Mission Completed

I made another pilgrimage to Bass Pro Shops. I swear, that's as close as I get to church these days. When I walk around in there, eyeing the bass boats and listening to the country music, I keep thinking, "Damn, if I moved a hundred and fifty miles north, I could spend EVERY DAY in this atmosphere. I might get to go an hour without seeing a pretentious doofus in a leased Bentley.

I don't know how I missed the giant saltwater aquarium last time. This think looks to be around 30,000 gallons. Huge. I went over and looked at it today. They had a tarpon, a snook, a hammerhead, jacks, a grouper, and a bunch of fish I thought were Bermuda chubs. A Bermuda chub is a worthless foot-and-a-half-long fish you run into out in the ocean. I thought it was a weird choice. Then I realized...these gigantic fish were yellowtail snapper. Oh, Lord. I'm lucky if I catch a two-pounder off Miami. These things were easily over five.

Don't tell me human beings aren't predators. I am not a violent person, but as I looked in that tank, I could not remember the last time I had wanted to kill anything more. I wanted to kill everything in there, except the shark and the tarpon. I feel the same way whenever I see a big marine aquarium.

I enjoyed my visit. I was disappointed, however, because they did not have the rimfire scope I wanted. Guess I'll order it online. They also lacked scope rings to replace the bad one on my K31. I put very little torque on the screw when I put the rear ring on the scope mount, but it stripped anyway, and now I can't shoot the gun. The ring is fine. The stripped part is a tiny steel lug sort of thing that fits inside the ring base.

I picked up a swivel mount kit, just to get a couple of parts it contained. I want to put a swivel stud on the receiver of my PSL, but no one makes the right part. I figure I can manage by using a machine-screw stud, with a washer and a thin nut inside the gun, on the other side of the sheet metal. Loctite ought to keep it tight. The scary thing is drilling the hole.

On the way home I hit the grocery. I was out of baking potatoes. I can't have that. Guess what they cost? Eighty-nine cents a pound. You can buy fairly good meat for that, if you're a good shopper. Unbelievable. I remember when they nearly gave the damn things away. I tore the bin apart, insisting on perfect potatoes with no dirt-filled hoe marks. If I'm going to pay chicken prices for potatoes, I am not going to be shy about getting good ones.

Until earlier today, I had forgotten all about the rib roast I had aging in the beer cooler. I broke down and ate some of it last week, but I knew I had a good three pounds left, hence the need for potatoes. I opened the cooler and took the meat out. Oh, man. It smelled sort of like sour cream. Perfect. I hacked off a steak, wrapped the snack-worthy remainder in foil, salted the steak, and put it on a plate to warm up. The potato goes in the oven shortly.

It seems like it's raining rib eyes. Winn-Dixie has the damn things on sale again. I really need a bandsaw. If I could manage to cut these things an inch and a half thick, I could skip the long drive to Costco, where the boneless and easier-to-cut roasts abide. As it is, it's two inches or nothing.

After dinner, if I can still move, I plan to install a Red Star Arms trigger in the PSL. Plus a doodad intended to replace a troublesome item known as the "shepherd's crook." This, combined with the new Caldwell rest, will give me an excuse to go to the range tomorrow. Like I need one. I was planning to make it a 1911 day. Maybe I still will. Or maybe I'll start with the PSL and move to the pistol side.

On the way home from Bass, I heard a horrible sound behind me, like a huge turboprop had taxied up to my bumper. Some compensation-inclined pinhead was tailgating me, in an F250 jacked up to where the headlights were six feet off the ground. I was glad to see it was just a passenger vehicle and not a runaway semi. The tiny head up in the cockpit looked furious. Like I was supposed to head for a ditch as soon as I saw his twenty-percent-paid-for motorized codpiece in my mirror. After I got out of his way, it occurred to me that I had a loaded firearm within easy reach. I wondered if that little goof even thought about things like that as he rode around inflicting his inferiority complex on other drivers. I'm a nice person, but most people in Miami are not, and about half of Miami drivers are armed.

Generally, around here, it's the BMW people who cause problems. Bigfoot Junior was unusual. A lot of people buy BMWs for the same reason Harley owners buy Harleys. They want to be identified with the segment of earth's population people associate with the machines. People associate Harleys with scary, violent losers, and they associate BMWs with Nazis. Deep inside, many BMW owners want to be seen as part of a master race, and they act the way the Nazis did when they occupied France. They're pushy and arrogant, and they feel entitled to deference.

I don't get it. You're not your car. Your car may be good looking and physically superior, but you may still be, say, a fat bald dentist with inch-thick glasses. In fact, if you drive a BMW, chances are pretty good that that description isn't far from the truth. You're probably a moderately successful professional between the ages of thirty and forty-five.

I think BMW owners are often particularly insecure, because status-consciousness is what generally drives a BMW purchase, and as everyone knows, people who can afford real status wouldn't be caught dead in a BMW. It's too common; too cheap. It's not a Bentley. It's not a Ferrari or a Rolls. It doesn't say "I made it." It usually says you can't afford what you really want. Still, you see shabby little 325is parked diagonally across two spaces, as if they belonged to Hitler himself. It always puts me off, when someone is just a little too excited about Teutonic superiority. Not a sign of maturity or goodwill.

Anyway, life is short. Fighting over a five-second advantage in traffic is ridiculous.