Words & Axes

Logger - cutting down big tree with axe - tips.
Buckin' Billy Ray Smith

The video is a little long, but I really enjoyed it. Of course, I am partial to axes myself. Or axes. Or axes. Look how many Billy has.

JMSmith got me started with a post about The Uses of Garlic.

He references Acorns for the culture war by Curtis Yarvin, who opens with this:

There is an ancient Lithuanian proverb about a village whose central square was long shaded by a great oak tree. Late one Saturday night, a madman went mad with an axe and cut down the tree.

That night, as was his wont, the wise man of the village was deeply in his cups. When, on Sunday afternoon he painfully arose and looked out his window over the plaza, he exclaimed to see the great oak cut down—then exclaimed again to see the villagers, with rope and crane and shovel, replanting the tree.

They had dug the stump out to a pit, where they were planting the hacked-off trunk. Of course the oak’s leaves were already starting to wither. Still in his pajamas, quite careless of his pounding head and the sun’s savage glare, the wise man rushed down the stairs and into the square. He began to gather acorns and bury them in little holes. Everyone thought the wise man, too, had gone mad. Didn’t he want the tree back? What was he, a squirrel?

Curtis uses some terms I was unfamiliar with:

• Kayfabe - In professional wrestling, kayfabe (/ˈkeɪfeɪb/) is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as "real" or "true", specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not staged. The term kayfabe has evolved to also become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the direct or indirect presence of the general public.
• Shoot - A shoot in professional wrestling is any unplanned, unscripted, or real-life occurrence within a wrestling event. It is a carny term shortened from "straight shooting", which originally referred to a gun in a carnival target shooting game that did not have its sights misaligned. Terminology such as this reflects the professional wrestling industry's roots in traveling carnivals. The term has come to mean a legit attack or fight in professional wrestling, and its meaning has broadened to include unscripted events in general. The opposite of a shoot is a work or kayfabe.

I don't know that the culture war can be won. My best hope right now is that the lunatic left will self-immolate within a few years. I am only afraid that will result in the pendulum swinging too far the other way and we end up with The Man In The High Castle.

Metasploit Unleashed

Arms Race Update - Chinese Prepare for "Peoples' War" in Cyberspace

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first six of them sharpening my axe.” - Abraham Lincoln
The next big war will be in cyber space. People are gearing up, feints are being made. I doubt there will be any clear winners any time soon. It's going to be a series of skirmishes, some more serious than others. Security agencies are already deeply involved, criminals and terrorists even more so. It's a brave new world. Or maybe, for the man in the street, just more of the same old shit.

Inspired by Metasploit Unleashed

Making An Ax Handle

DiResta Axe Handle
jimmydiresta
This guy is just nuts. The amount of work he puts into making an ax handle boggles my mind. I suppose it could have been done in a couple of hours, but you would need to be really good at using the tools, especially that band saw. I've never seen anyone use a bandsaw like that, well, except for maybe 'Uncle' Steve Blady. We stopped by to see him at his furniture factory when we went 'home' to Grand Rapids to visit Gramma (or maybe it was just someone from Gramma's generation. Gramma may have already passed away by then). He cut a couple of model pieces of furniture out of some scraps of wood he had lying around. It didn't take him but a few seconds. As I recall, one was a four legged chair and the other was a four legged table with four, stout, curvy legs. I hung onto them for a long time. A bunch of model furniture would have been cool, but I never did anything about that. They never rose to the level of display, they were just something I had. I think that was pert near 60 years ago. I don't know what happened to them, but I clearly remember 'Uncle' Steve whipping them out on his bandsaw. Funny how the mind works.

On my ax handle, I tried drilling it for the lag screw with a 12 inch long, quarter inch diameter drill bit. It went in about eight inches before it just quit. It's like it has run into a steel bar, it just won't drill anymore. I suspect it got overheated, lost it's temper, and lost it's edge. Osmany is bringing the long 5/16" diameter drill bit home tonight, so we can try that one tomorrow. We don't do anything quickly around here. Median time to project completion averages right around a year, and that's only the projects that get completed.

I need the larger drill bit because the lag screw I've got just won't go in more than about four inches. It's a lumber construction screw, designed to be machine driven into softwood, not hardwood like an ax handle. I only got as far as I did with a liberal application of wax. Unfortunately, it was from a scented candle, so now that whole corner of the garage smells like sweet essence of whatever it is.

P.S. I'm glad to see Jimmy still has all his fingers. Uncle Steve still had all of his.

Video via Jack.

Update five hours later. Video suggestion from California Bob:

Styx - Too Much Time On My Hands
STYX

Fly, me pretties, fly!

Joan Crawford in Strait Jacket from 1964

The solution to today's Jumble (which only appears in the dead-tree edition of newspapers) is:

FLEW OFF THE HANDLE

It's a very common phrase, but where did it come from? Google provides an answer:

This is an American phrase and it alludes to the uncontrolled way a loose axe-head flies off from its handle.

Seems like I should have known that, and maybe I did, once upon a time.

 

Mesh Goggles

Improve Mesh Chainsaw Goggles with a Sharpie
Ravenglade Axe Co

Mesh googles. Who'd a thunk it? Okay I guess for wood working. If a wood chip is small enough to get through the mesh, their mass is so little they are unlikely to do any damage. Shoot if they are that small they probably won't even get to your goggles. Probably fall to the ground or get blown away. No so good for working with metal or stone. Still, pretty good trick painting the mesh black.

Lone Survivor

Ben Foster as Matt 'Axe' Axelson

Grim little story of four Navy SEALS who are dropped off in lower Slobovia, sorry, some obscure part of Afghanistan, to take out a Taliban honcho. As you can tell from the title, things do not go well. It's a true story, though the movie was made in Hollywood, so some liberties have been taken.
    One interesting thing about this movie was the mountains. I've climbed a couple of hills, and any time I got above 10,000 feet it was a friggin' struggle, but then I have a flaky heartbeat. Robert Kaplan in Soldiers of God talks about how once Afghans are away from town they can walk up mountains without even breathing hard. Here we have Navy SEALS, young men in their prime, trained to perfection, and climbing this hill is a chore even for them. Which makes me think that maybe they should have done a little more high altitude acclimatization. On the other hand, this was a movie, and maybe the cues I picked up didn't accurately portray these soldiers tolerance for moderately high altitudes.
     Our guys did manage to kill a bunch of the ragheads, which makes me think that we do know how to train our soldiers. Still, ten to one is not good odds, even if you are ten times better than your opponents. That just makes it about even.

The Last King

The Last King

The Last King (original Norwegian title Birkebeinerne) is a historical drama that film centers on the efforts of the Birkebeiner loyalists to protect the infant heir to the Norwegian throne. The film is set during the Civil war era in Norway during the 13th century. - paraphrased from Wikipedia.

We watched this last night on Netflix. The first thing we noticed was the big, red-haired wilding from Game of Thrones, Kristofer Hivju, in a starring role. Well, of course, you'll find him here. Who is better at swinging an axe in brutal winter conditions?

The movie has a couple of surprising features:

• lots of chasing people on skis with evil intent, so much skiing that it put me in mind of old James Bond movies.
• squads of bad guys using crossbows effectively.
• horses carrying soldiers running on snow. The snow would have to be either not very deep or well packed. I can imagine short paths being well traveled enough for a horse, or perhaps a narrow path between adjacent villages, but I don't think there were much in the way of roads in medieval Norway. Well, you can't have a medieval war story without warhorses, so mark this one up to the influence of Hollywood.

Skiing Birchlegs Crossing the Mountain with the Royal Child, 1869, by Knud Bergslien.

The skiing was at least semi-authentic. No fancy tricks, basically just skiing long runs downhill with maybe a few gentle turns.

One Thing Leads To Another

The Police - Wrapped Around Your Finger (video of Stewart Copeland)
I'm watching The Grand Tour (Season 2, Episode 8) and Jeremy (more power) Clarkson has a couple of guests who are drummers, one of whom is Stewart Copeland. Who's that you ask? Wikipedia knows all:

Stewart Armstrong Copeland (born July 16, 1952) is an American musician and composer. He is known as the former drummer for the Anglo-American rock band The Police as well as for his film and video game soundtracks. Copeland has also written various pieces of music for ballet, opera and orchestra. According to MusicRadar, Copeland's "distinctive drum sound and uniqueness of style has made him one of the most popular drummers to ever get behind a drumset".

Okay, he is an accomplished musician. But then we make a turn to the dark side: his dad was a spy:

Miles Axe Copeland Jr. (July 16, 1916 – January 14, 1991) was an American musician, businessman, and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer best known for his close personal relationship with Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser and his "controversial books on intelligence," including

• The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics (1969) and
• The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA's Original Political Operative (1989).

In his memoirs, Copeland recounted his involvement in numerous covert operations, including the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état and the 1953 Iranian coup d'état. A conservative influenced by the ideas of James Burnham, Copeland was associated with the American political magazine National Review. In a 1986 Rolling Stone interview, he stated: "Unlike The New York Times, Victor Marchetti and Philip Agee, my complaint has been that the CIA isn't overthrowing enough anti-American governments or assassinating enough anti-American leaders, but I guess I'm getting old."

James Burnham is kind of interesting:

James Burnham (November 22, 1905 – July 28, 1987) was an American philosopher and political theorist. A radical activist in the 1930s and an important factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement, in later years Burnham left Marxism and turned to the political Right, serving as a public intellectual of the American conservative movement, and producing the work for which he is best known, The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941. Burnham is also remembered as an editor and a regular contributor to America's leading conservative publication, National Review, on a variety of topics.

First he was on the left, and then he was on the right, which reminds me of the wheel of political affilication:

The Political Circle

The page where I found this diagram points to story about the The Oregon Constitutional Convention wherein Corporations are discussed. It all seems to be tied together.

The book titles are linked to Amazon. All of the books are expensive, like $50 or more.

Children's Books

I am reading The World At Night by Alan Furst, a really excellent tale. Mr. Furst has written several books about life and espionage during WWII. This one takes place in France. I am reading along and this pops up in the middle of the page:

Seize hommes sur
le coffre d'un mort,
yo ho ho
la bouteille de rhum

Boisson et diable
ont tues les autres
yo ho ho
buvons le rhum

Yo ho ho? Hommes is men, mort is dead, bouteille sounds like bottle, rhum sounds like rum. Um, could this be 15 men on a Dead Man's Chest? Yes, it could and it is. I haven't heard this in like forever, so I went a Googling. I found several recordings on YouTube, but none that I thought really captured the flavor of the song, so you will just have to sing it yourself. And for that we have the lyrics (from Midi Melodies). It was never a real authentic sea chanty. It started as just a couple of lines in Treasure Island, but then it took on a life of it's own.

1. Fifteen men on a dead man's chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
The mate was fixed by the bosun's pike
The bosun brained with a marlinspike
And cookey's throat was marked belike
It had been gripped by fingers ten;
And there they lay, all good dead men
Like break o'day in a boozing ken
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

2. Fifteen men of the whole ship's list
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and be damned and the rest gone whist!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore
And the scullion he was stabbed times four
And there they lay, and the soggy skies
Dripped down in up-staring eyes
In murk sunset and foul sunrise
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

3. Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the murder mark!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead
Or a yawing hole in a battered head
And the scuppers' glut with a rotting red
And there they lay, aye, damn my eyes
Looking up at paradise
All souls bound just contrawise
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

4. Fifteen men of 'em good and true
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ev'ry man jack could ha' sailed with Old Pew,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest of Spanish gold
With a ton of plate in the middle hold
And the cabins riot of stuff untold,
And they lay there that took the plum
With sightless glare and their lips struck dumb
While we shared all by the rule of thumb,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

5. More was seen through a sternlight screen
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Chartings undoubt where a woman had been
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
'Twas a flimsy shift on a bunker cot
With a dirk slit sheer through the bosom spot
And the lace stiff dry in a purplish blot
Oh was she wench or some shudderin' maid
That dared the knife and took the blade
By God! she had stuff for a plucky jade
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

6. Fifteen men on a dead man's chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
We wrapped 'em all in a mains'l tight
With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight
And we heaved 'em over and out of sight,
With a Yo-Heave-Ho! and a fare-you-well
And a sudden plunge in the sullen swell
Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

The Legend of Drunken Master

The Legend of Drunken Master (7/12) Movie CLIP - The Axe Gang Battle (1994) HD
Watched this old Jackie Chan movie on Netflix last night. I'm watching this scene and I realize this is where Quentin Tarantino got his Crazy 88's for Kill Bill. Also, I think I've seen this tavern in other movies, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, although the set seems to have been spruced up, and that might have been done to make it look more like it did a thousand years ago when the Chinese empire was in its glory.

Tradition

Horseshoes, 61 nails, an axe and billhook are part of the rent London owes to the Queen. EPICS/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Atlas Obscura has a fine story about a simple business transaction that has been going of for hundreds of years. Becuase traditionalists are getting beat up left, right and sideways these days, an' I doan a-like it.

Via Detroit Steve