Gunnies Helping Gunnies -- 2 for 1 special

This is one of those posts that I don't like writing, because I hate it when members of my tribe end up in terrible situations. On the other hand, this is another opportunity for us to come together as a community and help out our brethren and sistren in their time of need.

In other words:  Yes, Erin is going to shake you down for money to help gunnies in need.

I'm a bit late in writing about this due to my own already-mentioned family medical issues, but hopefully I can help boost the signal to those who wouldn't ordinarily see it.


First off, Erik and Sabra (yes, THAT Sabra) Onstott are in a bad place right now.  Sabra is pregnant and their baby has been diagnosed with a truly awful disorder called Limb-Body Wall Complex. I'm not going to go into graphic detail, but yes, it's as horrible as you imagine it is; official medical literature describes the condition as "incompatible with life."  More information can be found in Erik's post here,  or if you really want your heart to break you can read their pregnancy blog, but the short version is that they're going to bring their child (whom they have given the gender-neutral name Psalm-Angel) to term so that, hopefully, they can hold their baby in their arms and say goodbye.

Sabra is due to deliver sometime between mid-August and September, and instead of getting ready to celebrate a birth, they're having to plan a funeral for a baby.

Is it suddenly dusty around your computer? Yeah, mine too.

But wait, it gets WORSE:  their landlord has given them 30 days notice and is kicking them out of their home, so now they have to find a new place to live by July 7.

Oh, and their car needs repairs as well. Erik has the parts, he just doesn't know how to install them so he can have a functioning car for this whole "moving and a funeral thing."

So here is how you can help:

• If you live in or near San Antonio, or have contacts there, please help the Onstotts with 
• finding a place to live,
• repairing their car,
• planning Psalm-Angel's funeral. 
• If you have the skills to help them directly (such as by being a mechanic, a real estate agent, or a funeral director), so much the better. 
• If possible, please donate at their YouCaring page. They have set a very modest goal of $3,500 (too modest, if you ask me) -- I call upon all gunnies to blow the fuck out of that total by giving at least twice that. Personally, I think we can give them an easy $10k. 
• Boost this signal wherever you can:  On your blog, on Facebook, on Twitter.  Wherever you have social media presence, you talk about their situation and you link to their YouCaring page. 
• Pray for them. I have specifically asked and, yes, non-Christian prayers are just as welcome. 
• If you would like to contact Erik directly (to help out, offer moral support, etc), you can email him at Erik dot onstott at sbcglobal dot net.

Now that I've gotten you in the spirit of giving, will you also consider helping out Tin Can Assassin as well? Fortunately no one is dying, but his wife has taken his daughter and fled to another state.

TCA needs help with legal fees, as not only does he need to fight a TRO (no doubt filed as leverage), he also needs to hire a good divorce lawyer so that his daughter isn't removed from his life.  (For more details go here; I can also corroborate the fact that if you send him an email, he will answer any questions you have.)

TCA doesn't have a GoFundMe or YouCaring page because, in his own words, "I don't want to shame my wife the way she's shamed me."  So far he's managed to raise $558 for his legal fees, and will need somewhere between an estimated $1300 and $2900 to pay the legal fees.

How you can help:

• If you have any money left over, please donate via PayPal to donovan_dion_oblsb AT yahoo DOT com, so that a wrongly accused man can get his life back in order and continue to see his daughter. 
• Prayers and well-wishes are also welcome. 

I thank you all, in advance, for all the help you're going to give to these two deserving causes. And no, you don't have to be a gunnie to help (It's not my  intention to exclude anyone!) -- I just thought that "Gunnies Helping Gunnies" was catchy. 

Mounds of Crap

In case y'all thought I was exaggerating about my dad's hoarding in Friday's BCP post:

This is the main pile.  (Mom calls them "Dad's Hemorrhoids," because piles.) And this is AFTER we cleared away boxes and boxes of stuff, some of them sitting on TWO CHAIRS.  After using a tape measure (and estimating for what we already removed), I reckon it was about 4 feet by seven feet by 2.5 feet... about 70 cubic feet of crap, all told.  For reference, that dresser top in the background  (rendered totally inaccessible by said pile)  is about 30.5 inches tall.

This is the left side of the bed. That particular hemorrhoid is 2x2x7 feet.  There was a matching pile on the right...

... but we cleared it away before I thought to take a picture of it. Basically, imagine a path about a foot wide between the bed and all the stuff.  From foreground to back:  Books to be gotten rid of, more books to be gotten rid of, and a box full of disorganized financial forms of dubious importance. They all need to be gone through and kept if recent, shredded if not.

And this is the bed. Admittedly, the bags and the boxes were moved onto the bed so we could have space to operate. But you see the roughly person-sized volume of stacks of books on the left? Yep, those "live" there. Dad sleeps on the right. He shares his bed with books.

And this is but one of the loads of trash we've thrown out after shifting through what will easily be 100 cubic feet of crap.  The trash bag on the right is completely filled with shredded documents.  The oldest was dad's 1998 tax return.

We've been at this for over a week and the end isn't even in sight.  Ugh. 

SHTFriday: The Slippery Slope of Prepping

Today at Blue Collar Prepping,  I try my best not to paint all preppers with the crazy brush.

Honestly, that's not my intention, not at all -- but I also recognize how easy it is to get carried away and discover that a hobby has become an obsession and is now running your life.

I'm certainly not one to talk. I played so much City of Heroes back in the day that, had I been a pilot, I would have qualified for combat pay.  So yes, I know all about turning something fun into a job.

One Man's Dream is not necessarily Another Man's Cause

[this review may contain minor spoilers for X-Men: Days of Future Past]

     It's fortuitous and somewhat coincidental that X-Men: Days of Future Past has recently had runaway box office success. It's a story about a man with a dream, a man with a cause, people defending an old establishment, and extremists thinking they're doing the right thing. While it's definitely not the story the comics told us decades ago, I think it benefits for this. Shame about Kitty Pryde, though. Maybe if they'd spent a movie or two developing her as more than a background character instead of making five movies about Wolverine (not that I'm complaining. I love me some Hugh Jackman's Wolverine), the movie would have been able to stand on its own with her as the one going back instead of him.

     But that's not what I want to focus on right now. X-Men has always served as a sometimes subtle, sometimes not-so allegory for minority struggle, and DOFP, in the day of hashtag slacktivism, media bias on both sides, call-out culture, and tumblr-style gender wars, has updated the formula. Xavier and Magneto are there still, but the context has changed.

     Xavier's Dream, which I would like to say that I do, and always have, strongly believed in, is that humans and mutants can peacefully coexist with each other. On top of that, realizing that there would be humans that violently feared mutants and mutants that could justify that fear, he formed his X-Men to defend innocent mutants against the formerly mentioned humans, and innocent humans against the latter mutants. The Dream is fueled by hope, and that Dream cannot survive if fearful and bigoted humans or violent, misguided mutants harm innocents on either side.

     Magneto's Cause, on the other hand, is something that scares me as bad as the aforementioned bigoted and fearful humans. It's much simpler, because it's a cause that's fueled by anger. It's completely black and white. Humans are history, are a threat, should be removed from the equation. Mutants are the future, innocent and blameless, and acting only in defense of their people. Any human that doesn't fit with that equation is simply a tool to be exploited and discarded, and any mutant that doesn't fit is a traitor to their biology.

     The main plot of DOFP revolves around how the act of a single extremist caused the entire world to fall apart, and how those with a Dream and those with a Cause must set aside differences to stop those that would go too far from hurting everyone with their actions. One extremist, Mystique, must be stopped from taking an action that would paint all like her a criminal and a threat, and another extremist must be stopped from using her actions (and her very biology) as a weapon against innocents. It's an effective allegory for the all-too-common people who think they're fighting the good fight, but just aren't helping. 

     I'll close out this thought with a semi-angry statement made a few weeks ago. I think it's still relevant.

“Too many assholes out there thinking they believe in Xavier's Dream but fighting for Magneto's Cause.”

[AFHOTWTTGS] Somwhat Overcast Sunday Teatime of the Soul

I'm flitting a lot, at the moment.

I can't seem to settle on a Project - by which I mean Game to Play, but you know how it is - if it isn't taken seriously and treated like work it feels like a waste of time, and if I'm just running something out of the box I generally feel bored and unfulfilled; I haven't really had to engage my mind and grapple with anything... but isn't that what a hobby is supposed to be? An opportunity to not do that? But don't I have an obligation to engage my mind and grapple with things if I'm not having cause to do that anywhere else in life? But doesn't that in turn mean that I should be doing something important and challenging and improving my life instead of faffing around playing wizard games?

You see what I mean? I'm asking too many questions instead of just doing things and having fun with them. Overanalysing. Fretting. Flitting. Doubting. Not actually doing things. Blogging about why I'm not actually doing things.

Not a good head-space to be in, especially over games - which, while they are part of 'real life' and don't let anyone tell you otherwise - are not ultimately going to put roofs over heads and potatoes in tummies, and are consequently Not Worth The Fuss in the first place.

Last week it was the IKRPG, this week it's D&D, next week it's Mage (although Mage is something actual people have expressed an interest in, so maybe I'll actually see that through - who knows?). All the verb-ing described above means there's not a lot of actual gaming going on in Von-town at the moment, and that's bad - but trying to get a game on the go results in more verb-ing.

It's probably a sign of underlying dissatisfaction with my life, manifesting itself in the harmless, consequence-less space of gaming (except it's not consequence-less, because real time and real money and real effort are invested in games and real fun is not a guaranteed output... you see?)

This is the sort of thinking that prompted me into Cognitive Behavioural Therapy so I could try to avoid it.

This is the sort of thing that prompts friends and guildmates and colleagues to say "just be spontaneous."

This is the sort of thing that leaves me out of pocket and out of time when I've been spontaneous and been disappointed.

This is the sort of thing that leads to whiny, self-indulgent blog posts like this one.

Maybe I need to browbeat someone else into GMing for me? Seeing other people do a crap job (by which I generally mean "running their game the way they want to and not the way I would") generally makes me want to outdo them.

Either way, talking about doing ain't the same as doing.

I'll be back when I have my head sorted out and my priorities straightened and some actual gaming on the go.

Monday Gunday: Things that make me giggle, photo edition

Rotary Magazines on shotguns!

How much a friend of mine looks like 

Ken from Wild West Alaska!

Miniguns in VW buses!

Miniguns in VW buses!

Miniguns in VW buses!!!

50 round drums for Glocks!

In fact, I like this one so much that I got one for myself.  Sure, on a Glock pistol it looks ridiculous... but how about on a pistol-caliber carbine that accepts Glock magazines?

It's not unwieldy at all, actually. I'm already supporting my Sub-2000 with two hands and a shoulder weld, and the extra 17 rounds don't increase the weight all that much.  I am running out of things to put on it, though...

Plus, it makes my S2K feel even MORE like a submachinegun. 

It's not even difficult to load with the built-in ratchety-thing. It just takes a while.

I don't care if it's silly, or if it's ugly, or if it jams like a mofo.  It makes me laugh, dammit. 

(Full review will come once I've tested it)

Brodor

From Imgur:

Hodor, in the Millennium Falcon, wearing a Nightmare Moon t-shirt. Your argument is invalid Hodor.


UPDATE:  Someone on Facebook suggested the name "Hoofdor."  I'm ashamed I didn't think of that.