Sailing Down the Canal of Root

Pre-Appointment

It's 10:30 pm Monday night as I write this. I'm writing Tuesday's post on Monday because I don't know how much I'll want to write tomorrow after I get my first ever root canal.

To be completely honest here, I'm fucking terrified.

I have always had sensitive teeth. When I see people eating ice, or biting into ice cream, my reaction is always My God, HOW are you doing that? For me to do such things is agony. Heck, it's painful for me when the dental hygienist sprays cold air on my teeth, so you can imagine what a massive weenie I am when it comes to having them drilled.

How big a weenie am I? I require topical anesthetic on my gums before I'll allow the dentist to come near me with that massive needle full of Novocain. I white-knuckle pretty much every dental procedure, which means that by the time I'm done I'm worn out.

I could seriously not be a spy, y'all. Come at my teeth with a drill and I will spill every secret I know.

So there's that tension in general. Add to that the fact that my mother (who's had terrible dental health for as long as I've known her -- with all the crowns and bridges she has, I'm surprised she doesn't have dentures by now) did a number on me in childhood by describing to me in lurid detail how a root canal in the 1980s was done.

Yes, I'm certain that techniques and technologies have improved in the past 30 years. Yes, I'm certain that anaesthetic is better and tools are more refined. Yes, I'm certain that private sector doctors are more accommodating of my comfort than the Army dentists I had growing up.

All of these facts do nothing in the face of all this baggage which is probably a neurosis. So my only real choice is to brace for the worst and hope that the situation won't suck quite as hard as I'm afraid it will.

Post-Appointment
I'm pleased to report that the situation did not, in fact, suck quite as hard as I was afraid it would. In fact, I've had regular fillings which were more uncomfortable.

First, the endodontist's assistant was a petite, perky brunette with a bright sparkly attitude that immediately put me at ease. (The fact that she was easy on the eyes didn't hurt, either.) I also found out she's a nerdette who enjoys superheros, so we had a nice conversation about Flash, Arrow etc while waiting for the endo.

(In fact, ALL of the assistants were perky cute little brunettes. The doctor doesn't have a type, no not at all...)

Then it came time for the numbing agent, and I told the doctor that I was an utter weenie. He understood, and then proceeded to give me the best Novocaine injection EVER. I mean that sincerely; I didn't even feel the needle going in, and he slowly spread the yumyum around in order to make sure everything got numbed. This also had the pleasant side effect of not having the discomfort of "Ow, something cold is being injected into me quickly!"

Then there was the drilling and scooping and cleaning and filling, which I deliberately didn't pay any attention to because I was trying to be in my happy place. As I said, it never went above a 1 on the discomfort scale -- I've had papercuts that hurt worse -- and the entire procedure took about an hour.

Heck, I'd have this guy be my regular dentist if I could. Sadly, there are laws against specialists doing general practice.

When he was done, I asked the assistant "Is that it? Can I go?"  and she said "Sure!... unless you'd like to hang out with us. We're having sushi for lunch!" I honestly wasn't sure if that was meant sincerely or if it was just a joke. I might have said yes if I didn't have a family member waiting to drive me home, because sushi with a bevy of adorkable girls while discussing nerdy interests is absolutely something I enjoy.

So... 10/10, would root canal again (although I hope I never have to).

A Handy Chart

I don't like "phoning in a post" by just posting an infographic, but what else can be said about an extremely handy one-page sheet showing the morse code, semaphore, and maritime flag symbols for the alphabet?

Print this out, laminate it, and put it with your other prepping gear.

This image is also available as a PDF and in high resolution.

https://www.outsideopen.com/alphabet/

Gun Blog Variety Podcast #128 - L'audace de Non

Audacity, audacity, always audacity; we even record our segments with Audacity.

• Surprise! Men and women ARE different. Beth gives us her thoughts on why that's a good thing.
• It's another police chase, but this time it's also interstate kidnapping. Sean tells us who they caught.
• Barron is on assignment and will return soon.
• In the Main Topic, Sean and Erin talk about how we are programming people to feel bad about defending themselves.
• Tiffany is also on assignment and will return next week.
• How do you say no to hungry people? It's hard, but Erin will tell you how and why.
• There's another episode of the anti-gun "Loaded Conversations" podcast! Weer'd puts her guest, David Hemenway, through a Patented Weer'd Audio Fisk™.
• And our plug of the week is Covington Vodka. 

Thank you for downloading, listening, and subscribing. You are subscribed, right? We are available on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and now on Google Play Music!

Listen to the podcast here.

Read the show notes here.

Thanks to LuckyGunner and Remington for their sponsorship, and a special thanks to Firearms Policy Coalition for their support.

Blue Collar Prepping Transcript:

The Audacity of Nope

Throughout the course of doing these Blue Collar Prepping segments, I have constantly preached that preppers need to maintain secrecy about the extent of their preps -- and perhaps even hiding the fact that they are preppers at all. 

The reason for this is simple: If it is known that you prep, and your friends and neighbors do not, then those people will likely show up on your doorstep wanting some of your supplies after a disaster.
And I have said, multiple times, that it is between you and your conscience whether or not you send them away. My point has always been that it needs to be YOUR choice to share with others. If an entire neighborhood of hungry people shows up on your front yard demanding food, the only choice you have boils down to “Do I let them break in and take the food my family needs, or do I have to threaten to shoot them to make them go away?” 

 
However you choose, your secret is out and you have to deal with the consequences. I say that it’s far better to stay deep within the Prepping Pantry because if people don’t know, they can’t threaten you with violence if you don’t give up the resources you’ve carefully stored. 

But this approach is invariably met with the question “But if I see someone in need, and I can help them, shouldn’t I?” And while I cannot answer for you, my response is almost always “No.”

Preppers need to learn to say “no”, because that can be a potentially lifesaving skill. I call this “The Audacity of Nope.” And it does take audacity, because the natural human response is to help someone in need.

Now let me ble clear about this: I absolutely encourage preppers helping other people when possible. That’s just common decency. However, if you’ve ever taken a first aid class, or a rescue swimming class, or anything else like that, recall that you are always taught that you should never, ever endanger yourself to help another, because if you put yourself in danger and fail, there are now TWO people who need rescue and you’ve just made the situation worse.

Prepping is like that, only with potentially higher stakes. If you have a family, it is your duty to protect them before you protect other people, and if you allow other people to partake of your supplies then you are in fact depriving your family of those supplies which might be needed later.

Worse, imagine if you give food to someone who needs it, and they tell other people where they go it. What’s to keep them from walking up and asking for the same thing?

It is not your responsibility to feed the neighborhood. 

This is why I believe that preppers need to learn to say “no”. Internalize this lesson now, because you do not need to be learning it when it’s life or death.

So here are the steps I recommend prepper take to learn how to “nope” out of situations:

First, learn to live the phrase “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” In other words, if something doesn’t immediately affect you, stay out of it! This is desirable on several levels:

• It breaks you of a habit of getting involved in other people’s business and cleaning up other people’s messes.
• It prevents you from looking like a busybody.
• It gives you more time and energy to devote to more important tasks.

Next, embrace the notion that it isn’t your job to save everyone. In fact, it is physically impossible to save everyone! Your only job in this world is to take care of yourself and those who you love or who depend on you. Everything after that is of secondary concern. Some may call that being selfish; I call it self-love. You don’t want your family homeless or starving because you decided feeling better about yourself for doing something nice was more important than security. To me, THAT is the height of selfishness.

Finally, take the time NOW to teach other people how to prep. This will not only ease your conscience later on -- “They had every opportunity to look after themselves, and I tried to show them how. It is not my fault if they didn’t listen.” -- but this also looking after yourself in the long term.

If everyone around you is prepared, then not only do you not need to worry about them using your supplies or equipment, but you have taken the first step in forming a prepping community that can depend on each other.

Do these three things now, so that if you ever need to harden your heart and say “No” later, it won’t hurt as much.

For the Left: A Joke, An Open Letter, and a Warning.

A woman, a gay Jew, and an atheist walk into a bar. Progressives completely lose their shit.

That's the joke. Take a look near the bottom of that image; there's a word I want you to remember for later.

My dear Left,

You've gotten complacent. After W, you managed a groundswell that got a black man elected president, and despite identity politics telling you otherwise, the next 8 years you had the lead and took the establishment. It would seem that, after losing the House, Senate, and Presidency, we no longer have that establishment. But in the 8 years that we did, make no mistake: we were The Man, and so the Right went underground and became punk rock. They got to be the rebels. They got to be dissident and fun while we put on our best show of being adults.

Now Trump has the big chair and the Right's got the majority in everything else. We lost. The upside? Here's your excuse to be punk rock again. But I have a few requests this time around:

• Be mature about it. The link I posted above? Stop trying to disrupt, de-platform, or de-legitimize people that are more or less on your side but who have views that dissent slightly from yours. You can't be inclusive if you subject people to the idea of wrong-think. 
• Keep the violence to a minimum, please. Don't blow anything up. Stop setting things on fire. Starbucks donated to Hillary, there's no reason to break their windows. They gave you those nice "inclusivity cups" last year. Remember those? The green ones with all the little people on them? I know you saw them. You were gloating how they didn't have snowflakes or Santa Claus on them. 
• If you tell someone to check their privilege, make sure you're checking your own. No more lecturing McDonald's workers on the gender binary if you have a book deal with a major publishing house or other such nonsense. 
• Pick your targets better, and check your tactics. Stop being awful people just because you think someone's an awful person. If you want to claim the moral high ground, if you want to think you're the good guys, start bloody well acting like it. 

Next, a warning: That word up there I wanted you to pay attention to was Antifa. Antifa is the very definition of "We think we're the good guys." Antifa ostensibly means "Anti-Fascism", which on the whole sounds rather nice. Given Fascism's track record, who in their right mind wouldn't be against it? I mean... Nazis, right?

Wrong. Please, please, please, don't let Antifa speak for you. That guy who punched Richard Spencer? Antifa*. I see you all there, cheering the hero that punched the Nazi. Call Spencer a Nazi if you want to, it makes no difference to me, but anyone associated with Antifa is not a hero. Please don't make the mistake of thinking that just because you have a mutual enemy that you're friends. Antifa are the ones in black masks and hoodies that you see at otherwise peaceful protests smashing things and attacking people, which in turn puts the media attention on the rest of you, making you all look bad. They're the ones that will also attack you the moment you step out of line with their line of thinking.

I leave with a final thought: Trump has broken the Right, and the Sanders/Clinton Schism has broken the Left. All the rest of you, please pick up the pieces and make something new, something better with what's left over. Bring better ideas to the table. Bring more ideas to the table, and talk to each other. I don't want two sides dominating the elections again. There's no good reason for it anymore.

Good luck, Left. Do something productive with this time. 

-Salem


* Editor's note: there is an online source that doxed him  as Antifa, but the author preferred not to provide the link due to content of a questionable nature. "Let that lack of evidence be on my head," says Salem. 

Feng Shui: Dodging

This past Saturday was the end of our Feng Shui adventure arc, and while this isn't my last foray into the realms of Hong Kong-style action RPGing, I'm ready to get back to Traveller for a while.

That said, I'm not done talking about Feng Shui.

During the last fight of the story arc, the players were fighting a big bad boss supported by many mooks in a defensive posture. The players spent a lot of time dodging incoming gunfire by said mooks, and I'm not certain if I handled it the best way.

In Feng Shui's rules as written, you declare a dodge after the GM says someone is attacking you but before the roll is made and the result announced. Now maybe I'm a big ol' softie, but I thought it was cinematic to allow the PCs to go "Oh crap!" and abort to a dodge after the roll is made but before the result is announced. I figured that losing shots (and potentially burning Fortune) was penalty enough in an action game -- after all, if you're dodging you're not fighting, and Fortune is a limited resource.

The problem with this approach is that it slows the game down. It's one thing when the PCs are fighting an equal number of Named characters, but if they're fighting 30 or so mooks with automatic rifles, it can turn into... well...

GM: Two of the mooks hit. A simple dodge will work for one, but you'll need to dodge and spend Fortune to avoid the other. Will you?
Player: Huh? Sorry, I wasn't listening.
GM: Will you dodge?
Player: Oh, sure.
[awkward silence ensues]
GM: Will you please spend Fortune on that?
Player: Oh, right...

With 6 players and 30 or so mooks, this can happen many times in a game session.

I'm not yet ready to do away with the "abort to a dodge" house rule, because I understand that bosses hit hard and players don't want their characters hit -- but I'm currently giving it the gimlet eye and sizing up its neck while I sharpen the butcher knife.

But what I think I will do is remove the ability to abort to a dodge against mooks. I realize that they are designed to be speedbumps, but they need to be some kind of a threat and they seem to work best in groups. So perhaps I will rule that when fighting mooks, you either take your lumps if they hit or you just do a blanket "I dodge" and... hmm. That still ends up with having to roll fortune and a game slowdown.

Okay, how about this: Mooks are designed primarily to be distractions and resource drainers for  PCs, so just the act of spending Fortune against one of their attacks ought to be an automatic dodge. So if, say, you happened to be a single hero running heroically down a gauntlet as a squad of mooks empties automatic weapons at you, you just tell the GM "I'm dodging" and the GM starts debiting your dodge account:

GM: The mooks shoot at you as you run through their killzone, automatic rifles blazing.
Player: I dodge.
GM: [consults pre-rolled Mook AV chart] Okay, you're down five shots and three Fortune.
Player: Um, I only have two Fortune.
GM: No, what you mean to say is that you have zero fortune and a gunshot wound. 

Yes, I like this concept. Let's see how it plays out the next time I break out the Feng Shui rules.

Palette's Product Review: Bondic Liquid Plastic Welder

(This is an expansion of the Plug of the Week from yesterday's podcast)

I'm fond of pointing out that preparedness isn't always about being ready for disaster; it's also about being able to handle the small emergencies of day-to-day life.

As an example of a tiny crisis, have you ever had to repair something tiny and fragile and precious to you or someone you care about? If so, you know how difficult that is to do, because you ultimately end up with having to affix a tiny little contact surface that doesn’t hold much glue to another tiny contact surface. You basically need three hands to fix it: one to hold the base unit steady, one to keep the broken part in place long enough for the glue to bond, and one to wipe away the excess glue that always seeps out between the cracks. Use too much glue and you get a mess; don't use enough glue and the object falls off.

My solution to this dilemma is Bondic, the liquid plastic welder.



If you’ve ever gone to the dentist and they’ve used UV light to cure a resin filling, you already know how Bondic works -- it's a pen-sized applicator that squeezes out drops of resin on one side and has a little UV light on the other. Apply what you need (up to a millimeter in thickness), then cure the liquid into a solid with a quick application of ultraviolet light from the lamp on the other end. The plastic bond is transparent even after curing, although it can be sanded and painted if necessary.

This works great for repairing tiny fragile things, because I no longer have to worry about using too much glue or having to hold the items in place. Instead, I just apply a small amount of glue, then secure the pieces with Bondic. The plastic weld holds the pieces together while the glue sets, and it serves as additional reinforcement as well.

Bondic has other uses, too:

• You can fill holes with it (this is where the sanding and painting becomes useful)
• You can create parts out of plastic (if you're patient -- the UV light can only penetrate 1mm in depth, so if you're building something large you have to do it layer by layer)
• You can even use it on electronics as non-conductive solder, or to insulate exposed pieces. 

About the worst thing I can say about it is that its base layer doesn't have much tensile strength. If you use Bondic to repair something that gets a lot of flex (like frames for glasses), you need to use a lot of it, or else the thin plastic will snap.

I apologize if I sound like an infomercial for Bondic. I just really love mine because it's made my life so much easier when it comes to fixing my mother's damages collectibles -- which also means this helps repair upset feelings and maintains family harmony, too. If you're the "Mr. Fixit" in your family, I encourage you to add this to your toolbox.

You can get the Starter Kit from Amazon for $18 plus Prime shipping, and with that you get two tubes of liquid plastic and a UV light. The 12-piece DIY Kit has all that plus a variety of sanding blocks, sticks, and needles for just $25 and Prime shipping.

http://amzn.to/2iXAdLd

FTC disclaimer: I bought this item with my own money. I wasn't paid for this review, despite the fact that I gushed over it. Don't you have better things to do than read blogs looking for infractions?

Gun Blog Variety Podcast #127 - Nice SHOT, Man

That's why I say man, nice SHOT
What a good SHOT, man

• The SHOT Show is over and Beth has some thoughts about the Good, the Bad, and possibly the Ugly aspects of it.
• Who steals a golf cart and punches a cop? Sean takes a closer look.
• Barron is on assignment and will return soon.
• In the Main Topic, Sean and Erin talk about the recent gun rights court victory, Ezell II.
• Tiffany also spent the week at SHOT Show. She asks "Why are we so divided?"
• Do you like wool clothes? They're great for the cold and wet that preppers might have to face. But how do you clean them when you don't have all your modern conveniences? Erin tells you how.
• Josh Horwitz, the Oompa Loompa of Gun Control, was on the Tucker Carlson show. And you just KNOW that Weer'd is going to take a crack at him.
• And our plug of the week is Bondic, the Liquid Plastic Welder. If you need to fix it, Bondic might just be the ticket.

Thank you for downloading, listening, and subscribing. You are subscribed, right? We are available on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and now on Google Play Music!

Listen to the podcast here.

Read the show notes here.

Thanks to LuckyGunner and Remington for their sponsorship, and a special thanks to Firearms Policy Coalition for their support.

Blue Collar Prepping Transcript:

Cleaning your Winter Wool

It’s wintertime for most of the country -- I say “most” because here in Florida, it’s still 73 degrees outside -- and when preppers put on their winter clothes, they’re usually made of wool. 

Wool is favored by preppers because it retains its insulating properties even when wet. This makes it a great material for clothes that could get immersed -- like socks -- or become damp from sweat. 

But the problem with wool is that it doesn’t clean easily. While this isn’t much of a problem for your favorite sweater that you take to the dry cleaners once a year, stinky clothes -- especially socks -- can be a hygiene and morale problem. 

So how do you clean your woolies? First of all, don’t wash them like regular clothes. There’s a link in the show notes to a video explaining why, but the short version is that wool, unlike cotton or synthetic fibers, is made out of protein -- which is exactly what most stains are made of, and most cleaning agents are optimized to destroy protein stains. So putting your wool clothes in with regular soap is about as effective as washing them in acid. 

In a non-emergency, the best way to clean your wool unmentionables is to use cold water and a soap that is listed as being wool-safe in the gentle (non-agitating) cycle, and then dry them without heat. 

But what do you do if you don’t have access to cold water and soap? Fortunately, there are other cleaning methods available to the intrepid prepper. 

The easiest method is to use snow. It’s free and it requires very little effort, but you need need snow -- not the easiest thing to find in places like Florida -- and it should be fresh, dry, powdery snow. Using wet snow will make your clothes soggy and you’ll have to carefully let it dry without heat, which is difficult to do in the winter. Assuming you can find this kind of snow, here is what you do:

1. Shake your clothing out to get rid of any loose dirt or dust. 
2. Hang your clothes outside for at least 30 minutes to allow them to reach air temperature. 
3. Using a clean broom if available -- and if not, use your hands -- sweep enough snow across the clothes to cover them but not bury them. 
4. Compress the snow onto the material using your palms or the flat of the broom. 
5. Let the snow sit for 15-20 minutes. Snow contains trace amounts of ammonia, and it will react with the cold air to cause stains to solidify and be expelled from the material. 
6. When time is up, flip the clothing over and repeat the above process. For garments like socks and underwear, you may need to turn them inside out and repeat the process again.
7. After you’ve done this to all the soiled sides, shake as much snow off the item and then hang it up to dry in the sunlight. If you’ve done it properly, the snow will evaporate without even getting your garment wet. 

If you don’t have access to snow, there’s still another option open to you, but it’s riskier. According to BCP author OkieRhio, who is a fiber arts enthusiast, you can clean soiled wool with plain white vinegar, so long as it’s no more than half cooking strength, and provided you don't have a delicate nose which is overly sensitive to the smell of vinegar on your clothes. 

However,  there is a problem with cleaning clothes with vinegar, because you have to make VERY certain that you get the material rinsed out EXTREMELY well, so that there is no trace of the vinegar remaining! This is because vinegar is something called a mordanting agent - a chemical used to make fibers more porous and prone to accepting color. What this means is that if you have this great wool sweater that you really like and you rinse it in cold vinegar water but don’t rinse all of the vinegar water out -- the next time you spill anything colored on your sweater, such as tea, your sweater will now be almost permanently stained by the tea. 

So here’s the takeaway from all this: Wool clothes are great to have for preps, but odds are good that if you need to clean them in an emergency, they are likely going to end up with odd colors or smells. That’s fine if they’re socks, gloves, or underwear -- function over form -- but keep in mind the drawbacks of cleaning your nicer wool clothes this way. 

• What Happens to My Wool Sweater in the Washer?
• How To Clean A Wool Blanket With Snow