Atomic Nerds

1. When I am supreme ruler of all, near the top of the changes to implement immediately will be severe corporal punishment for people who confuse the terms “perfume” and “marinade.” Seriously lady, that cloud is dense enough it’s starting to bend light, and every fly it draws in drops dead within seconds. Nobody in the pet store cares that it took your husband applying the cluebat directly to your forehead for several hours for you to get the point about your new cat, GTFO so the rest of us can fucking breathe.

2. Restaurants: If you have successfully made your establishment feel cramped even when it is mostly empty, you’re doin’ it wrong. Claustrophobic != Trendy. And you want how much for a half sandwich and a handful of raw broccoli and carrots? For that scratch, the burrito stand across the street will feed me so much I won’t be able to walk for an hour.

3. Good news: We have found a local source for the most amazing goat cheese ever. Bad news: This source is the local hippy-store, some sort of co-op that advertises “locally grown” food, provided you define “locally” as “within this time zone,” and is full to the brim of the sort of vacant, earnest-faced trimmed-beard-sporting birkenstock-stock who are very eager to use words like “sustainable” or “environmentally responsible” whether you want them to or not. From perusing the shelves, I have come to the conclusion that “organic” is a Native American word for “costs four bucks more, sucker.” On leaving, I was overwhelmed with the urge to pour paint and motor oil down a storm drain, light up the foulest cigar I could find, and dangle a porterhouse from my rearview mirror as an air freshener. Luckily, the metal station was playing Slayer. Of the dozens of bumper stickers festooning the seven cars in the parking lot, the only one that didn’t make me want to key paint or slash tires was “Beer is my spirit animal.” I may now have a reason to take advantage of New Mexico’s permissive open carry laws.

4. Personal record on today’s deadlift. You don’t care, but damn did it tickle me. So now you know.

5. Tank isn’t sure about this new collar thing.

That is all, carry on.

Even happen at Blogorado.

The same bracer! The rest of the steampunk wasteland mutants will never let me hear the end!

Like everyone else, we are suffering from some Post-Blogorado Depression. We are not normally the most social of butterflies, and B’rado always crams in several months’ worth of intense- and intensely enjoyable- socialization into a few days, as well as turning our normal schedule completely inside out. (As anyone who has visited the Nerd Ranch finds out, we are… to put it nicely… nocturnal. The Obligatory Cow Reference running out of regular coffee and giving us decaf for two days did not help.)

It was rather like a family reunion where, for the most part, you got to pick your family, and you get to do something more fun during daylight hours than stand around talking or playing horseshoes. We did rather reap the wages of spending our weekends brewing rather than shooting- Tam is quite right that pistol skills seem to deteriorate much faster than rifle/shotgun, though given Stingray was using his CZ like a mortar to launch Europellets into the unfortunate car long downrange, perhaps that only applies to some of us.

I only seem to enjoy these things more every year, wrinkles aside. Tam was the newest face the most of us this year, and I enjoyed meeting her far more than I thought I might. (For some reason, I had gotten it into my head that we’d exchange snark for ten minutes and then have nothing else to talk about. I think this was some sort of mental self-defense to avoid drooling on her or something equally silly.) It was great to see Mike and Jen for another time as well as Sci Fi and his wife, and Christina who was sadly missing last year and it was great to see Holly again after meeting her at Phlegmmy’s party and, and, and…

NFO and I had a conversation that may yet turn into a post (not sure yet) about tribes, and the kinds we’re born into and the kinds we create for ourselves. This was- will likely continue to be- a gathering of tribe, the created kind, and one neither he in his longer experience or me in my briefer has been part of before; one that seems to completely disregard normal affiliations of age, gender, region, subculture, and even politics up to a point. Guns unite us, but again only up to a point- there are shooters of all levels of skill and devotion, and while some love nothing better than to spend every bit of available light sending some kind of lead downrange, others take a more leisurely pace and spend just as much of that time socializing or noodling around in a less explosive fashion. Literacy unites us as well- all of us are enthusiastic readers, even if our tastes are all over the map. But most book clubs don’t get along this well, nor do most gun clubs. A great deal of this is simply the (Herculean) work the Farm Fam puts both into making logistics work and performing the delicate social alchemy to guess who will get on and who won’t, but some of it completely resits analysis other than “tribe”.

Sal, AD, JPG (who, I’m slightly ashamed to admit, is still referred to as “.jpg” in conversation here), Spear, and LawDog are the rest of the tribe this year (some every year), and while this paragraph feels inadequate I am quite sure all know how important seeing them is, to both of us.

If only because the whole party is our annual year-end performance review of the brewing efforts- our report card is what gets drunk and what doesn’t. The red ale remains a perennial favorite, there’s rarely more than a bottle or two left. The Emergency Medical Bock was a smash hit and may need a double batch brewing next year. The English ale is strong but overshadowed by the red and the EMB. The Bearfucker was an unexpectedly explosive smash- we can’t quite get a good specific and original gravity yet, but I’ll eat my socks if it’s less than 10% ABV. (We were expecting a full-bodied nutty brown ale. We got a full-bodied nutty near-whiskey.) The stout seems to have been somewhat obsolesced by the EMB and BF. Not many people like the Goddammit, but the ones who do REALLY like it.

We already have the beginnings of a drawing board for next year’s experiments… but first, a looong break from standing at the brew kettle every weekend. Perhaps we’ll even do some shooting.

This is my favorite antelope ever.

Somewhere on the endless expanse of open space between secret locations:

“Well, yeah. You and I don’t need to spend three grand on a scope yet until we can make full use of something from Leupold that costs half as much. It’s kinda different spending your own money, y’know? I mean he just goes in and the whole thing goes down like “Hi, I’m OldNFO* and I’m awesome.” “Holy shit, you are! Have this amazing rifle!”

*It sounded even funnier with his real name in, and I don’t know why. If you know the guy, you understand.

…jiggedy-jiawfuckIforgotthegarand.

Oh well. The person it’s with is trustworthy enough the only thing to worry about is him saying “Huh, I can improve that…” and having it come out either 10,000x more awesome, or breaking whatever strange mojo makes it so already awesome. Or he’ll just put it in a corner and I’ll get it later.

Rumors of my resemblance to Kjell Nilsson are extremely exaggerated. If ever there were a litmus test for beer goggles, that’s it right there.

And most amazingly of all….comments weren’t filled with raging assholes when we got back!

Seriously.

That’s never happened before.
Well done, the lot of you! I even laughed at some of the stuff in there!

Amuse yourselves till we get back. Don’t be dicks in the comments. I don’t know why I’m bothering with that instruction since we always come back to dicks in the comments, but I can dream.

If you’re a warcrack nerd, amuse yourself with Garrosh Hellscream’s Blog. No, really.

Tootles.

No, not a surprise attempt to get someone’s unmentionables off. Yesterday, war were declared. Today, war is waged. As planned, some hours after dark with a distinct chill in the air to aid in calming the enemy, kit was gathered.

What? What do you mean “other stuff?” That’s the whole kit, totally serious promise. Why are you looking at me like that? Fine. Here.

Anyway, Mr. or Ms. Nitpicky, primary ordinance was prepped for drop:

And deployed.

Primary ordinance was left on target for approximately an hour. On cautious lifting of the bucket, no angry combatants emerged, but it was discovered either by enemy action or friendly incompetence, the main entrance had been partially to entirely blocked- either they barricaded in, or I managed to get a clump of wet dirt and such froze to a chunk of dry ice and plugged it, leaving us uncertain how much stoppit-gas was actually delivered. Command decision was made to clear the blockage if possible. Support decision was that command was fuckin’ nuts and would be way over there. The entrance was cleared, said wet earth having frozen into a conveniently removable plug-shape, and the system was brought back on line with more careful arrangement.

Weapons hot… er, cold? Active. We’ll go with active. Weapons active another 45 minutes, followed by cautious peek and verification of non-plugged entrance. No combatants on site, and vapors clearly visible drifting into the hole. But the henchmen were still wicked toasted and, um, yeah. that happened. Fire out with minimal federal intervention, the cinderblock was used to cap the hole and compacted down into the ground a bit to make sure.

The following morning has offered up a mixed bag of results. Enemy combatants have been detected around the battle zone, and thus far in the day approximately thirty have been dispatched using a combination of small arms fire and hand to hand techniques. Clearly this number leaves us well short of the aforementioned Husnock goal. On the positive side, however, there remains the possibility that these combatants were simply out of HQ on bivouac for the night, as uncapping the main entrance and cautious observation have revealed no enemy either exiting, or entering. Additionally, individual mop-up engagements conducted with the Soldier Held Oblong Vespid ELiminator (S.H.O.V.EL) did not trigger any response from HQ. These are promising signs, considering how little it took to achieve such a large response yesterday.

While still uncertain regarding the high number of lingering enemy combatants, further research has indicated that multiple entrances are unlikely, but that hive size can be surprisingly larger than expected with some instances reaching as much as four feet deep. As this has been a largely ignored section of terrain until the puppies started re-purposing it as the Prime Pooping Area, onset of enemy activity is not precisely known, and thus we can make relatively little informed decision about the size of the opposing force.

The solution: Do it again, only harder.

Primary weapons will be redeployed tonight with more attention paid to not blocking the entrance. Cap will be applied and the entire system will run overnight. We will continue to eliminate individual combatants on sight as possible. Further updates as events warrant.

That could’ve gone better, if I’m honest. After action report to follow.

This morning at zero-something-precoffee, a vicious attack was launched on the peace loving** inhabitants of the Nerd Ranch. A despicable enemy with a daily kos-like collective, only with more spine, came forth and deliberately and willfully inflicted pain in an attempt to incite terror and despondency within the good people of this land. As this is not a major news conglomerate, let me provide actual details. After many days, possibly even weeks, of peaceful co-habitation, a den of burrowing wasps launched their own version of Pearl Harbor, and swarmed, attacking puppies, Kang, and LabRat. The cause of the attack is unknown. Be advised that the Nerd Ranch will not tolerate such acts of aggression, and in the years to follow, response delivered to this colony will be likened unto that which befell the Husnock.

The casualties:

Wonderboy*** received at least one sting to the muzzle, evident in the now mostly gone swelling on the right side of the picture. Kang received a couple square on the top of her muzzle during the initial defense and subsequent counter-offensive. LabRat refuses to give comfort or aid to the enemy by documenting her wounds, but received somewhere between 8 and 12 stings, mostly in the scalp but also one to the boob that she really refused to have documented as comfort and aid to the enemy. Enemy psychological operations were marginally successful as wasp clusters working vigorously between Wonderboy’s shoulders combined with his natural sangfroid created a plausible impression of having been stung into submission while the fact of the matter was that natural Akita puppy coat is thick enough to withstand multiple wasp-hits without issue. As a credit to his breed, he was exceptionally stoic for a six week old about the process of removing the stinger from his muzzle, two small cactus needles obtained during retreat, a bayonet tip, a shark’s tooth, and a meager handful of buckshot. Wondergirl thought she saw a wasp near her face and screamed for a half hour. She has been assigned extra PT until she hardens up, as she was not actually stung. Simply put, this attack is bullshit and will not be tolerated. This hive will be destroyed.

The enemy:

Recon reports elevated activity during the daylight hours. Internet recon, always the most reliable of sources, and basic knowledge of local bugs, indicate that as temperatures drop below today’s already chilly state as night falls, activity will dwindle and enemy combatants will return to barracks. Suggested methods of attack from the internet are as follows:

1) Fire
2) Napalm
3) Fire
4) More fire and some ghetto-rigged bottle trap
5) Napalm and fire
6) BEEHIVE IS TOO HARD CALL PROFESSIONAL
7) Fire

These are all fine and good options (except number six. That’s for pussies.), and I do like fire quite a bit. However, when you absolutely positively have to kill every motherfucker around, accept no substitutes.

I’m going to use science.

Those of you not already fleeing for bunkers, high ground, NORAD, or booking a flight on Virgin Galactic****, I’m going to gloat in advance***** and brag about how this will go down. The simple plan would be to just pour a gallon of diesel fuel in that conveniently funnel-shaped hole in the ground, but that will be smelly, and cover things the puppies will put in their mouths with toxic diesel fuel. Instead, late this evening I will make a trip to the grocery store. As it is a well known fact that living creatures need to breathe (a few counterexamples on display and duly lampooned notwithstanding), my goal is to deny my enemies that particular skill. With such a neat funnel shape, and a headquarters entirely below entrance level, don’t you find it rather fascinating the way carbon dioxide is heavier than regular mixed atmosphere? And isn’t it just marvelous the way dry ice sublimates directly from a very cold brick into such heavier than air gas? Oh, gravity and chemistry. What can’t we kill with you?

Assault is scheduled for full-dark plus 3-4 hours. Equipment loadout is one (1) pound dry ice, 1 (one) metal bucket, narrow lip suitable for light ground penetration, and one (uno) cinder block.

By god, by dawn Tank****** will be avenged.

*title source
**Stop laughing.
***We’re still working on a permanent name. At this pace, that might be it.
****A good friend has described my method of problem solving as using a bazooka to pick low-hanging fruit. I say if it’s stupid and it works, it ain’t stupid.
*****…and thus pre-doom my attack
******Wonderboy’s name was finalized during the drafting of this post. In addition to the obvious connotation of heavily armored mobile stuff-smasher, it fits his role in a geek family too. Welcome to the Nerd Ranch, Tank.