That Was the Week that Was: 2013 Week 35

In the last TW3 we got up, for Week 33, we wrote that we’re “so far behind that whole bunches of Matinees and TW3s are not up yet.” That hasn’t changed but we did get the TW3 up this week, more or less on time (you’re reading it, right?) and, will wonders never cease, we not only got a Saturday Matinee up, but a 2,000 word monster of a Saturday Matinee, about a movie as big in its ambition, and daunting in its inaccessibility, as China herself.

When this initially goes live, the links will be dead. We’ll gradually liven them up.

The Boring Statistics

This week’s output was, measured by word count, light normal: around 13,700. We only put up 18 posts, less than normal. We continue to plan for three posts a day, six days a week, and a trivial Sunday post. Comments tied last week at 74; we were impressed by the quality of the posts.  The average post was about 750 words, and the median was close to the mean for a change.

Most Commented Post of the Week

In this case, nothing else could compete with the tale of the kiddie-diddling Major General (Gilbert & Sullivan must be looking down in absolute horror). He’s going to have plenty of time to contemplate the square of the hypotenuse where he’s going; he might not be able to do all ten years, at age 71, but hey, it gives him something to strive for. That post drew 16 comments, and the runner up, about some wretched white supremacist criminals in New Hampshire, drew 12 — including a surprisingly tame discussion of race and IQ. But then, our commenters rock.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t note that commenter Daniel E Watters corrected us on a gun-ID quiz, and many commenters caught our brain-dead error (reporting an M249 as an M240). We’re lucky to have such sharp-eyed, and just plain sharp, readers.

The Week in Posts

Here’s the recap of our posts for this week:

• We began with a Sunday Recovery
• On ranges in Okinawa, MP Marines Let ’em rip with crew-served weapons.
• When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have SUVs, like the Tahoenaut that left a motorcyclist circling the drain, and bugged out. (As of Saturday night, the cops still don’t have him).
• The Atlantic says we should defer to the opinion of a lying lifer murderer. We say: You’re Killin’ Us.
• We show you a picture of Guns at the Business End and invite you to guess.
• When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have RVs, in which they’ll do unspeakable things to innocent kids. Worse, the NAMBLA poster child-rapist is a retired Army general.
• We’re starting a new project, a standoff scale Colt Model 630 as carried on the Son Tay Raid, in Let’s Build Retro Part 1: Planning the Build. We’ll have some fun, build a neat gun, and educate a teenager, all at once.
• Let’s build Retro: Should have been Part 1: Why? By that we mean more “why build” in general than “why build retro” specifically, but we give you some justifications for the course we’re embarking on.
• When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have baseball bats, and we provide a case in point.
• Let’s Build Retro: Part 3: Parts Inventory, We can’t build the thing if we don’t have all the bits, so we show you several ways to do a workable inventory.
• Engagement Dynamics: Expect the Gorilla because he just might be there (or it just might be a college student in a lame gorilla suit, as one literal-minded commenter tells us).
• Breaking: Obama bans surp reimports, attacks CMP, NFA trusts. You start to get the idea the guy behind the Irresolute Desk really doesn’t like us all that much.
• The best argument against White Supremacy… has always been white supremacists.
• A small-scale but sophisticated resumption of VG1-5A production is a Fascinating project at GunLab and Weaponeer.
• Mags with a Message: Noveske Johnny Mag raises funds for John Noveske’s surviving kids.
• We round up lawyers on the Obama NFA Trust NPRM, and the consensus seems to be, it could have been worse but it really is a pretty rotten proposal.
• Sometimes we watch a movies so you don’t have to, and unless you’re a glutton for punishment, our Saturday Matinee 2013 035: Back to 1942 is one of those films: technically brilliant but depressing in its tragedy.
• And that brings us back to do, do, do, do…. to That was the week that was: 2013 Week 35 (as you see, we finally broke down and linked recursively to this post. Just so you Aspies reading this can go in circles!)

Again, these will be linked later. We wanted to get this post up before next week.

How we did on last week’s promises

Pretty awesome as we didn’t make any promises, so whatever we did is all good. Well, we did say two weeks ago we

[S]till owe the technical post on Bull’s HARP, we’re going to discuss the .40 S&W a little, and we have a horror story from an anti-gun state that makes the kid run in for dummy ammo in Mass look like crimefighting at its best. We also haven’t done a WWWW in a while (that’s Wednesday Weapons Website of the Week for those who are not naturally acronymble).

So of those four promises in the Week 35 TW3, we accomplished two in Week 34 (the .40 post, The Problem with .40, and a WWWW,  Wednesday Weapons Website of the Week: Gun-Deals.com. We didn’t get to the horror story post (which is from NJ) or the Bull opus, so they roll over. And while we got the Matinee and TW3 this week, we missed the WWWW.

For Next Week

Our goal remains to post three times a day, six days a week, and more specifically  one gun-tech post and one SOF, UW, or war-related post up daily. We promise, along with the rolled-over posts from two weeks back, to give you a WWWW, a Saturday Matinee, and a TW3 before the week ends at midnight Saturday. What’s more we’re going way out on a limb to promise one back Matinee — at least. And this a short, holiday week!