groceries and gasoline, the entire delivery truck is loaded onto the barge and brought to the island and barged back empty. This causes the prices for such commodities to go way up.

While you can’t cut down on groceries and such, you can do something about fuel consumption. In order to cope with 5-dollar-per-gallon-plus gas prices, most Catalina Island residents drive small golf-cart sized vehicles since the town is rather small. You also see motor scooters and we saw a Segway while we were there.

One interesting vehicle we saw was this motorized stand-up three-wheeled solution which the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department uses to patrol the streets of Avalon. Click on the picture below for a large close-up.

laso-patrol.jpg

Shuttle Tydirium

star-wars-shuttle.jpgWell, not actually, but this little “Butterbug” perching on one of Damsel’s Zinnias reminded me of the Star Wars shuttle craft when it folds it’s wings back for a landing on the flight deck of the Death Star.

To get the inset Shuttle Tydirium photo, I did an Internet search on “star wars shuttle” and found reference to it on WOOKIEPEDIA, the Star Wars Wiki Site. I never saw Wookiepedia before, although I’m sure many readers have.

NOTE: Due to a transition in my work assignment, you will be seeing less content and more pictures for the remainder of this week. Next week we will be blogging from romantic Catalina Island for our annual anniversary pilgrimage.

Damsel took this picture over the weekend.

butterbug.jpg