http://www.wethearmed.com/

We should be hitting 1,000 members in the next couple of days. That’s pretty awesome.

The board is growing and I like the vibe. It is pretty laid back and comfy. So far, so good.

On Saturday night after the Gunshow From Hell 2008 my wife and I went to the Coldplay concert in Salt Lake. I had gotten some free tickets, shout out to 101.9 The End.  I was not a Coldplay fan, but Mrs. Correia loves them.

I wasn’t expecting much, as I’d heard their music, and it seemed kind of sedate. Live however, they were absolutely awesome. It was one of the better shows that I had seen.  They were energetic and fun. At one point the band went out and played a couple of songs in the audience. We were about five feet away for that bit. Mrs. Correia noted that the bouncers kept an eye on me because apparently I was the scariest looking person in touching distance.

I was so not a Coldplay fan that I actually didn’t even know they were from until they spoke. ( “Hey, I didn’t know they were English” and all the fans around me look at me like I’m stupid) I’d have to say that I’m a fan now though. The last time I had an experience like this was with Radiohead, not that they were English, I knew that, I just wasn’t expecting much, and instead got an absolutely awesome show.

And that was despite the lousy acoustics of the Energy Solutions Arena. That building has the worst sound of anyplace I’ve ever heard a concert. A wall of thunder descends from the ceiling and bludgeons your ears the entire time. You get a sound like a lumbering brontosaurus bouncing off the walls and they still managed to sound good.

The first opening act was a band from Texas called Sleeper Car. They were pretty good. Then the second opening act sucked beyond all comprehension. I don’t know what the guy’s name was, and that’s probably a good thing, because I’d be cursing it right now.

Basically it was some sort of 30 minute techno song/performance video.  The cartoon reminded me of Adult Swim’s Super Jail, only Super Jail is more interesting, and it is over in less time. It had this repetitive beat that would die down, and we would all cheer, thinking that it was actually over, then Fooooooom  Foooooom it would start again. Then weird cartoons would play flashing colors and words like FANTASY and crap like that. Since I hadn’t eaten any psychedelic mushrooms and still have all of my frontal lobe intact, I didn’t really get anything out of it.  I got bored and went and got a $4.00 coke so I missed the big finale. Thank goodness.

So the opening act was good, the next act was painful, and the main show was excellent. Overall, it was a great night.  Coldplay surprised the hell out of me.

This weekend was the Gunshow From Hell ’08. If you read my earlier post, Gun Sales Up Ten Billion Percent, or you don’t live in a cave, you may be aware that guns sales are up a smidgen. As in, sell your kidney and you might be able to get a stripped lower receiver made in Pakistan.

The FBMG crew was in our regular spot. Unlike most of the other dealers, our prices were the same as usual. We decided not to sexually violate our customers with a Garden Weasel just because we could.  Basically if somebody had an AR15 in stock, it was because they were charging too much. We saw basic Bushhamsters for $1,500, WASRs for $1,000, and my personal favorite, a stripped Stag lower receiver for $499. (One of my Minions had to take a picture of that one and ask the dealer how he could sleep at night)

Our prices are basically the same as before the election. Worst case scenario on guns we were getting on backorder was MSRP. We took orders for hot items, like AR15s, and had people put 1/3 down to get in line. That means 15-20 weeks right now, but that beats getting violated with aforementioned Garden Weasel.

We did an absurd amount of business. Saturday was the biggest single sales day that FBMG has ever had, and after Election Week, that’s saying a lot. I went to rock concert Saturday night. The gunshow was more crowded.  My booth was standing room only for most of the day.

The mood was kind of panicky. Some people were cranky, bossy, pushy, and obnoxious, and at gunshows, that’s usually just the dealers. I’ve never had so many people rudely interrupt me while I’ve been helping another customer as I did on Saturday. “HEY! Ya gots any Rock Rivers!” No, douchebag, and get your ass back in line while I help this other person that was ahead of you.

A market like this brings out the worst in some people. We have a bunch of belt fed machine guns in 7.62x54R. One ammo wholesaler had a ton of that in stock, so we went over first thing in the morning and bought it all. Hey, belt feds suck up the ammo! Well, some guys standing in line behind us actually got angry with us for DARING to buy up that much ammo.  Hey, welcome to the party dude. I’m sorry you waited until after the election of an America hating socialist to stock up, but that’s how it is. Buddy, if you want strict rationing… well, wait until Barack destroys the economy and everything gets rationed… never mind. That’s just too depressing.  

Overall, fear of what the Democrats are going to do has driven the gun buying public into a frenzy. We got so sick of people asking what Barack is going to do that on Sunday we brought in a Magic 8 Ball to answer the question. Every time somebody asked us that same question, we would just whip out the ball. “Is Obama going to ban guns?” “Answer is unclear…” “Is ammo going to get taxed?” “Definitely yes.” So on and so forth.

Ironically though, the first time we used Magic 8 Ball, somebody asked if we were going to lose the 2^nd Amendment and Magic 8 Ball said “You’re F*****!” I didn’t even know that was an option on there, scary prophetic little ball.

If anybody has a big poster of Barack Obama you want to mail me, I’m going to put it on the wall of my shop with a sign that says Salesman Of The Year. But then again, if you read this blog, I’m assuming that if you’ve got a picture of Barack on hand it is either taped to the bottom of a urinal or is serving as your dart board. I probably couldn’t put up such a poster because my customers would deface my wall, and probably burn the store down in the process.

I was exhausted by the time we got done Sunday night. Luckily, it took us literally 1/3^rd of the time to unload compared to loading because we’d moved so much product. We had left a couple of guys at the shop, one to teach a class, and one to answer phones. We’d cleaned the store out of inventory and iNick still managed to sell like $4,000 worth of stuff. I was like “What did you sell?” and he was like “I don’t know!”

It was a remarkable gunshow. I’m interested to see how the January Pre-Inauguration Day Gunshow goes. I’m hoping to get a picture of a $5,000 Olympic Arms or something. I don’t care how desperate you guys might be to stock up, just avoid that Garden Weasel.

One of my kids broke my wife’s decorative wall mirror. I’ve got to hand it to them. Usually when one of them does something bad, the other two rat them out instantly.  All three are staying mum as to who did it. So either one of them is calling in favors, they really don’t know who broke it, or they all broke it together. I’m figuring #3.

We couldn’t just replace it with a regular mirror, because my wife built a decorative wall hanger thingy. (I don’t know, she watches those housy shows and is way more constructive than I am) so we have to have the exact same size mirror.

So my wife dispatched me to Ikea. We have an Ikea directly across the freeway from FBMG, so it was supposed to be easier for me to pick up a new Kolja. I love how everything at Ikea has a weird name, like it isn’t 32″ round mirror, it is a Kolja. You can also purchase Lofkas, Brimpas, Huffalumps, Skordingers, and Fragglerocks. If I was writing an epic fantasy novel sword and sorcery kind of thing, I would just use the Ikea catalog to come up with names.  I bet Dungeon Masters everywhere keep a copy of that thing handy. “Random encounter, (rolls dice) Barbarians! And the leader’s name is… (flips pages) Kraghor! Kraghor of… Fricka!”

At lunch I entered Ikea and wandered through the warehouse from Indiana Jones for forty-five minutes looking for mirrors. Women really like Ikea, but I just don’t get it. Now if I was single however, I would totally hang out here, because this is apparently where all of the good looking women in their thirties are. Which makes sense, since Mrs. Correia is in her thirties, and is smoking hot. Yes, I am that lucky. It is good to be king.

So as I’m wandering through this mega store (Yes, Sir, the Koljas are across from the Oderslipins and the Octopussies, turn left when you enter the Gnome Kingdom and follow Fafnir the Wolf to Odin’s Throne. They’re beneath the hooves of Trumpflarn the Magic Unicorn) and I finally pick up the mirror, walk the 2 kilometers (It is a European store, so it is metric) to checkout, only to discover that even though there are 50 cash registers, there are exactly 3 open. And all 3 of them are the self-checkout lines.  Sweet! European style efficiency! I usually have to go to Walmart for this kind of service!

This is the LAST place that anybody should have to try to do a self checkout.  So I’m standing in line behind 300 attractive women and 4,000 screaming kids who are moving piles of furniture trying to find the barcode on a sofa (sorry, a Flugsnor), and we’re all waiting on a grandma who can’t figure out how to input her Grippen or her Luffapo (which I personally thought was an illegal sex act from Thailand, which shows how out of touch I am with the Ikea world!).  It was a painful wait.

If you can afford a six million square foot warehouse, then you can open another damn cash register. I don’t care if all your employees have birdflu, somebody get out here and find the friggin’ barcode on grandma’s Luffapo, now damn it!   

So it took me over an hour to buy a $20 mirror. Unnaceptable Ikea! Your Viking forfathers would be so offended that they would pillage many villages for that!  I’m so offended that I won’t be shopping at Ikea again. (which doesn’t really say anything, since I’ve only been there once before when it opened because my wife dragged me along, and my son wandered off and became Ikea of Utah’s first Code Adam missing child. We found him beating up another three year old over control of one of those games with the little sliding blocks of wood, so I bought him some meatballs)  So no more Ikea for me.

Well, at least until my wife makes me go pick up something else.

This question was raised on www.wethearmed.com  So I put some thought into it.

Bail out the auto industry?

Let me put it this way. When you have a company that is contractually obligated to pay $75 an hour to the guy who SWEEPS THE FLOOR… you deserve to FAIL.

Let me rephrase.

FAIL! Damn it! Go to hell, go to hell and die!

I’m sick and tired of this crap.

The argument for strategic industry is one thing, but it is fundamentally flawed. The days of Detroit flipping over and turning out Sherman tanks are gone. If the auto industry tried to tool up for wartime production our new tank would be the M2 NADER, which blows for combat but gets 32 miles on the highway, and three Iranians and an angry goat driving a ’75 Toyota pickup truck (that’s still running) could burn a fleet of them.

Screw it. The unions raped the auto industry. It is time for a reboot.

In a true capitalistic society, these companies would croak, then somebody else would come along, learn from their mistakes, and buy their assets. Then you would have a new and improved industry. That method has only worked since the invention of freedom and money, but hey, let’s try this new way, ’cause this Marx guy seems pretty cool!

Bailing out banks is stupid. Bailing out AIG is stupid. Bailing out Detroit is stupid. I’m sick of stupid. George Bush, you suck more every day. Nancy Pelosi, it is impossible for you to suck anymore, as you are the baseline of all suck.