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.30-06

After using the rifle to watch the eclipse, I was left with a nagging sense of incompletion: the rifle still didn’t have a sling.  Here I was feeding my family with a garden, building rain barrels, canning vegetables; and yet–my arsenal still required attention.  I mean, how am I going to fend off zombies/raiders post-apocalypse?

And a ridiculous premise necessitates a ridiculous decision.  Therefore I opted for no mere sling, but one with an integrated bandolier!  That’s right–I’ll need to maximize ammo capacity, or everything I’ve learned from video games is wrong.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t much in the way of rifle sling bandolier options, at least not one meant for actual rifle cartridges.  The majority seemed to be catering to 12 gauges, which admittedly does make more sense.  It’s a lot more likely that one would be firing a lot of shotgun rounds rather than .30-06s.  The latter would generally indicate the user was just a really bad hunter.

But perseverance paid off and I found what I was looking for.  A company named “Big Daddy Holsters” (WTF?) manufactured what I needed, and right here in the US…which seems appropriate.  The Remington 700 is about the most American modern rifle there is, and the .30-06 is undisputedly the most American rifle cartridge ever created, so it would seem a bit of an injustice to outfit it with Chinese parts, regardless of anyone’s political stance on outsourced manufacturing.

Fully loaded, it now carries 28 rounds, which is 7 magazine’s worth.  I opted for 150-grain rounds, mostly because that’s what I had on hand, and partly because if I’ll be fending off humans/desiccated animated husks of humans, larger rounds wouldn’t be necessary.

I’m now incrementally more ready for the end of times.

–Simon

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Crunchy on the Outside

Who would have thought that orthopteras were just so darn munchable?  This is one of those experiences I just have to share, so I’ll start with the image.  I saw this during a trip to Jungle Jim’s:

Delicious and nutritious

Are these humanely killed?  Because I want cruelty-free chitin.

Why was the taxonomic name used?  I don’t expect a bag of jerky to be labeled as “bovine snacks” or such.

I hate it when my snackable arthropods have artificial preservatives.  Good on them for that.

I certainly don’t want to add unnecessary saturated fat to my diet.  I’m glad these are cooked healthily.

No MSG!  Excellent.  I don’t want flavor-enhancement to interfere with that natural earthy taste.  I also don’t want to eat a bag of bugs and not be satiated, because then they’d be like chips: you just can’t have one.

I like that logo with the fork being stuck into a bug.  Yum.

There isn’t much mystery in its origins, however: https://www.thailandunique.com/.  Visiting the website, bugs appear to be their specialty.

I wasn’t feeling adventurous.  I bought a can of duck liver instead.

–Simon

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Chocolate Habanero

Back in December when I threw random seeds into peat pots to see what would grow, a pepper plant did especially well.  It was a random choice, of the seed vault.  It was a Chocolate Habanero.  You can see it in my March post.  I had no idea what this pepper was, but my sister assured me that they were good.  And it wasn’t as if I had a lack of space.

The plant grew slowly but steadily, until I re-potted it and set it out on the deck.  Then, a late frost killed the growing bud, and it became bushier.  But despite this, the tenacious plant soon outgrew its pot, got re-potted, then relocated out to a barren patch by the kid’s garden.

Looking a little wilty–I think it needs a re-potting again

Then the plant exploded into bloom.  Currently, I have about 80 peppers drying in the kitchen.  So the question now is: What do I do with these?  A quick search revealed their Scoville rating to be about 350,000–well beyond most practical culinary uses.  So naturally, I experimented.

1 garlic clove, 1 tomato, 3 chocolate habaneros, olive oil, vinegar, and salt…and bam!  I call it “Habanero Death Sauce”.  Straight, it’s almost unbearable.  But mixed in small quantities with other mediums, it adds a nice bite.  I’m not sure what to do with the remaining peppers, though.  I’m thinking ninja powder to escape work meetings.

–Simon

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Pumpkins (Part 2)

The pumpkins have grown, and after much discussion regarding their ripeness, I decided to harvest the first one.

It was partially out of fear that the neighbor’s kids would smash them, and I wanted at least one for carving.

Now my observations about pumpkin-growing:

Pumpkins are incredibly resource-hungry.  They want a lot of light, space, and nutrients.

Carving pumpkins are pretty pointless from a gardening standpoint.  They don’t taste good, and only serve as decorations for a few days.

Regardless, they were fun to grow and I should have more than enough for everyone’s carving needs–provided they escape a more violent and premature fate.  They also survived the vine borer plague, so yay–harvest win.

–Simon

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Red Faction: Armageddon

With the August Xbox Live Gold freebies came Red Faction: Armageddon.  It sounded ominous, and a welcome break from the crap arcade games that keep popping up.  Everyone likes some mindless shooting, after all.  But unfortunately my time with the game was brief, and while I admit that it’s rather unfair to critique a game off of 5 minutes of gameplay, game reviews are useless in general–like any art critique it’s the pretentious rambling of a pseudo-intellectual “expert”.

I knew nothing of the franchise, but surmised that it was part of a series (deduced by the “:”).  Upon loading, I was greeted with the various graphical introductions of developers/publishers–none of which I had encountered before (not a good sign).  I also didn’t know SyFy published games, and in my experience the TV and movie industry doesn’t know a damn thing about making a good video game, nor do they know how to adapt a video game into a TV show/movie.  Also, I hate when people abbreviate “Science Fiction”, and doubly so when they use a “y” instead of an “i”.  This game already had a lot of strikes against it.

Then I was presented a familiar calibration screen: adjust the brightness until some symbol is just barely visible.  Games do this for one reason alone: at some point something scary is going to pop out of the darkness and scare you, but you won’t be scared if you can see it too soon so we want it just barely visible.  There was a time when I dutifully responded to the developer’s wishes.  No more.  I adjusted the brightness until the symbol in question was comfortably visible, and not just barely visible.

[SPOILERS]

The intro cinematic loaded, and through a combination of my ignorance with the franchise and the game’s bad narrative, I surmised that I was on Mars, there were general disagreements between groups of people, and I was part of one of these groups and therefore needed to shoot people in the other group.

This other group had captured the planet’s terraforming equipment, and was using it for some sort of environmental terrorism.  Approaching the target in an ATV, my team was there to shoot these people, I guess.  But my team did little to inspire confidence.  A brief discussion ensued regarding a “Pyrrhic victory” and “throwing a wrench into their plans”, to which someone on the team intelligently questioned what both of those sayings meant, and…what a wrench was.  I guess the passing standards on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test have gotten lowered over time.  We ran out of people of average intelligence and were now throwing mentally challenged soldiers into the fray, or just really uneducated people…just like Vietnam.  Ha!

But it was obvious that this dialog was for humorous intent.  I symbolically humored the developers by uttering a single “Ha!”.  What I presumed was my character (the only one who didn’t sound stupid–because who wants to play an idiot?) professionally answered queries regarding his mechanical aptitude, as it would be needed in fixing the terraformer.

Then a sandstorm enveloped the ATV, and lightening blew the rear hatch off the vehicle–I don’t understand how those physics made any sense–I’m thrown from the vehicle as it met some violent end.  Then the usual fade to black.

I awakened, standing, with some AI giving me instructions.  And thus began a familiar rendition of a popular beginning sequence–integrated controller settings.  To get my bearings, I needed look straight up at the sky.  Challenge accepted.  Then, I had to look at a series of barrels.  Whew.  What better way to test my combat-readiness than to pivot my neck and hips slightly?  Satisfied that I understood basic orientation and locomotion of my own human form, the game then let me actually walk.

Following the one direction I could go, I encountered a crumbling wall.  The AI told me to use my maul and smash it.  That’s right–standard military armament included an assault rifle and a 200 pound hammer, stored up my butt apparently, as it manifested into corporeal existence upon equipping.  Actually I think there was some sort of Star Trek-y matter replicator on my suit that created it.  Maybe it could replicate me a good video game later.

Also, it made me use the D-pad to change weapons.  I couldn’t even cycle them with the Y button, oh no.  This meant that in the heat of combat I would have to reach over with my maneuvering thumb to switch, thus momentarily becoming stationary.  Yes, that choice made sense.

Anyway, I took this giant hammer and smashed the wall.  Huzzah!  I switched back to my rifle, hoping something would appear to shoot, and… the game froze, then crashed to the dashboard.

Thus ended my first and only brief experience with the Red Faction franchise.  I subsequently went outside and picked tomatoes.

–Simon