Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

Author: Professional Beach Bum

  • Roger Waters at the Greensboro, NC, Coliseum

    It’s been awhile, and life is changing considerably. Last I wrote was regarding living in a self-sufficient manner on a bit of acreage. Since then, my mom came closer than pretty much ever to meeting eternity (septic shock, recurring cdiff infections, congestive heart failure, and other stuff, all at once). As in was down to 68 lbs (though she is technically a homunculus at 4’9″). We took the first half of her inheritance from her aunt passing, got all of the debt except the mortgage paid off, and figuring this was probably the last time for it, splurged on a summer for myself, my sister, and my nieces to remember while mom is still mobile and, well, alive. I am also moving back to Austin, TX, at the end of this month. The fiancee is graduating in some kind of bio-chem/genetics voodoo Frankensteinian field. The second half of the inheritance goes to fixing both houses so that we can sell them, so my sister can buy a house outright in town, or wherever she wants to.

    We rented a beach house for 3 weeks on Tops’l Island (the property we own is just south of Pinehurst, NC, and borders the SW corner of Ft Bragg, so that is our favorite beach to visit) for an obscene amount of money (worth it). We also spent a REALLY obscene amount of money on 5 tickets for the Waters show, as we are all huge Pink Floyd freaks.

    Waters is very hit and miss in the post-Floyd days (1985 in ATX on the Pros and Cons Of Hitchhiking tour, the guitarist was not able to do either Gilmour or Clapton, it was out of place for the music), so I researched on YouTube his shows from recent years. I went back to the last stages of the recent Wall tour, and the early shows from this one. He sounded good, the show looked good (as opposed to a few years ago; see the embarrassing performance on YT with Eric Clapton, ’05 or ’06), the production looked like old Floyd Wall-era goodness. I pulled the trigger at $200/ticket. This was the 12-y/o and 8 y/o nieces’ first concert. We were 2/3 of the way back on the first row of arena seats, and I could see directly into the front of house sound/light console area. This being my main focus after the TBI residuals from Iraq finally killed off 30+ years of second-nature guitar playing, which is now like trying to learn Chinese for me.

    We got to the show fully aware that we were in a very liberal college town at the center of the BS transgender bathroom wars, and that Waters is pretty much a far left, racist, authoritarian ass. He did a full 3 hour show, with a 15 minute intermission and only 3 songs from his solo album, so about 2.5 hours of Pink Floyd stuff.

    Me, the minions, and my sister at intermission…

    Light show was top notch, merging in digital effects in camera from the digital video cameras around the stadium with the projected animations from Gerald Scarfe going back all the way to the Dark Side of the Moon tours. The updated pig from the ’77 Animals tour flew around. New footage for Dogs and Sheep of Battersea with a whole mess of pro-Palestinian, pro-BLM, anti-Trump footage projected in for the appropriate songs…

    As a side note, though there was the predictable frothing cheering from the proggie contingent on his strangely out-of-place proggie excursions, there was the almost audible sound of eyeballs rolling back into heads during those parts. A lot of it.

    I got into conversations with people several rows around me, including the libertarian-ish thread of what exactly his message was. I didn’t even start it. What exactly was his message, when he’s calling out Trump but not Clinton, Obama, et al? How are you going to crack on capitalism while charging $200 per ticket anywhere below nosebleed, and starting at $40 for a t-shirt? The phrase transparent hypocrisy was used more than once.

    He even brought out local black kids (wearing orange GITMO jumpsuits) to dance (which they then ripped off for the solo to reveal RESIST! shirts), and then lip-sync the second verse of Another Brick In The Wall Pt 2. There was very much a Victorian “White Man’s Burden” feel to that whole bit (Oh look at the noble savages) that came off as pretty damned awkward.

    So, enough of that. Musically, it was as good as any show I have ever seen. Rush, The Firm, Van Halen in ”79, the first show I saw him in (in his prime), this was as good if not better. He finally got a guitarist who did credit to Gilmour, the backup singers killed it on all of their parts and did great service to Claire Torry’s vocals on DSOTM for The Great Gig In The Sky. His backup guitarist handled Gilmour’s lead vocals, different and a bit less strong than DG, but it really worked well. Waters’ voice was in better shape than the Animals tour in ’77. He seemed “trained not to spit on a fan,” unlike one show on that tour. The energy was fantastic, and most of the audience was my age to mom’s generation (Boomers) and there for the Floyd show.

    The light show was completely Pink Floyd from their Animals/Wall heyday, and then some. He had a metallic sphere drone (helium-filled?) that was covered in GoPro cameras, which tooled around trough the show. I surveilled it back of course. The pyramid of lasers with the rainbow of lasers was perfect for Eclipse/Brain Damage, and Comfortably Numb was VERY well done as the finale.*

    The proggie political stuff was expected and annoying, but in no way diminished one of if not the best show I’ve been to.

    *I still want to see Gilmour though, as it is his fault that I started playing guitar, and now have a self-custom built FrankenStrat and pedalboard with boutique and self-built EFX pedals covering the Meddle through Final Cut periods, and why I went into seriously studying sound/recording engineering once the brain/eye/hand communications issues got bad.

  • Heinlein As A Way Of Life; or Joys Of Body Armor

    “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” 
    ― Robert A. Heinlein

    In my first attempt at this, I used the terms Prepper and Prepping. I should not have, though I think material aspects of those are covered by what I am doing. Dad worked on Apollo and then Apollo-Soyuz and Skylab. We lived in Seabrook with all the other NASA/JPL/IBM engineers and astronauts that worked at the Johnson Space Center. I thought it was normal to play in the display J-2 rocket engine and wander around when the NASA staff were making the displays for the little museum they had going on before they made it a paid public theme park. My choices for reading were what dad had in the bookshelves, which was a set of Great Books of the Western World, the whole set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a mess of Niven, Heinlein, Clarke, Pournelle, Asimov, and others.

    Heinlein always struck a chord in me, a resonance that with words expressed with the same impact that having grandparents who lived a lot of that self-reliant and ultimately satisfying life. Let us approach this from that lens, rather than all the connotations that come with Preppers and Prepping. Homesteading is probably the best term for it, in that Prepping requires that you are preparing for some great calamitous event, whereas I am coming from a point of just living life and solving problems in as self-sufficient manner as possible. This includes being prepared for disaster and mayhem, but as part of life.

    Because of a reference in some of the comments about a rant on body armor from 2015, I read the entire archived thread that was referenced. First off, it is my life, and I will use whatever means I have in order to defend it. I will even extend that to those around me, whether they deserve it or not. That is my reasoning for having and carrying a pistol. My military gear is for just that (and mainly for working around the property, which happens a lot more than Mad Max bad guy gangs tooling around the nucular (sic) wastelands causing rape and mayhem). I camp with my hammock, poncho, poncho liners, carry everything in the same ruck (and same loadout) that I could live out of indefinitely if need be. Something that was brought up in that thread, to death, was the rights v. the person’s irrational fear of the use of body armor making his guns less effective, so BAN IT, BAN IT ALL TO HELL!!11!eleventyone!!

    Don’t care. I shoot, a lot. It is one of the things that my TBIs didn’t scramble so badly that I can’t do it anymore, unlike doing artwork without great concentration or pain, or thinking about each step consciously at some level. I can still do it, and I do it well. I have also been very lucky in that on most of the ranges that I shoot on, there is a good possibility of getting hit with debris, the shorn jacket of a bullet, the odd nail in a stump that gets hit at just the wrong angle, and I have gotten away with at worst minor cuts.

    There is also the fact that its intended use for protection in armed conflict. I have it for that reason, should I ever need it. However, I find that the only use for it so far, has been range safety. I have Rx Oakley and Wiley-X specs because I value my failing eyesight. I value what is left of my scrambled brain, so I have an ACH (Advanced Combat Helmet, Ballistic) high cut helmet. It clears the Peltor active ear protection, I can wear it all day, and it is WAAAAY more comfortable than the PASGT helmets you saw from Panama, Gulf War 1, Bosnia, and the opening years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

    I have a simple plate carrier that I use, any Berry-compliant (every bit of it made in the USA, to include all components) carrier will do, but my beater carrier is a Shellback Tactical Banshee with medium SAPI rifle plates front and back, with Level IIIA Aramid (Kevlar) soft inserts on the sides. It also works great for carrying 4 extra magazines, a first aid trauma kit, flashlight, and hydration kit. I also have their Banshee 2 with the 3d air mesh lining if I ever had to wear it for days-weeks at a time. Crye Precision and TYR Tactical make the best tactigucci stuff out there, but these work for me, without the several-months wait. Aftermarket is one place where they really surpass the .mil plates and carriers, but you pay for it. NIJ 2006 is the latest standard, and is more stringent than the .mil requirements for Level IV and Level IV Special Purpose plates.

    That all said and done, it’s getting to be time for proper gear. Boardshorts, t-shirt, flip-flops, the body boards, and the wetsuit. Almost time to rent a house on Topsail Island or the OBX before the waves die down for the summer. Next installment: reloading equipment and water purification.

    Don, Always 11H1P, but now just Professional Beach Bum.

  • Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst

    After reading the review on the prepper info manual disguised as a novel by Gojira, I noticed the comments touched on a wide range of topics. I’d like to go into a more practical insight on several of these, but not so much an ideology, as was done in the novel. This will be a series of articles on various subjects regarding survival preparation, though mostly pertaining to natural disasters and weather events as this is the most common situation hopefully that any of us will see. This is not intended to do anything but give ideas and spark discussion. Weapons, accessories, gear, all are what I have determined to be best for me, in my situation

    This intro article will, by necessity, touch on a little bit of ideology because that is what sparked both a practical interest in the mechanics and gear/skills for self-reliance, as well as my decision to join the Army when I was 20.

    First, definitions. The plain text of the Second Amendment states that:

    “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

    The history and clear intent are widely available since all of this was discussed during the ratification process in personal correspondence and the Federalist/Anti-Federalist Papers. The important part is in the terms well-regulated and militia. Regulated in this context clearly meant equipped and trained. A modern equivalent would be an armed neighborhood watch, as well as local and state militias. Militia is simply anyone able to fight, being prepared to do so if called upon – The Minuteman. The phrase “a free State” meant literally a state of freedom. As a citizen of the USA, I have always known that it is my responsibility to defend the ideals set forth in the Declaration, and the mechanism by which government was created to protect them, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

    I thank my grandparents who were educators before the infusion of Marxist and non-Marxist Progressive-tainted indoctrination. My upbringing was infused with learning practical skills such as farming, hunting, weapons training, computer programming, and use of tools to either fix broken equipment or make a tool specific to the task at hand.

    My level of deep study into the founding documents intensified as my 18th birthday approached and I prepared to vote in a Presidential election later that year, Ronald Reagan’s bid for a second 4 years in office. Reagan was the first and last time I have voted for a candidate from either major party.  I was a libertarian and just didn’t know the term yet. I did know that neither political party had any interest in adhering to the Constitutional functions, structure, and limitations that Federal government exists under.

    Two years later I swore an oath, supreme in which I was to uphold and defend the Constitution, against enemies for foreign and domestic. I made damned sure I was aware of what I was willing to put my life on the line for, and agreed with it. I served in the 82nd Airborne as an infantryman, and then, after 9/11, as a Parachute Rigger (which is ironically when I was used in a combat zone in an infantry capacity). I got out in 2005; they wouldn’t let me keep going due to too many TBIs and structural damage to knees, back, neck, and lumbar spine. Plus, there was no way I was going to a promotion board in the Rigger field.

    So, my choices regarding arms and equipment are based on compatibility with current issued equipment for several reasons. By definition, I am part of the militia, even though I am not part of any local or state group. All of my neighbors and I live on plots of land ranging from 10 acres up to 120 acres; all are former active military, and reverting into an organized cohesive unit in times of severe societal disruption is second nature. Ft. Bragg’s southwestern corner is our boundary, and has several thousand acres of forest land crossed by dirt road fire breaks – lots of deer, coyotes, black bears, rabbits, and squirrels. My choices are based on these environmental conditions, and I would do some things differently in Austin, Texas than I would here. From an equipment standpoint, my personal gear is set up for me to go and meet a threat before it makes it home; whereas, the family’s is geared toward defense in place. Most of all, the most important weapon you have is you. The rest are just tools.

    Whew, enough of that! Today, I want to talk about basic arms and ammunition.

    I chose the AR-15 as my primary weapon. It is a SIG M400 direct impingement rifle with a 16” barrel, 1 in 7” twist on the rifling to handle heavier bullets up to 77 grains (Sierra Match King and the Nosler version). It isn’t that expensive in basic form. The trigger group needs some light touches with a fine stone to make it glass smooth. Parts are interchangeable with standard .mil issue. It uses the same ammo, 5.56×45 NATO M855 62 grain penetrator FMJ, as the .mil issue, and it loves this stuff to the point of being sub-MOA (one minute of angle is approximately 1” at 100 yards).

    I have upgraded parts to include a Troy M-LOK 15” free-float handguard with a MAGPUL vertical foregrip, Troy backup iron sights, a 2-point padded sling from Tactical Tailor, and an EOTech XPS-2 holographic sight. I am getting the M33 3x magnifier to go with it for more precise shooting and target ID at middle ranges (100-400 meters). The rifle has the MAGPUL MOE-SL stock. I have the Streamlight TLR-1 Game Spotter green LED light for taking out predatory species such as coyotes at night, and a Streamlight TLR-1HL as my primary weapon light with a tape remote activation switch.

    This rifle needs to be capable of CQC as well as SPR uses at close range and mid-range respectively. I try to keep at least 1,000 rounds of the .mil ammo in reserve, and I usually put that many through the rifle every week. I carry 3 30-round PMAGs and one 20-round PMAG on my plate carrier, with a knife, a 2-liter hydration bladder, an MBITR pouch, and an individual first aid kit. I carry and additional 8 30-round PMAGs, another IFAK, 2 spare pistol mags, and the pistol on my belt system (currently an HSGI padded battle belt with slimline suspenders from Warrior Assault Systems, though I want to try out a couple of other options).

    Secondary weapon currently is a Springfield Armory XD45 (.45 ACP). I’m a 1911 guy, so Glock ergonomics didn’t do it for me. I can easily do headshots at 25 meters with this pistol, all day long. Same ammo routine as with the primary, 1,000 rounds in reserve and about 1,000 a week through the pipe. However, I will be transitioning to the SIG P320 for the same reasons as I chose the AR-15 as my primary. With the 9mm version, I can have interchangeability with current .mil weapon. With the barrel and magazine kit, I can go to .40 S&W caliber and therefore be compatible with LEO ammo used by most departments here. I also will get a second P320 in .45 ACP because I like the caliber, have reloading dies for it, and have tons of brass to reload for it.

    Lastly, I have the Mossberg 500 in 12 GA since I am left-handed; my sister has the Remington 870 Express Magnum. The difference is in the safety – The Mossberg’s is on the tang and is ambidextrous; the Remington’s is on the trigger guard and is only practical for right-handed persons.

    The above shows why the next article will cover reloading and why I am getting into doing it. I can make match ammo for the pistol and rifle for less than ½ the cost of surplus or commercial ammo, using all-new brass. Closer to 1/3 if I reload the brass.

    Okay, GO!

    Don Carter/11H1P, Professional Beach Bum