You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#160 in a series)

August 12th, 2026

Gina LaPlaca is the former mayor of Lumberton Township in New Jersey.

In March of last year, she was arrested for DUI and child endangerment.

LaPlaca is currently serving a three-year supervision sentence for the March 17, 2025, arrest where she had a Blood Alcohol Concentration of .30%, nearly four times the legal limit in the Garden State.

But that’s not why she’s going down in flames.

Ms. LaPlaca and her husband, Jason Carty, are charged with forging signatures to get her on the primary ballot this year.

The troublesome couple, who both “collected signatures,” allegedly put people’s names on a nominating petition supporting LaPlaca and signed for them without their consent ahead of the June 3 primary vote.
Multiple individuals who appeared to support the controversial politician told investigators they did not sign or authorize anyone to endorse LaPlaca’s run on their behalf, officials said.
LaPlaca signed the petition swearing she “personally circulated the petition [and] that such petition was signed by each of the signers thereof in his/her own handwriting.”

…

Officials did not reveal how many signatures the couple forged, but specified LaPlaca wouldn’t have made the ballot without them.
“Without the fraudulent signatures, the investigation revealed, LaPlaca’s petition would have lacked the requisite number of signatures required to be a candidate for the primary,” the county prosecutor’s office said.

…

LaPlaca was charged by summons with Making a False Statement Under Oath, Knowingly Filing a False Petition, two counts of Tampering with Public Records or Information and Falsifying or Tampering with Records.
Carty was charged with Knowingly Filing a False Petition, two counts of Tampering with Public Records or Information and Falsifying or Tampering with Records.

By the way, the alleged forgery accomplished exactly nothing. Ms. LaPlaca finished third, with 323 votes.

She was effortlessly defeated by current Mayor Terrance Benson and former committeewoman Kendra Hatfield, who received 1,100 and 1,052 votes, respectively.

Posted in Law, Politics | No Comments »

Random pop culture crankery (with a little bit of gun stuff).

August 11th, 2026

This is from Rock Island Auction, and is a promo for an item in an upcoming auction. But it also touches on one of this blog’s areas of interest. And some friends of the blog are currently working their way through “Miami Vice”, so…”The Bren Ten Origin Story”.

Changing gears to something that’s a little less gun crankery, if MeTV sticks to their schedule, Thursday morning’s episode (8 AM Central, 9 AM Eastern) of “Perry Mason” will be “The Case of the Final Fade-Out“. This is the final episode of the original run.

The general consensus of opinion seems to be that “Mason” got progressively weaker as time went on, and season 9 has issues. While there are some good episodes in this season (I like “The Case of the Midnight Howler” and “The Case of the Cheating Chancellor“) there are some that are just remakes or stunts. (“The Case of the Dead Ringer” stands out in particular as a stunt episode. This season also includes “The Case of the Twice-Told Twist”, the only episode to be filmed in color. While I don’t consider that a “stunt” – they were preparing to move to color if the series had been renewed for season 10 – it is yet another juvenile delinquent episode.)

However, “Final Fade-Out” is a lot of fun, and a great way to end the series. There are a bunch of inside jokes, many of which are documented in the IMDB trivia. Many of the people who worked behind the scenes got (uncredited) on-screen roles in this episode. Even ErleStanleyGardnerTheCreatorOfPerryMason makes a cameo appearance as a judge in the second of the two courtroom scenes.

This is a fun episode. I always find it worth re-watching when it comes up in reruns, and I recommend it if you have not seen it previously.

Posted in Guns, TV | No Comments »

Notes on film.

August 10th, 2026

Keeping with our “worst movies to win the Academy Award for Best Picture” watching, we saw “Gigi” the other night. I don’t think it was a conscious choice to watch another movie from that list – it was more “let’s watch a musical”, that was what Lawrence had on hand, and “Gigi” is more of a “honorable mention” on the list of worst Oscar winners.

I am not a gay man. But I like theater, I like musicals, and I like movie musicals. And I have a passing familiarity with Lerner and Loewe. (I’ve seen “My Fair Lady” cut up for TV, and (I think) in a Houston Grand Opera production. And some years ago, I saw what I also think was a HGO production of “Brigadoon”. I remember that because one of the leads was the aerial traffic reporter for a local radio station. I wish I could remember that guy’s name. It was KPRC 950 AM in the late 1970s – early 1980s, if that helps anybody.)

As good as ”The Greatest Show On Earth” is…”Gigi” isn’t.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Movies, Music | 6 Comments »

Obit watch: August 11, 2026.

August 10th, 2026

Former Representative Ben Jones (D-Georgia). THR.

Most people would know him as “Cooter Davenport” on “The Dukes of Hazzard”. Other credits include “Movin’ On”, “Smokey and the Bandit”, and “The Lincoln Conspiracy”.

Tedde Moore, actress. Other credits include “Police Surgeon”, “Torso: The Evelyn Dick Story”, and “Odyssey 5”.

It has been a bad few days for people of the gun. One of my book buddies in the Association has been sending me obits.

Tom Marx passed away in February, but his death was announced only recently.

Tom was one of the true “industry insiders.” He began as a Chicago cop and then focused on the gun world, working at various times for Smith & Wesson, Ruger, and Blackhawk among others. His consulting encompassed design, engineering, and marketing. Marx specialized in handguns and particularly defensive handguns.

From the same obit (by Massad Ayoob in Backwoods Home), Greg Moats.

Greg had been at the legendary Columbia Conference held at world combat pistol champion Ray Chapman’s Chapman Academy in Columbia, Missouri in 1976 at which the International Practical Shooting Confederation was founded under the leadership of the legendary Jeff Cooper.

And Steven Dodd Hughes, gunsmith, author, and photographer.

I think I actually bought a gun from him about 14 years ago. I remember him being a pretty darn good guy and a pleasure to do business with.

Posted in 1970s, Guns, Movies, Obits, Politics, Smith and Wesson, TV | 2 Comments »

Joyless fun-suckers, sucking all the joy out of everything.

August 9th, 2026

One of the things that I have learned, admittedly fairly late in life, is: if you see something specifically called out in rules or guidelines that seems odd or out of place (for example. “DON’T buy a parrot figuring that it will be a fun surprise for me.”) that thing is more than likely there because someone did it and it caused…issues.

What brings this to mind?

Now, ahead of another school year, Cornell has expressly banned the processing of wild game in residential kitchens on campus.

The longer version of the story: two Cornell students who had some spare time on their hands, rifles, and appropriate permits, went hunting and CillED A. BAr.

Having killed the bear, they did what any normal person would do: they took the bear back to their dorm and dressed it out in the kitchen. (Their original plan was to go to a friend’s house, but “their friend’s place was unavailable”.)

“We were really diligent,” he said. “We made sure we did everything by the book. We knew we’d be under scrutiny.”
As Mr. Chin and his friend carved up the bear in the first-floor kitchen, some of their peers were studying at nearby tables. Other students walked by and took pictures.
“Most people were really curious,” he said. “Like, ‘Hey, we’d love to try some.’”
“We were just explaining, like, ‘Hey, none of this goes to waste,’” Mr. Chin said.

But, sure enough, some joyless fun-sucker (probably a vegan) complained, and the university started an investigation.

Turns out:

The university later determined that Mr. Chin and his friend had not violated the student conduct code or Cornell’s community living standards, and the police did not file charges.

The police probably did not file charges because no crime had been committed, would be my guess. However, Cornell has decided to ban wild game processing in residence halls anyway.

There have been no other known instances of wild animals being processed in residence halls, Ms. Knewstub added.
For those students who would like to hunt, she said, “there are many certified vendors near and around campus who can work with hunters to process game.”

I am left with some questions, though. How do you make “black-bear pastrami”, and what does it taste like? (Somehow, I doubt you can use a standard pastrami recipe, and a quick Google search did not turn up a specific black bear one.)

I’m also vaguely curious about what rifles they used, and where they kept them.

(Short true story: I know someone who, when they were in school, wanted to take their shotgun back to the university with them so they could do some bird hunting. This was a fairly large university in Texas, but not one of the ones you usually think of. This person’s plan was to keep the gun at a friend’s house…the HMFWIC that was in charge of this person instead arranged for the shotgun to be kept at the home of a close personal friend of theirs. Namely, the university’s marching band director. Who, I was given to understand, was pretty heavily armed his ownself.)

(Guys, if you want to move to Texas after graduation, I’ll be happy to sponsor your application. The bear hunting here isn’t great, I don’t think. But we’ve got other game to make up for it.)

Posted in Food, Guns, Hysteria, Mammals | No Comments »

Short random AI thought.

August 5th, 2026

Remember Ashley Madison?

The breach also revealed that the company exaggerated the size of its userbase by “creating fake accounts, or not stopping others from creating fake accounts”.

They must have had battalions of people creating and manipulating fake accounts.

These days, all you need is a single generative AI instance, and you can create all the fake users for your dating site that you need.

Another example of hard working people losing their jobs to AI.

Bonus:

Posted in Bagatelle | No Comments »

Obit watch: August 4, 2026.

August 4th, 2026

Kay Granger, former Congresswoman from Texas.

Ms. Granger left Washington in 2024, during her final year in the House, and moved into an independent living facility in Fort Worth — an arrangement that her office did not disclose for months.
When a conservative website broke the news in December 2024, Ms. Granger’s son Brandon told The Dallas Morning News that she had been experiencing “dementia issues.” In a statement at the time, Ms. Granger said she had been navigating “unforeseen health challenges that have progressed since September and made travel to D.C. difficult.”
The news caused a stir in Washington, coming as several older members of Congress also faced health issues and the Republican majority in the House was razor-thin.

Monty Roberts, horse trainer. I remember vaguely hearing about him around the time the “Horse Whisperer” was big, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to do an obit watch. Then I read the article:

“You have to give him credit. He was one of the first people to get away from the rough stuff, tying a horse to a pole and sacking it out,” Temple Grandin, the noted animal behaviorist and proponent of the humane treatment of livestock, said. “He was really observant out in the field and got to thinking about what a horse really has to say to you. A lot of people are good at reading horses, but he was a pioneer in telling people there were better ways to train horses.”
And unlike some trainers, she said, he demonstrated his methods.

…

When he was just 7, he showed his father how effective it was to treat a young stallion with kindness to instill trust.
His father, he said, flew into a rage and beat him so severely with a chain that he had to be hospitalized. He vowed never to share his unconventional ideas with his father again. But he remained convinced that there was a better way to work with horses.

…

Among his admirers was Queen Elizabeth II, who had read articles in equestrian magazines about Mr. Roberts’s methods and had longed to find a less violent method for training horses.
In April 1989, she invited Mr. Roberts to visit her and demonstrate his unconventional ideas. She was so impressed that she brought him into her royal equestrian orbit as an adviser, and he became a friend.
“She believed that no one should ever say to any human being or animal, ‘You do what I tell you to do or I’ll hurt you,’” Mr. Roberts told The New York Times in 2022.

Scott Hylands. You know, I’d never actually even heard of “Night Heat”, which surprises me: I thought I had a pretty good knowledge of cop shows. Other credits include “Blue Thunder” (the series), “Today’s F.B.I.”, “Harry O”, and “The Magician”.

For the record: Vincent Pastore, of “The Sopranos” fame. IMDB. You know, I might actually watch “Wu-Tang: An American Saga”, if I can find it.

Posted in Horses, Obits, Politics, TV | 2 Comments »

Shortish lazy gun book blogging.

July 28th, 2026

First of all, I recommend you go over to the Revolver Guy blog and read Darren S.’s article, “The RevolverGuy’s Reading List“.

I think this is a pretty swell list. And yes, there were a few on there that I was not previously familiar with.

Changing gears a bit…I’ve found out some interesting information about this old Smith and Wesson. I have not received the actual history letter yet, and I want to wait on that before I post. I’ll update when I do get the history letter, and I’m hoping that my saying “I have not received the actual history letter yet” will cause the history letter to show up before the weekend. Because the fundamental perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum, as we like to say around here.

Changing gears a bit again…Jacob at the Widener’s Shooting, Hunting & Gun Blog sent me a nice email about their recent blog post: “Armor Piercing Rounds: 308 Winchester?” I swear that I had already seen this post and that it was linked somewhere else (maybe McThag linked to it?) but AP ammo is something I’m interested in, the email from Widener’s was flattering, and I might want to take Jacob up on his offer (“If you ever need a caliber or two sent your way, let me know.”) one of these days.

There’s also a YouTube video with Chad Finchum, who’s a NASCAR driver. I don’t follow NASCAR as much as I did when I was younger, but I do sort of keep an eye on it. Haven’t watched the video yet, but I’ll embed it anyway.

Changing gears a bit again (I feel like I’m driving an 18-wheeler. On the downhill side. Of Wolf Creek Pass.)…I’m not sure if this actually qualifies as “lazy”, but I did want to get this in. The moderately lazy part is that it ties back to a book I’ve previously written about, so I can cover it in a shorter post.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Smith and Wesson | No Comments »

Happy birthday!

July 28th, 2026

This blog turns 17 years old today.

Seventeen years of, as someone once put it, “looking at obituaries and which coaches got fired“.

I’m still not burned out. If the posting frequency has decreased a little, it is partly because of Bluehost issues, partly because my life is a little busy, and partly because there’s just not as much worth blogging about.

But from July 28, 2009 to today is 6,209 days (using the date calculation features in Excel). There are 7,452 published posts. That’s about 1.2 posts per day, every day, including weekends and holidays. I think that’s something I can be mildly proud of.

Posted in Admin | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: July 27, 2026.

July 27th, 2026

Lawrence sent me this a few days ago, but I didn’t have a link I felt like using until now: John C. Dvorak, prominent computer columnist.

I almost want to make an argument that Dvorak was a “troll” in the Internet sense of the word before there was an Internet. I’m not sure I can or want to defend that argument, but people who were around at the height of Mr. Dvorak’s career might remember some of his more trollish moments.

E.J. Peaker, actress. No “Mannix”, but she had a lot of other cop and cop-related credits: “Quincy, M.E.”, “Get Christie Love!”, and “The Streets of San Francisco”, among others.

Zale Parry. She didn’t have a lot of credits beyond “Sea Hunt”, but she was an early scuba pioneer:

In 1953, the couple helped launch Scientific Underwater Research Enterprises, which tested underwater equipment that would be sold to consumers. Two years later, she became the third woman certified as an underwater instructor in Los Angeles County.
Parry said she attempted her record-setting dive in August 1954 “to prepare a technical paper on the subject of nitrogen narcosis since we could not find enough subject matter. We wanted to give a good, true picture of what happens. The event changed my life.
“All it took was three miles off the shores of Avalon, Santa Catalina Island with a slight afternoon chop and a dive to 209 feet to a sandy rippled bottom with a strand of bull kelp and one discarded Schlitz beer can … From there on, the radio, television, newspapers and magazines had agents calling for interviews and fun game shows.”

Posted in 1970s, Media, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Noted.

July 24th, 2026

Mike the Musicologist sent this list over to me, with the comment that “This is a pretty good list.”

When he says something like that, I pay attention. One of the nice things about it is that it includes movies from before 2010. (Both Mike and I have a real problem with the lack of historical context in many lists.)

“100 Must-See Movies: The Essential Men’s Movie Library”.

I have a few small quibbles, but I commend the list to your attention.

Posted in Movies | No Comments »

Drink!

July 24th, 2026

Shot:

A routine FedEx pickup turned into reptile mayhem when a massive iguana leaped out of its box and across the counter, sending unsuspecting employees scrambling.

Chaser:

Posted in Bagatelle, Lizards, Reptiles | No Comments »

Oh, no. Not this s–t again.

July 24th, 2026

I was considering using that title for the previous post, but I figured in the end (ha!) I’d probably only have one chance to use the GoT reference. And I can use it here, too, because this is one of my peeves that I am petting.

It is estimated that over 90% of the ocean’s whale populations were decimated through the practice of commercial whaling, which was a major engine of the American economy in the 19th century, as captured in books like “Moby Dick,” the 1851 masterpiece by New York native Herman Melville.

The word “decimate” means “reduce by ten percent”, or “to select by lot and kill every tenth man of a military unit.” Now, personally, I am willing to cut folks a little bit of slack: if one our of every nine, or one out of every eleven, is killed, I’m okay with referring to that as “decimation” or “decimating”. As long as it is close to ten percent, I’m okay.

But the phrase “over 90% of the ocean’s whale populations were decimated” is just ridiculous. It has no meaning. It is nonsense.

Does the NYPost even have editors any more? I think the answer to that is “no”.

Posted in Mammals, Wordplay | 1 Comment »

Game Of Thrones.

July 24th, 2026

Previously on WCD.

Throne, co-founded by University of Texas graduate Scott Hickle, has developed a device that clips onto a toilet and tracks gut health, hydration and prostate health using a camera, microphone and artificial intelligence.

Yep. Another potty cam.

“I certainly didn’t think I was going to grow up to build toilet cameras for a living,” Hickle said.

I bet his parents (who the article mentions are both doctors) are proud.

“There’s a microphone here and we can turn the sound of your pee stream into a chart of your urinary flow rate and the peak urinary flow rate,” Hickle said.
The team even developed a special robot that simulates peeing to develop the microphone.

Robot Or Not?

The app shows data for:

“You can see every session throughout the day. So I’ve gone four times,” Hickle said while demonstrating the app.

Did. Not. Need. To. Know. That.

User data is also given extra security. The website promises “bank-level encryption”.

Well, that’s completely meaningless.

Throne’s device costs $400 and requires a $6-per-month subscription that the company says helps pay for its AI models.

So the hardware is cheaper than the Kohler Dekoda, and the subscription is $1 a month cheaper (though the Dekoda is only $70 if you pay for a full year). There’s no mention in the article, however, if the subscription covers multiple Thrones or just one Throne per subscription. There’s also no discussion of multi-user capability.

Other than that, I’d repeat the same things I said about the Dekoda: I get that there are some people with health conditions that might find this useful, though I question whether it would be $400 plus an ongoing $72 a year useful. I also get that “gut health” seems to be the next big health advance, though it seems to me that “gut health” has been a thing for a while, and what do we have to show for it?

And, once again, here’s your hydration chart.

Posted in Geek, Stupid, Urine | No Comments »

Obit watch: July 22, 2026.

July 22nd, 2026

Hal Williams, actor. Other credits include “Quincy, M.E.”, “Harry O”, and “Sanford”.

(Did you know they tried to make a sequel to “Sanford and Son” without Lamont? I did not.)

He was 91.

I saw this story earlier today, but didn’t make the connection until Lawrence sent me an obit: Kaylee Hottle. She was 18, and died in a car accident.

I usually try to stay away from the credits in the headline, but her only other credit in IMDB is an episode of the “Magnum, P.I.” remake. (Something called “What Doesn’t Kill Us” is listed in pre-production.)

Posted in 1970s, Obits, TV | No Comments »

« Older Entries