I find myself tagged by ColtCCO, who’s just floated his very own meme. I am in august company; Tam and Moral Flexibility got tapped as well. So, rather inexplicably, did the pdb. I guess ColtCCO was feeling magnanimous.

Anyways, the meme is: “Things That Should Not Surprise Anyone (But Probably Will)”

1. Michigan sucks.

The State of Michigan, a perennial contender for the title of Most Broke and Broken State in the Union, a state with rampant unemployment, rapidly-failing industries, roads that appear to have been carpet-bombed, and a $1 B-B-B-Billion hole in the budget, decided that it would be a fantastic use of taxpayer dollars to buy new license plates for everyone. Nevermind that the old white-on-blue plates have worked just fine for the past 25 years. Nevermind that issuing new plates without carrying over the existing plate numbers inconveniences everyone who has the presence of mind to memorize their plate number. Nevermind that the ONLY justification offered for the change is the bullshit claim that the old plates were hard to read at night. No, this is truly a wise and rational use of increasingly-scarce funds, because the Gub’mint Says So.

2. Many ARs, like many people, are grossly overweight.

Your basic M4gery is an aluminum-and-plastic carbine chambering a round with negligible recoil, so there’s no reason for it to weigh more than 6.5 to 7 lbs. But after you add the de rigeur quarter-mile of Picatinny rail and bolt on at least a half-dozen accessories, your “light and handy” carbine is now shading 10 lbs, handles like a length of lead pipe, and guess what? It’s STILL only a .223!

If you don’t mind your gun weighing that much, I humbly suggest trading in the AR towards a FAL so you get power proportionate to the weight.

3. Men hate dancing.

We really, really do. So, coming from a guy who has to be in 3 or 4 weddings this year, please heed these words: Leave us alone.

Look, women like dancing. Men like sitting around, drinking and watching women dance. In point of fact, we’re willing to pay good money for that. So you women dance with each other and let us guys sit around and drink. Everyone gets what they want and we can all go home happy.

4. Your brand name is worthless to me.

There’s a big trend in the gun biz of well-known domestic brands securing import contracts for formerly-affordable foreign guns, buying plenty of fawning press in the gun rags, and jacking up the prices. You want examples? Alright, here goes:

The Springfield Armory XD, despite all of SA’s star-spangled marketing hype, is the Croatian HS2000 with a higher price tag. Remington’s new 798 used to be the Charles Daly Mauser and, before that, the Interarms Mark X. Putting Big Green’s name and logo on it doesn’t make it a better rifle; it’s still a mediocre but serviceable Zastava clone of the FN Supreme action. And despite the rapturous write-up the gun received in last month’s American Rifleman, Armalite’s new AR-24 is nothing more than the Turkish Sarsilmaz CZ-75 knock-off with a minor facelift and a fresh infusion of marketing dollars.

Don’t get me wrong; none of those are bad guns. But they were all BETTER guns, relative to their price tags, before the marketeers got involved.

5. Raw Power is the greatest rock album ever recorded and, indeed, one of mankind’s most glorious achievements.

This one needs no explanation or elaboration. Either you understand or you’re beyond hope.

I hereby tag:

Cowboy Blob

Kit

MauserMedic