Short and quick: Mike Ditka. NFL.com. ESPN. Chicago Tribune (archived). Chicago Sun Times. NYT (share link, may require).
Noted:
Obit watch: October 10, 2026.
October 10th, 2026Time enough at last!
October 10th, 2026
I have finally crossed enough off of my to-do list, and also resolved some things that other people wanted me to do, so I feel comfortable doing some gun book blogging.
I’m going to start out easy. Two duplicates of books I’ve already blogged (from the Springfield purchase) and two books that I didn’t previously have, but I’ve written about the authors previously.
After the jump…
Obit watch: October 9, 2026.
October 9th, 2026I know about Mike Ditka, but in keeping with this blog’s policy, I want to wait until tomorrow to do a round-up.
In the meantime:
Margaret Hamilton. No, not that one (though I did say to my mother when she asked me if I’d heard of her, “Wasn’t she the Wicked Witch of the West?”). This one led the team that developed the software for Apollo.
…
Cecily Gemmell. You’ve never heard of her, but she was the last tie to a particular era of history.
She was Winston Churchill’s last surviving personal secretary.
Ms. Gemmell, known as Chips, first entered Churchill’s orbit in the summer of 1947 at the age of 18, arriving in the still-stunned aftermath of his 1945 general election defeat as Britain’s wartime prime minister. His reputation as the man who had saved the world from Hitler’s tyranny was titanic, but his electoral ejection from No. 10 Downing Street before final victory — Germany had surrendered, Japan had not — remained humbling.
Youth was a requirement for a Churchill stenotyping secretary. “The Old Man,” as he was known, dictated so long and so late into the night, as a rule, that stamina was essential. Ms. Gemmell joined a team of extraordinarily bright and capable, if often exhausted, young women, and a proud line of exceptional Churchill personal secretaries (all but one of them female) that extended back through both world wars to 1902. At her death, Ms. Gemmell was the last.
…
Ms. Gemmell was initially assigned to Churchill’s literary assistant, Denis Kelly, cataloging the prime minister’s World War II papers in anticipation of Churchill writing his war memoirs. The cache was housed at Chartwell, Churchill’s country home in the county of Kent, and so a place was found for Ms. Gemmell to live in the nearby village of Westerham. She bicycled back and forth to Chartwell, pushing the bike up “an incredibly steep hill” that, at least, “was a cinch coming back down.”
She worked in what she described as the semi-basement of the Muniment Room at Chartwell — “completely untrained,” but tasked with organizing the monumental paper trail of Churchill’s wartime existence. She saw virtually no one other than Mr. Kelly, along with “everybody’s socks — the socks of the famous,” from her obscured vantage. She would “look up and see Anthony Eden’s pink socks leaving the room,” she recalled, referring to the foreign secretary who would later briefly become prime minister. “All I saw of the famous were their socks.”
…
Your Friday loser update.
October 9th, 2026NHL teams that still have a chance of going 0-84:
Philadelphia
Los Angeles Kings
Calgary
Still early, but I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re going to have at least one horrible team this year. And I don’t think it will be one of the Florida teams, which I hope will make McThag happy.
Firings watch.
October 8th, 2026I can’t find it now, but I recall the Titans wearing Oilers throwback uniforms during a fairly recent game. I also recall advocating for the public flogging of everyone involved in this decision.
Seven months later, the executives who oversaw the uniform and logo switch have been fired.
According to a statement to the Nashville Tennessean, the Titans have decided to move on from three vice presidents who oversaw marketing, creative and revenue.
“As the Titans prepare for the opening of our new stadium and the future of Titans football, we are making changes to how we lead the business side of the organization,” the Titans said in a statement to the Nashville Tennessean. “We will hire an Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer to lead our revenue, marketing, and communications teams. As part of these changes, Adam Nuse, Erin Swartz, and Charles Jensen are leaving the organization. We are grateful for everything they have contributed to the Titans and wish them the best in future endeavors.”
I know, it is rooting for laundry, and more so than usual. But the Titans annoy me, and this is one of the reasons.
Obit watch: October 7, 2026.
October 7th, 2026Eva Marie Saint. NYT (share link, may require).
Other credits include “Grand Prix”, “The Last Days of Patton”, “When Hell Was in Session”, and “The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming”.
Burning in Hell watch: Bill Harris. You may remember him from hits like the Symbionese Liberation Army, the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, and the murder of Myrna Opsahl.
Nice use of the passive voice there, NYPost. “…shotgun went off”.
NYT (share link, may require).
“What Was the Symbionese Liberation Army?” (NYT share link, may require).
Obit watch: October 6, 2026.
October 6th, 2026Jim Bakker. NYT (share link, may require).
No offense intended, but I honestly thought he had died several years ago.
Jeffrey Archer, writer and convicted perjurer.
Sometimes, it seems like the judges in sketches on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” are uncomfortably close to reality. “Fragrance”?
…another newspaper, The News of the World, reported allegations that Mr. Archer had committed perjury at the original libel trial in 1987, forcing him to withdraw from the mayoral race.
Those charges came to trial in September 2000, and in July 2001, he was given a four-year jail term for perjury and perverting the course of justice. After two years in a variety of correctional institutions, he was released, resuming his career as a prolific writer. He kept his title and retired from the House of Lords in 2024.
Obit watch: October 5, 2026.
October 5th, 2026Marjoe Gortner, who had one of the oddest career arcs in entertainment history.
He spoke eloquently as a child, so his parents, Vernon, a Christian evangelical minister, and mother, Marge, had him ordained as a preacher at age 4, when he performed a marriage ceremony for a Paramount newsreel.
Now a celebrity, the long-haired Gortner delivered gyrating, dramatic sermons at revival meetings across the U.S. as his family amassed a fortune estimated to be worth $3 million, but he said his father took off with the money shortly before Gortner turned 16.
He rejoined the ministry as a way to earn a living and in 1971 granted a film crew access to him during his final revival tour. The resulting 1972 documentary, Marjoe, produced and directed by Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan, debuted at Cannes and won the Oscar for best feature documentary. (The poster called it “a real story millions of people refuse to believe.”)
He went on to become an actor. Other credits include “Starcrash”, “Acapulco Gold“, and “American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt”.
Burning in Hell watch: Dennis Hastert (R-pedo).
Your NFL loser update: week 4, 2026.
October 4th, 2026I think maybe panic is worth considering now.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Miami
Houston
Tennessee
Chargers
Tampa Bay
Houston is 0-4, which surprises me. But…is there a chance, maybe a slim one, but a chance, that the worthless Chargers could go 0-17 this year?
A man can hope, can’t he? Isn’t hope what defines humanity?
NHL teams that still have a chance of going 0-84:
Detroit
Philadelphia
Dallas
Chicago
Los Angeles Kings
Calgary
Drink!
October 2nd, 2026Shot:
Chaser:
(I would really like to know what that gun is. It looks like a small 1911-style .380, like maybe a Colt Mustang or one of those SIG Sauer .380s?)
Obit watch: October 2, 2026.
October 2nd, 2026Playing catch-up:
Gordon Johncock, noted racing driver. He won the Indianapolis 500 twice. His first win was the notoriously bloody 1973 race. His second win was in 1982.
That race featured a spectacular duel in the final laps, with Johncock and Rick Mears vying side by side. Johncock, on the inside, driving a Wildcat/Cosworth, finished a few feet ahead of Mears, winning by 16-hundredths of a second, the slimmest margin in the race’s history at the time.
Johncock’s margin now ranks fifth. The closest finish came this year, when Felix Rosenqvist bested David Malukas by 0.0233 seconds.
Dennis Haskins, actor. Other credits include “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “Cutter to Houston”, and “The Dukes of Hazzard”.
Your Friday loser update.
October 2nd, 2026Two things snuck up on me while I was on the road and/or down with the crud.
The first thing was the end of the MLB season. As I stated in a previous update, there were no historically bad teams this year. The Colorado Rockies were not good, but they finished 58-104, with a .358 winning percentage, the lowest this season. The White Sox were 84-78, for a .519 winning percentage, and are in the playoffs. The City Unknown Athletics finished 64-98, with a .395 winning percentage.
And the Astros went 81-81.
The other thing that sort of snuck up on me was the start of the NHL season. I knew it was coming, but I wanted to wait until today before posting a loser update.
NHL teams that still have a chance of going 0-84:
Detroit
Ottawa
Buffalo
Tampa Bay
Carolina
Philadelphia
Washington
New York Islanders
Dallas
St. Louis
Winnipeg
Nashville
Chicago
Anaheim
Los Angeles Kings
Calgary
Brief trip report: DFW.
October 1st, 2026As previously noted, Mike the Musicologist and I took a short trip up to the Dallas-Fort Worth area for the Gun Rights Policy Conference.
After we got back on Monday, I went down hard with con crud. This is the first day I’ve felt like trying to blog.
In my personal opinion, the two best talks at AMM-CON (Alternative Mass Media Con, the prelude to GRPC) were:
- “AI & Ethics: How 2A Media Can Use AI Without Losing Trust”, by Rich Yumul.
- “How To Read and Understand 2A Court Decisions” by Mark Smith of Four Boxes Diner.
Mark Smith’s presentation was the one I wanted to follow up on, but I can’t find any contact information for him. But the link above goes to YouTube video of his talk, which has a transcript, which gives me what I was looking for: his list of the best and worst appellate courts. “The Supreme Court is very good.” After that:
- The next two best: the Fifth Circuit which covers Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. And the Third Circuit that covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.
- “reasonably okay. They’re not great, but they’re not terrible”: The Eighth Circuit out of Missouri, the Sixth Circuit, which is “Kentucky-ish” and Michigan, and the 11th Circuit out of Florida.
- “the bad stuff”: “The 10th Circuit is generally bad, but occasionally you will get a good panel.” After that, the Fourth Circuit out of Virginia (“terrible”), the Ninth Circuit out of California (“terrible”), and the Second Circuit out of New York City (“generally terrible”).
- “And the worst court in America by far is the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit out of Boston. There is no combination of three judges that you can get that will uphold the constitution in any respect.”
Here’s a map of the courts for easy visualization.
I can’t find video of Mr. Yumul’s talk on AI, but I did take notes, and may try to post those tomorrow. One thing he did provide us was a very interesting prompt that will take a piece of writing (such as a blog post) and analyze it as if the AI was a hostile fact checker. I intend to ask him if he would mind me sharing that here.
I also want to make note of his four principles, which I think are a good general approach to AI:
- Is it TRUE?
- Is it MINE?
- Is it HONEST?
- If it’s wrong, did I FIX it?
I may want to write more about GRPC tomorrow and over the weekend, though I do think the window is closing. Two things I do want to squeeze in:
- The director of BATFE spoke at GRPC. Let me repeat that: the freaking DIRECTOR of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, an organization that most firearms owners consider a “wretched hive of scum and villainy”, spoke to a room full of gun people. Along with the agency’s chief council. That link will take you to video.
- The freshly pardoned Patrick “Tate” Adamiak also spoke at GRPC and at AMM-CON, along with Lee Williams (who did much to draw attention to his case). If you’re not familiar with Mr. Adamiak: he was a US Navy sailor, who’d been selected to try out for the SEALs. Then BATFE raided his house over his collection of firearms. He was convicted and sentenced to twenty years in prison for allegedly selling “machine guns” in an egregious example of BATFE conduct under the Biden administration. (One of the “machine guns” was a toy STEN that you can buy off the Internet today. The BATFE also took a de-milled RPG, completely rebuilt it in their lab so it could fire a single round of 7.62 ammo, and then claimed it was a destructive device.)
(One of my compatriots noted that a lot of Secret Service types were nervously fingering their sidearms during the BATFE talk. There were also more than a few people in the room who were open carrying, and who knows how many that were carrying concealed.)
(Seriously, the “Tate” Adamiak case should outrage anyone who gives a flying flip at a rolling doughnut about justice. I had vaguely heard about it, but wasn’t following it very closely. MtM gave me a briefing in the car on the way up.)
Obligatory:
Your NFL loser update: week 3, 2026.
September 27th, 2026Still on the road, so not a whole lot of sophisticated commentary this week.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Miami
Houston
Tennessee
Chargers
Tampa Bay
Sunday musical interlude.
September 27th, 2026I like Hank Williams, Jr. personally, though I’ve never met him. I know he’s a serious gun guy: he and Mike “Duke” Venturino used to hang out shooting and tinkering with Colt Single Action Army revolvers. I understand he’s also quite fond of Ruger revolvers, too.
“The Pressure Is On” is, in my opinion, a great album. Any time you have at least four solid bangers on an album, I think you can call it great.
There’s “The Coalition to Ban Coalitions”, a funny ha-ha only serious song about nanny state-ism. There’s a really really good cover of “Tennessee Stud“. There’s “Ballad of Hank” with Don Helms (this song is where the recurring WCD trope “fired everybody just as hard as he could go…fired some people that he didn’t even know” comes from).
And then there’s “A Country Boy Can Survive”, which I am picking this morning for reasons. If you don’t know the song, the reasons should become obvious as you get into it.
The preacher man says it’s the end of time
And the Mississippi River, she’s a-goin’ dry
The interest is up and the stock market’s down
And you only get mugged if you go downtown
I live back in the woods, you see
My woman and the kids and the dogs and me
I got a shotgun, a rifle and a 4-wheel drive
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
I can plow a field all day long
I can catch catfish from dusk ’til dawn
We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too
Ain’t too many things these old boys can’t do
We grow good ol’ tomatoes and homemade wine
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
Because you can’t starve us out and you can’t make us run
‘Cause we’re them old boys raised on shotguns
We say grace, and we say ma’am
If you ain’t into that, we don’t give a damn
We came from the West Virginia coal mines
And the Rocky Mountains and the western skies
And we can skin a buck, we can run a trotline
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
I had a good friend in New York City
He never called me by my name, just “Hillbilly”
My grandpa taught me how to live off the land
And his taught him to be a businessman
He used to send me pictures of the Broadway nights
And I’d send him some homemade wine
But he was killed by a man with a switchblade knife
For 43 dollars, my friend lost his life
I’d love to spit some Beech-Nut in that dude’s eyes
Then shoot him with my old .45
‘Cause a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
‘Cause you can’t starve us out and you can’t make us run
‘Cause we’re them old boys raised on shotguns
We say grace, and we say ma’am
If you ain’t into that, we don’t give a damn
We’re from North California and south Alabam’
And little towns all around this land
And we can skin a buck, and run a trotline
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
A country boy can survive
Country folks can survive