It was recently brought to my attention that there is a hot new beard trend involving mascara and references to unicorns. In fact, several people let me know whenever there is a “hot new beard trend” because I am the token bearded-American in their lives. These people mean well; they’re universally follicularly challenged (often women) and think that their beardo friends are just Ken dolls waiting to be adorned in whatever is trending on Pinterest today. And they also seem blissfully unaware that these “hot new trends” are mostly just two guys from Portland on Instagram with a shtick that has been escalating since 2014 when they stuck some flowers in their beard on a lark and got positive buzz from it. They dabbled in food stuffs and non-flowering plants, returning to more complicated floral arrangements periodically to hold the interest of their followers. At some point they crossed an unforgivable line into glitter beards. I assume anyone else who tried this on the internet has some kind of mental handicap, intense self-loathing or is very good at photoshopping, because only a masochist would put the herpes of crafting (thanks Dimitri Martin) into their beard. I’m not even sure how you would get rid of glitter in one’s beard that did not involve dying and being reincarnated as not-a-fool. More benignly they did Christmas ornaments for this Christmas.
So remember, kids. Next time you see a clickbaity article talking about a hot new beard grooming trend is sweeping the nation’s men, remember that it’s probably just a few instagram personalities having fun or trolling for clicks and not hot, new, or a trend.
Yeah, click this and you will see an “important topic that producers should not be afraid to report to their veterinarian and to all breed associations.”
There you are, links with even less substance than normal! Enjoy, scorn, revel in or despise – as you want.
Derp, unlike oil, is a resource no country truly lacks. Now I would not dream of going for the crown of the Derpetologist, but I am not above sharing some fine vintage local derp. Now, as in all places, we are spoiled for choice around here, derp wise. But I gave a good long 30 seconds worth of thought about it and decided to go with something representative.
You may not have heard, but Romania had a bit o’ ye olde communism going on a while ago. It may have been in the news over there, not that we got news back then. Anyway the fellar leading us through the multilaterally developed socialist utopia was a quasi-illiterate former cobbler called Nicky Ceausescu. Ol Nick presided over a country where food was a luxury, heating your apartment on a bitterly cold winter day a dream, and leaving the Utopia for the evil western countries a risky endeavor. Because what says Utopia like risking your life trying to get out?
Whenever communism is criticized – and believe you me there is plenty to go around- the death, the torture, the oppression, lack of basic goods and lack of liberty – the great counterargument rears its ugly head. Well, someone will say, at least Ceausescu built something. Apartment buildings and industry!! Apartments in hideous brutalist concrete shells. Tiny, difficult to heat, crowded. Narrow alleys, no parking – the proles didn’t need cars, a capitalist affectation – no parks or green spaces. But build them he did, a great act of urban renewal that lead to entire neighborhoods being flattened after the inhabitants were unceremoniously kicked out of their homes. There might be a mayor or two outside Romania who would give this a try given the chance.
Great Industry was built– randomly, badly placed, horribly inefficient and creating almost nothing of quality. But it was built. And then it rusted. But everyone had a job! Well, yes, people did pretend work for pretend pay. Everyone had a job; food was scarcer, but jobs were to be had by all, for all the good that did.
In Bucharest there is one of the largest buildings in the world. It is officially called Palace of the Parliament now, but most Romanians still call it by the communist moniker of The People’s house, or Casa Poporului in the local language.
Now where the derp got truly amusing was when I heard the argument: without a big government could Romania have built Casa Poporului when it did? The argument was followed, amusingly, by a bit of almost self-awareness. The guy actually told me “I don’t want to hear about the need or efficiency of the building, but the principle stands that you need big government for large project such as that.”
So I ask you, libertarians, without big government could you evict hundreds of families, tear down their homes, and waste a tremendous amount of very scarce resources a poor country could ill afford in order to build a megalomaniac’s wet dream of a pointless slab of concrete full of marble and gilded chandeliers, without bothering to ask questions of its need or efficiency. Well, my humble answer would be no. How the bloody hell is that a bad thing?
Funny enough, as a country gets rich enough, you will have some big pointless stuff being build, by rich people using their own money. But probably not to the scale of the Peoples House and probably not in the stage of development Romania was in.
Also, the Danube to Black Sea canal would definitely not have been built. That is the place where the enemies of the revolution were sent to dig hard soil by using spades and shovels, with evening beatings as the recreation and leisure part of the day, and starvation level diets to avoid obesity and diabetes and such. No one knows how many died at the Canal, and how many lived in fear of being sent to the Canal for no apparent reason. So I ask you this, without Big government, who would send the wreckers to dig the canal, huh? Checkmate, libertarians.
Sorry-ass Houston Rockets. Although I’ve been a Celtics fan since forever, having grown up with no local pro team, I’m trying to develop a rooting interest in the hometown squad and last night certainly didn’t help that cause. Anyway, they got absolutely freight-trained by a depleted Spurs team. And now Popovich, the smug assclown with an incredible basketball knowledge, gets to face off against the Warriors again, where I can only hope he gets publicly humiliated. Either way, the Astros beat the Yankees last night, so something positive happened. You know, since everybody with a heart hates the Yankees.
Other than that, we’re all just waiting on hockey to kick back off again tonight with a matchup tonight between those two hockey-crazy hotbeds of Anaheim and Nashville. That’s right, Canada. That’s how bad our domination of hockey has gotten.
So having rambled on about sports long enough, lets get to…the links!
Want to get to the bottom of the Trump-Putin election interference (which likely doesn’t exist)? This guy has the solution for you! (TW: get a barf bag before reading it. Seriously.)
The hospital in question.
I’ve got a serious question: are there people out there that are naive enough to require this advice? Because its all pretty much common sense (except the forwarding service bit, that’s pretty awesome). Anyway, here’s some news you can possibly use, or at least an opportunity for you to discuss more alternatives for those of you that read the links.
Single Payer in action! But, you know, we’re the uncivilized barbarians that want people to literally die in the streets.
Greetings one and all, and welcome to an unusual installment of Reviews You’ll Never Use. This week, I shall recount to you, my reluctant audience, my adventures, foibles, and heroic deeds during this past weekend’s Texas Frightmare Weekend. This will follow a slightly different format, with all wordy word words up front and then all the photos at the end. I tried sprinkling them throughout but thought it looked too cluttered. Also, some quirk of the site makes it very difficult to line photos up next to each other when captioned, so they’re just all in a vertical line, which also looks weird. Sorry.
My favorite weekend of the year. Now I have to bide my time until October, when shit gets real for me again.
This was TFW’s 12th year, and the convention continues to grow. They’re going to have to change locations again soon, methinks. The Hyatt Regency DFW’s entire bottom floor is a convention center, but on Saturday especially, it’s just wall to wall, to the point it’s barely fun and you can’t move. The logo doesn’t lie, however: this is the southwest’s premier horror convention. People come from all over; in Ted Raimi’s panel, he asked who was from out of state, and fully half the room raised their hands. I spent time standing in various lines with a lovely couple from Montreal, a man who claimed to hail from San Francisco and yet quizzically was not a gayhomofag, and some boisterous fellows from Monterrey, Mexico.
The wife and I always stay at the hotel from Friday through Sunday, as there is simply too much to see and do for a single day, and it’s much more conducive to drunkenness to be able to just go up to our room, rather than get an Uber back and forth to our house, about half an hour away. Friday night we dedicate to signature hunting and finish that task on Sunday because the lines during Saturday are just unbearable. Also, if you’re reading this, Hyatt, your $15 breakfast buffet is barely passable as food, and a lot of places don’t charge for that shit, particularly when it is of such low quality. Literally, the only good thing is that the bacon is made thick and soggy, just the way I like it. I am not a fan of crisp bacon, and if you are, I hate you, because people like you make restaurants think it is not only acceptable, bur desirable, to make crispy bacon. Seriously dude, fuck you.
There are always lots of guests, lots of interesting vendors selling interesting things, lots of costumes, panels, and film screenings. There’s a theme party on Friday night, a VIP party for people who pay more on Saturday, and a free Saturday night option of karaoke. I’ll let you peruse the guest list yourself rather than listing them all here, but this year we had quite a good haul of signatures and bought a few fun items. We attended the Friday night theme party (the theme was an Antarctic research post from The Thing), but Saturday I’m afraid we were simply too drunk to participate in any of the other festivities. The Friday night party was crowded but boring, so we broke open the glowstick necklaces laying about and made an art project on the tablecloth. We really only went because the decor and props were done by our friends at Dark Hour haunted house, and it would have been shitty of us not to show up to support people we hang out with. Seriously, we have season passes to this haunt, and had our 10th wedding anniversary there last month.
Saturday we managed to sit through a midnight screening of Karate Kill, with director Kurando Mitsutake in attendance to field questions afterward. I pointed out to him that the Texas flag was upside down the two times it appeared in his movie, which I’m proud of myself for having caught, it being 2 in the morning and my being drunk. Somebody asked him the budget of the film, and he said he wasn’t supposed to say prior to US distribution, but fuck it, he’d had too much whiskey, and he spilled the beans. Don’t worry, Kurando, I won’t tell. The film was a welcome re-introduction to actress Asami’s titties, which I had seen in previous films. She was in attendance at a TFW a couple of years back, and we got her signature. She was dressed conservatively in traditional Japanese female clothing. I wanted to tell her it was no use since most of us had seen her have fake sex on screen, and seen her boobies, but I suppose it made her feel better. Seriously, check out the movies she’s been in. Read that list and revel in its awesomeness. I have a couple of those movies and may review them in future.
One of the commenters, it may have been Suthen, mentioned The Legend of Boggy Creek once before. Well they had a screening of a 2016 sequel, Boggy Creek Monster, but unfortunately it had an early (8 pm) start time, and I was still getting blasted at the bar. But just know that it’s out there, waiting for you to see it : )
I only caught three panels this year: first was The Thing, which featured Keith David, Wilford Brimley, the guy who played Windows, and the cinematographer. Turns out Brimley is a hilarious dirty old codger with a lot of crusty old man stories, which is awesome. I also got his signature this year, and you’ll never guess the photo. The dude actually had an 8×10 of an old Quaker Oates advert featuring him. I couldn’t believe he’d be that cool. So of course that’s the one I got signed.
The second panel was Suspiria. This was the big one. Dario Argento doesn’t make it to stateside cons very often, and often cancels appearances. We had him, Stefania Casini, Udo Kier, Barbara Magnolfi, and, one of the founding members of Goblin, Claudio Simonetti. Dario’s limited English made it difficult for him to articulate complex thoughts, and Barbara and Claudio had to step in to translate for him increasingly as the panel wore on. The most interesting audience question, to me, was a person who asked the great director what he thought of the current generation of Italian horror directors. Argento responded that there was no current generation; just a bunch of retards mindlessly mimicking the giallo masters (specifically himself, Bava, and Fulci). Claudio chimed in his agreement with that assessment. They all thought Italian cinema had one glorious moment in the sun, and then decided it would retire as champion and never do anything innovative ever again.
Also, it turns out that while my full name is a common enough one to Italians, my nickname is a purely English diminutive. The first two Eye-ties I had sign things stumbled over it, and they spelled it out in block lettering, before adding my wife’s name in more natural-looking handwriting. It looks like we just crudely added my name onto all the photos after the fact. So for the last two pasta-eaters, I just gave them the Italian version of my name.
They were all hilariously stereotypically Italian. Overly expressive, waving their arms about as their spoke, everything was Brava! this, and Grazie! that, with several of them telling us in the audience that they loved us and each other a thousand times over the course of the panel, and while speaking with them while getting autographs. I did get the guy from Goblin to sign one of their LPs, which is better than a photo I think.
The last panel I went to was Ted Raimi’s. He didn’t have a moderator for some reason, so spent the whole time engaging the audience, running about, and is one of those guys who is always, “on.” When I asked my question, he asked me what was on my shirt. Of course, it was a Warhammer reference, so I had to explain to him in one sentence about the Skaven. I had two other people in the audience whoop in support of the Great Horned Rat. The audience respectfully (mostly) stuck to questions about him and his career, rather than only asking about Bruce Campbell and Ted’s famous brother.
We also secured Keith David’s signature, Amanda Bearse (she was there for the Fright Night panel), Ric Flair (why was here there? Who knows. But he did write, “Woooo!” under his name when he signed the photo, so I’m happy), and Michael Berryman. Mr. Berryman, as you may not know, has had to overcome tremendous physical obstacles in his life to become a successful actor, and he gathered all of us in line around his table to tell us stories of perseverance and positivity. He invited anyone who has a positive image, video, or story to post it on his Facebook page, so I’m relaying the good word to all of you.
We also got Chris Sarandon this year, of course as Prince Humperdink. He’s a humble guy if you talk to him. Or at least he says humble things. He claimed to not know whether any of his characters will stand the test of time. I think Humperdink is already pretty well there. He’s also much smaller in person than you’d think from seeing him in Princess Bride or Fright Night.
We also picked up Dee Wallace, who has been in so many classic films (E.T., The Howling, Critters, Cujo, et al) that she was kind enough to have a photo montage of them all, to keep me from having to chose. Rounding out the list was Ken Page, voice of Oogie Boogie in Nightmare Before Christmas.
There were a few others that are repeat guests, so we had snagged their signatures in previous years. Udo Kier, Meg Foster, Malcolm McDowell, and Tom Savini all fell into that bucket.
A lot of the cast from Bates Motel was there and had huge lines, but I don’t watch that show so who gives a shit.
Oh and last but not least, Misfits guitarist Doyle was there, looking menacing and still with a great devillock. Except he probably wouldn’t want me to associate him with the Misfits, because I heard from several others that I spoke to while waiting in different lines that he just talked trash about the band, about how it was entirely his talent that drove them, Danzig is lucky that Doyle made his career, etc. Seemed kind of bitter. Oh well. Looks like the kind of guy Warty would like.
Ultimately it was a sad drive back to the casa on Sunday, as this, our big weekend of the year had come and gone. I love the experience, and my wife gamely tags along. There’s a wonderful buzz in the air, and you’re surrounded by people who dress like you, think like you, act like you, who understand every one of your obscure references, and who are just as passionate about the Dark as you are. The whole thing is a shrine dedicated to group worship of Death, in His manifestation on film. I get to spend a whole three days walking around with people who have fake intestines spilling out, fake eyes hanging by plastic nerves, t-shirts with catchy pictures and slogans, neon hair styled every which way, tattoos like you wouldn’t believe. Not to mention the occasional sluttily dressed hot chick, to compete with the fatties that seem to make up half of the female contingent of horror fandom. This is our fourth year, and we’re already looking forward to the next go-round.
Alright, some words about the photos. A lot of the guests charge extra for a photo op with the signature. I don’t care about any of you that much, so sadly many of the people I got to meet, I don’t have photos of. At first, I tried creep-shotting them, but my complete lack of skill with phone cameras, combined with the crowds, soon showed me the folly of this approach. So there aren’t as many pics of celebrities (or in some cases, “celebrities”), as I would have liked. This leads me to my next point: most of the photos are of very poor quality. What you see below probably doubles the number of photos I’ve ever taken in my life. I have never had any desire to visually document anything for any reason except insurance purposes, and so never take pictures, and have no facility with this. I don’t even have a picture of my wife. Why would I? I know what she looks like, and it’s not anybody else’s goddamn business. Nothing grinds my gears more than people who have photos of their own family. It tells me that either, 1) you frequently forget what they look like, or worse 2) you think I give a damn what they look like. Protip: I don’t. Anyway, I’ve never taken pictures at any previous TFW, and only did this year to have content for the site, so they’re terrible. The only time that sucked is when William Sadler looked genuinely deflated that we didn’t want a photo with him after getting his signature a few years back. If I mentioned meeting a guest up above, but don’t have a photo of them below, it’s because they upcharged for it. The only creep shot I kept was of Argento since I promised that one. You can see from how bad it is why I deleted the other attempts. Most all of these were taken late Friday night or Sunday afternoon. I had a lot more from Saturday, but the crowds were just too thick and the pics were all even worse than the ones you see below. You’ll also notice I stand somewhat awkwardly – I have some chronic lower back pain from a pretty bad motorcycle accident a few years back, so I have to stand pretty ram-rod straight if I’m going to be on my feet all day to mitigate it. Just thought I’d address it before somebody else brings it up because I agree, it looks weird. Anyway, you have been warned.
Our art project at the Friday night party. Several of our friends noticed this and stopped by our table to take part. The staff kept giving us the stink-eye, but hey, you work in the service industry, so fuck you.
Some kind of Alien Freddy family, who the fuck knows.
One of the many fantastic shirts available for sale. I thought about buying this and having Brimley sign it, but couldn’t resist the Quaker Oats poster instead.
People dressed like the ice necromancers from Game of Thrones. Actually I think the littler one is one of those green people who grew the tree up Max von Sydow’s ass.
This is my good friend’s daughter, who also works at Dark Hour haunted house. The character is from something called Five Nights at Freddy’s, which is bizarrely *not* a Nightmare on Elm Street property. The robot hand is actually battery powered and articulates. This was on Saturday, but thankfully since I was assisting I was able to get the shot before general admission opened, after which she was swarmed the rest of the day.
One of the set pieces created by Dark Hour haunted house for The Thing theme party on Friday night. You can’t tell in this shot, but it glows from within and pulsates. It’s the kennel dog-monster thing. They also had the head spider thing, of course, but I wasn’t able to get a good shot of it.
Yes, they set up a tattoo area, so you can immortalize your weekend with a flash tattoo. The dude is from LA, which he advertises prominently on his banner. I guess that makes it trendier somehow. Fuck people who live in SoCal.
The Suspiria panel. From left to right: douchebag moderator; Barbara Magnolfi, Stefania Casini; Udo Kier, Dario Argento, and Claudio Simonetti.
Great t-shirt. If you don’t know what A Serbian Film is, kiss your wife and children while you still have your innocence and watch it. Or just read the summary and see why it’s awesome to have a shirt that says this.
My buddy Alex belting out Country Roads on the accordion wearing his normal flayed human face mask and utilikilt. He is the owner/operator of Reindeer Manor haunted house, which is quite good. His lovely wife is also possibly the best dessert baker I’ve ever met.
My wife really wanted the crocheted nosferatu because it’s unique. I thought he looked lonely, so bought him a plush Godzilla to play with. The day we got home our fucking mastiff chewed up the vampire’s head. He is currently out with some old woman for repairs.
Great Americana melting pot moment. You can’t see the mom as she’s off-camera to the right, but she was in full Muslim woman-be-gone hidey dress, but with a grin plastered on her face as her kids took pictures with all the various monsters and seemed to be having a great time. Good feelz all around. Welcome to the States, young horror fans.
MacReady and dog-monster wife at The Thing theme party on Friday night.
This guy makes weird shit out of bones. This is a Little Shop of Horrors homage that cost like $1,100. The mouth is a big turtle shell.
Great horror themed kids shirts for sale. Spawn of the Dead, I Don’t OBEY My Parents, Escape from School, and The Monster Squad Founding Member. We bought a few for the nephews.
Myself and mystery woman with Stefania Casini.
Myself and that damned mystery woman who kept following me around with Barbara Magnolfi.
Myself and mystery woman with Keith David. She’s wearing a t-shirt that’s a reference from Monster Squad, I’m wearing probably my favorite shirt: Skeletor trying to drink wine from the bottle but it’s just pouring through his bottom jaw and running down his chest. I think this may be the only other shot here from Saturday.
Myself and mystery woman with Claudio Simonetti. We got him to sign a limited numbered Goblin LP, which now I have to buy a record frame for.
Myself and mystery woman with Dee Wallace. She was a real sweetheart; besides Meg Foster, probably the single nicest lady I’ve met at this con. Look at her IMDB link up above, she’s been in a lot of great horror films, and I was excited to get to meet her.
It’s hard to tell in this shot, but this guy dressed like Groot has an axe in his back for some reason. He did awesomely only speak through a voice box built into the helmet that just said, “I am Groot”. Kids loved it.
Another great t-shirt for sale that I bought for my buddy who couldn’t make it this year.
If this is the cover to your movie, if this is the box art and that is the name of your films, I will buy them, no questions asked. It’s like heaven for a person like me; there are tables and tables covered in this kind of shit.
I doubt the efficacy of these gas masks.
Dude and chick dressed like at the beginning of the film Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
This was just laying on a table as a centerpiece in the middle of one of the rooms, as decoration. Because this is the kind of thing that counts as decoration at Texas Frightmare Weekend, which is why I love it so.
Creep-shot of Dario Argento. He’s signing an endless array of rare large posters brought by the people directly in front of me in line, a nice couple from Montreal. The dude put me to *shame* in obscure low-budget horror knowledge, and that ain’t easy to do.
Cinco de Skeletor. Plus it was a black dude, which is super weird, because 1) there’s like a dozen black dudes at this convention, total, and 2) they sure as fuck don’t dress up.
Chick dressed as Chucky. Child’s Play and Fright Night director Tom Holland was in attendance, but unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to meet him/get signature.
Part of what I love about conventions. You find the weirdest shit. This one guy had a whole series of little painted Chinese porcelain figurines, that just came in orange boxes that said “Myths and Legends Series” and labeled, “God of Luck”, or “God of Prosperity”, etc. No other info. He said a customer traded them to him at his physical shop, which he accepted because he thought to sell them at DragonCon, but no such luck. So we picked up the God of Luck and put him on our shrine to Guan Di once we got back to the house. Just a nutty little piece of the universe.
Prom Night Carrie.
Beetlejuice when he has the spikes sticking out of him. I’d hate to try and navigate a crowded con with… protrusions like that.
*1950’s PSA announcer voice* Are you worried about the threat of violence due to local or global sociopolitical destabilization caused by natural or man-made catastrophic events? Do you feel your current daily equipment loadout or everyday carry would be insufficient when responding to a large, agitated populace or large scale terrorist attack? Are you simply bored and have too much money and need an excuse to purchase more guns? Sounds like you need a Get-Home-Bag!™ In this installment, NRA certified* tier mall ninja Vhyrus will show you how to make your GHB (or ‘force multiplier package’ for all you operators out there) using affordable, off the shelf items available to most of us courtesy of free market capitalism.
For the well-equipped gentleman
Now, before I begin, I want to start out with a few assumptions that I have made in composing this article. First, I assume you live in an area where you can legally purchase long arms and store them in some manner in your vehicle at all times. So, this article is basically void outside of North America (and CA, NY, and the rest of the slave states). Second, I assume you are able bodied enough to carry about 40 pounds of equipment and function while doing so. If that is not the case you may need to scale back your gear according to your ability.
If you are new to guns or not much of a gun person, this article is definitely made for you. I tried to explain the more esoteric points as clearly as possible. Those of you into guns may find this article a bit oversimplified, and for that I apologize. I also want to add that much of this is based on my opinion. Well researched opinion, mind you, but opinion nonetheless. This kit as I describe it certainly will get the job done, but certain specific details may be up for debate among some of the more ballistically inclined among you. Feel free to tell me how stupid I am in the comments.
So, what is a get home bag? Put simply, it is an emergency battle kit that will allow you to defend yourself if a serious SHTF situation were to occur while you were not home. This kit is not designed to protect or defend against normal criminal activity, such as a carjacker or mugger. That is what your pistol is for. I mean, you DO carry a pistol, don’t you? This is more designed along the lines of a major violent riot, large scale natural disaster, zombie apocalypse, etc. It is designed to be a self contained unit that you can grab from your vehicle in case you need to bail out and hoof it due to impassable roads or other quickly developing events. A GHB is not a bug out bag per se, although it could be part of a bug out bag if designed properly. I am going to go over the simplest form of the GHB, which is a rifle or shotgun, ammo, and body armor. Also, many of the items I will describe in this kit are not one size fits all. Depending on your local environment and laws, your bag may be very different from the one I show in this article. For example, if you live in a high population urban area, you will be more interested in a gun that can shoot quickly and accurately and hold a lot of ammo, whereas if you live out in bumfuck Iowa, you may want to ditch the body armor entirely for food and water, and carry a gun that holds fewer rounds but allows for longer range shots and more power. In part 2 of this series (yes, there is a part 2. Strap in fuckers, we’re just getting started) I will go into more detail on different guns for different situations and what works best for your area. This article is going to focus on a budget minded approach, so I am going to illustrate the cheapest way to implement a GHB. If you have a lot of disposable income and want to go crazy, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with buying a 2000 dollar trunk gun and a grand worth of ultra lightweight body armor. The kit I have put together is what I would consider to be the minimum necessary for a decent kit.
The first and most important part of your get home bag is a gun. Depending on your budget and situation, this may be the only part of your GHB, in which case it simply becomes a get home gun. Slap some ammo in it, throw it behind your seat, and you’re good to go. I recommend more than that in most cases, but at least it’s a good start. There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of viable guns you could use for a trunk gun, and as I mentioned I intend to go into more detail in a separate article. If you’re pressed for time and want a TL;DR version, then the short answer is to buy an AR-15, which is what I ended up using for my kit. My initial idea was to purchase what I consider to be (at least in theory) the best get home gun currently on the market, the Kel-Tec SU-16CA. The SU-16 is essentially what you would get if you forced an AK to dress up like an AR. It is a piston driven, side charging rifle that takes AR15 magazines. It is lightweight, simple to operate, inexpensive, and has a few little features that make it unique amongst it’s peers. There are many different models, but the one we will focus on is the CA model. The CA model has 2 features in particular that are extremely useful for our purposes: It can fold in half for compact storage, and it can hold a 30 round magazine in the stock. This makes it the perfect grab and go rifle. The other great thing about this rifle is that it lacks features that would cause it to be classified as an assault rifle in the less free states, which should make it easier to acquire and carry in those second amendment challenged locations.
So, with my ideal rifle picked out, I set out to purchase one. The problem is, I can’t fucking find one! Right now it appears that the only model commonly available is the C model, which has an AK like underfolding stock. While handy and compact, it also gets rid of the magazine storage, which is kind of the whole point of the damn gun. The A and B models are also available, but the A has an 18 inch barrel which makes it harder to store and carry, and the B model has a pencil barrel, which makes it slightly lighter but also makes it much less capable of prolonged firing. Then there is the price. Right now these guns are running about $500-$600 new. While not expensive, currently you can get a brand name base model AR15 for as low as $400 and change, and the AR is a much better platform overall compared to anything kel-tec makes. The other nice thing about an AR is that they can be separated into two halves which allows very compact storage, even more compact than a folded SU-16. The only issue is that an AR does not have magazine storage in the buttstock. Fortunately, someone else took care of that since there are several options currently available that allow you to keep a magazine on the stock of the gun ready to go. The one I purchased is made by Blackhawk, but I actually recommend the Condorversion. The straps on the Blackhawk one that I purchased are only designed for use with a GI type collapsible stock, so if you have a magpul one you will have to buy different straps like I did. The condor one comes with longer straps that will better fit different stocks, and it is cheaper.
In the end, I used a gun I already owned rather than buying a new gun, which obviously saves a ton of money. If you have a gun that could fit the role of a trunk or get home gun and you’d rather not buy another one then perhaps your existing gun could simply be modified to suit your needs. The gun I have is a side charging AR which uses a Bear Creek Arsenal side charging upper. Currently these are a ridiculously low price, and if you are at all interested in making a side charging AR, I highly recommend getting one. If there is an interest from the commentariat, I can also write up a short piece on assembling your own AR. Getting back to the topic at hand, I picked a side charging AR for several reasons. First, a side charging AR is simpler than a standard AR, as the charging handle pulls triple duty as a forward assist and a shell deflector. It also gets rid of the god awful charging handle on a mil spec AR. The barrel is a mid length 1:7 twist, although if I could do it again I would make it a 1:8 twist. I will go into barrel twist in the rifle article, but if buying an AR try to get a 1:8 twist barrel. Failing that, the 1:7 twist is best for all around defensive use.
Black rifles matter
The two accessories I highly recommending adding to any fighting rifle are a sling and an optic. For slings, 2 point slings are better for moving, but 1 point slings are better for fighting. Magpul makes a convertible unit called the MS3 sling that I like very much, or you could make your own like mine but it will probably be better just to buy one pre-made. If you want to stay cheap and simple just go with a 2 point sling. For optics, this largely depends on your local environment, but it is hard to go wrong with simple red dot. For a good cheap red dot look no farther than the Bushnell TRS-25. I have 2 of these and they have never let me down. They can put up with the recoil of my VEPR 12 which had broken the other 2 red dots I tried on it within minutes, so you can be sure they will work. I wouldn’t go scuba diving with it or run it over with a train, but for normal use it should hold. I would also recommend iron sights as a backup. This may sound redundant but a lot of less expensive ARs do not come with any sights at all so you have to buy them. Remember, you want to keep this setup inexpensive in case it gets stolen from your car or wrecked in a crash, or you have to throw it in a lake for some reason. Now all you need are magazines and ammo. For my GHB, I used Magpul Pmags. The gen 3 pmags come with snap on dust covers that take the pressure off the feed lips, so you can load them up, snap on the covers, and store them worry free for years. Note that gen 3 pmags don’t fit in the stock mag pouch mentioned earlier, so you’ll need to buy 1 or 2 gen 2 or GI steel mags to fit in the pouch. Finally, ammo. To keep it simple and cheap you’ll want to go down to Walmart or your local gun shop and pick up some m193made by federal. This is the same stuff the military uses, so it’s nice and strong. It’s also very affordable. How many magazines you carry is up to you. I have 5 30 round mags ready to go in my kit.
The second major part of the bag is the body armor. I may also write a short article about body armor if people are interested, but the general idea is that there are levels of body armor from 2a to 4. The higher the level the more calibers the armor will stop. Everything below level 3 is only rated for handguns, not rifles. The advantage of lower level armor is that it is cheaper and lighter, but soft armor will not only not stop rifles; if you do get hit with a handgun, even if it doesn’t penetrate, it is going to ring your bell something awful. There’s no point stopping a handgun round if it knocks the wind out of you so badly that the bad guy can just walk up and pop you in the head while you’re rolling around on the ground. Level 3 and 4 armor plates are solid plates, either ceramic or steel. They are much heavier, but they can take multiple rifle hits without failing. Not only that, but because they don’t deform when hit, they won’t transfer the energy of the round into you like a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick, which means you will actually be able to react and either fight back or find cover. The minimum I recommend are level 3 plates. The ones in my kit are level 3+, which is not an industry standard but came up because certain commercially available rifle rounds (hint: I mentioned them back in the last paragraph) can actually penetrate level 3 armor at closer ranges. 3+ are slightly beefier but they can protect against everything not explicitly armor piercing. The company I recommend is AR500 armor. You can get a set of 3+ plates and a carrier for around $300 from them, which is a very reasonable price. Body armor prices have come down drastically in the last 10 years or so to the point that they are truly affordable, so there is no reason not to have a set. For guys, you want a rounded front plate, girls should have a flat front plate. Rear plate can be flat to save money.
Last, but not least, you need a bag to keep everything in. This part is trickier than it sounds. The most important thing is you want a bag that does NOT look like a gun bag. You do not want anyone to think there is anything valuable in the bag. It also should be something that you can transport easily, which means it should have a shoulder strap and/or backpack straps. If you plan on using an AR broken down you will need a minimum of 25 inches in the bag for the upper. If you get something like an AK with a folding stock, you will need about 28 inches, and if you plan on keeping the AR together, you’ll need about 33 inches. At first I bought a bag online with the intention of keeping the AR broken down into two halves and putting it together when needed. The bag I bought turned out to be too small. I was able to fit everything, but it was an extremely tight fit and it wouldn’t zip up completely. Frustrated, I decided to solve the problem the way I normally do: Drive to Wal-Mart and walk around the aisles until I find something that works. And find something I definitely did. I ended up with a 32 inch duffel bag. It’s larger than I originally planned, but it allows me to keep the AR as a whole unit ready to go and it has plenty of room for other things even after I put the gun and plate carrier in the bag. It also has a shoulder strap and backpack straps that tuck into a little pouch when not in use. It kind of looks like a large gym bag or maybe a bag full of laundry, which is exactly what I want people who see it to think. It was also less than 30 bucks. I don’t expect it to be super durable but it should hold up for it’s intended purposes. Remember most of this stuff is only designed to work for a few hours or days tops. None of this is intended to be a long term solution (except maybe the gun itself).
There is one last thing I added to my bag: a cable lock. The purpose of this is twofold. First is to discourage theft in case my car is broken into. I basically lock the gun to the car and thread the cable through the plate carrier. If they tried hard they could get the plates, but the gun isn’t going anywhere without a set of bolt cutters. This is not just for regular smash and grab, though. Depending on how far away from your car you are when something happens, you may not be the first person to get to your bag. The last thing you want is your own gun used against you. If you live in a rural area you can probably skip this, but it does make it a little less likely to be stolen.
Now that we have our kit laid out, let’s do a quick cost estimate so far:
Rifle: $500
Body Armor: $300
Bag: $30
Magazines: $50
Optic, ammo, accessories: $120
Grand Total: $1000
So there you go, one basic GHB for a grand. Not a bad deal if you ask me. Remember that this is a minimum budget based on my specific needs. If you need a 2 person kit or you have some of the items already purchased, this is going to change the amount you need to spend.
Once you start assembling your kit, you can’t just throw everything in your trunk and forget about it. Test your gun with the magazines you plan on using and the ammo you plan on carrying. Make sure the gun is 100% reliable. Sight in the optic, adjust the sling to your desired length. Wear the plate carrier with the plates in, and make sure it is adjusted and fits well. Clean the gun before you put the kit away, and make sure you take it out every 6 to 12 months and make sure everything is still working. Inspect the gun, mags, ammo, etc. That’s it! You’re now ready to fight the fascist capitalist pigs! I mean smash the patriarchy! Wait, which site am I on again? Oh fuck! Uh, I mean *reads notes* protect yourself from violent antifa mobs and other catastrophic events. There we go. Hopefully you learned something from this article…. aside from the fact that I have crippling paranoia, that is! *Laughter, studio applause, end credits*
“COMEY!” the hat screamed, “YOU MOTHERFUCKER!” His deranged laughter pealed through the staff party like a church bell. The quadcopter he was riding darted toward party-goers at eye level and his bill stiffened whenever someone flinched.
“Fired! Fired! Fired! Fired!,” the hair chanted, hanging from the exposed breast of an intern. She was high on cheap beer and GHB and gently pissed herself every time she laughed.
“Did you see, did you see where if was on the news behind Comey before he’d even found out?” that hat asked no one in particular for the sixth or seventh time.
“Where’s Donald?” the hair screamed over the pounding music.
“How should I fucking know?” the hat replied.
A roar went up when Kellyanne climbed onto a desk and began to gyrate.
“She’s going to break a fucking hip,” the hair said. He squeezed the boob he was riding until the intern screamed and brushed him off. He was scooped up from the floor and passed around.
“Dude!” he yelled to the hat.
“Just go with it, man,” the hat yelled, hovering near the staffer who was DJing with his iPhone. The hat screamed “‘Free Bird!’” at the confused young man.
A woman screamed when she realized she had been passed the hair and tossed it to Sean. Sean placed it over his own hair and threw his empty tequila bottle at a wall.
“Yeaaaaaah! You’re fired! You’re fired!” Sean screamed, pointing at random people. He tried to light a cigarette while he was still screaming and burned himself with the lighter instead.
“Do not set me on fire, you goat-fucking anal polyp!” the hair screamed.
The quadcopter slammed in Kellyanne and she screamed, a banshee wail that everyone could feel behind their eyes. The hat righted the copter and veered away. Kellyanne wooed at top volume and tore off her blouse.
“Ah, fuck, my eyes!” the hat yelled, “I mean, you know, if I had eyes!”
“They look like crushed juice boxes!” the hair exclaimed.
“I really always fucking liked you, man,” Sean said, ruffling the hair on his hair.
“That’s great, Sean.”
“No, I mean it, I really always did. Like from the first time I saw you.”
Sean lurched from side to side, struggling with his belt.
“No, Sean. No. Bad Sean. Bad!” the hair said.
The hat swooped in and turned on the quadcopter’s camera as Sean squatted and starting shitting in an office trashcan.
I had such a peaceful drive through the pastoral settings of central Texas yesterday to get my daughter. Listened to a few butthurt Dems lament the firing of the guy they demanded be fired a few weeks ago. Listened to the hype surrounding the deciding Game 7 between the Capitals and the Penguins. Heard surprisingly little about the Celtics vs Bullets (sorry “Wizards” but you’re always the Bullets in my book) and managed to conduct a little business. Then I reached my destination and got to experience the joys of unloading a dorm room on the fourth floor in a building where the elevator wasn’t working. Bastards. Followed with a nice five hour return trip and a wonderful discussion with my daughter about how so many of her friends had transformed through the school year into shrieking aspies who were dead certain (from their 19 years of life experience) that Trump was destroying the country and the world. Thank God she was as amused in describing the performance art as I was in hearing the description.
Pretty much sums it up.
Anyway, only one of those things matters now. So go ahead and vent Capitals fans. Vent that your team laid a giant egg last night and played scared. Vent that your captain is a shrinking violet in pressure games. Vent that its 19 years now since they got to the finals (a series in which I got to go see the Red Wings beat them in Game 4 and skate around with the Stanley Cup and bring Vladdy onto the ice, which caused me to cry). This links is for your tears. So here we go.
Shit gets worse and worse in Venezuela. If only those wreckers and capitalist instigators would have embraced the Chavistas none of this would have happened, eh comrades?
The 18-year old young man can also rotate his hands and legs at 360 degrees, but he can only rotate his fingers and neck at 180 degrees. Slacker.
If that wasn’t enough, he can dislocate his hands and legs, y’know, just for funsies. What, that’s not your idea of a good time?
“I’m in a glass case of emotion!”
His mom considers it (obviously) a gift from God, which, hey, maybe it is. Who knows? With great power, comes great responsibility, Yash Shah. I’m sure he will use his powers only for good–or for squeezing into tennis rackets, which is neither here nor there on the morality scale.
Alright. If you really refuse to click the link, here’s an actual picture of Yash.
And a little bonus, off-topic weirdness: click here to see if the Rick-mobile will be in your area in the not-too-distant future. 3,000 flurbos to anyone who takes a picture of it in their locality. I must live vicariously through you since they’re eschewing basically every northern-border state but a handful.
So, with my ideal rifle picked out, I set out to purchase one. The problem is, I can’t fucking find one! Right now it appears that the only model commonly available is the C model, which has an AK like underfolding stock. While handy and compact, it also gets rid of the magazine storage, which is kind of the whole point of the damn gun. The A and B models are also available, but the A has an 18 inch barrel which makes it harder to store and carry, and the B model has a pencil barrel, which makes it slightly lighter but also makes it much less capable of prolonged firing. Then there is the price. Right now these guns are running about $500-$600 new. While not expensive, currently you can get a brand name base model AR15 for as low as $400 and change, and the AR is a much better platform overall compared to anything kel-tec makes. The other nice thing about an AR is that they can be separated into two halves which allows very compact storage, even more compact than a folded SU-16. The only issue is that an AR does not have magazine storage in the buttstock. Fortunately, someone else took care of that since there are several options currently available that allow you to keep a magazine on the stock of the gun ready to go. The one I purchased is made by 
