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.

Okay, this is weird, but I’m posting this to my blog for a reason. I got a request for a list of non-Amazon reviews and posts about MHI. (39 reviews and still at 5 stars) For the last few days I’ve been trying to e-mail a list of links, but the e-mail just will not go through. I don’t know if my e-mail will only allow a message with a certain number of links, or what, so I’m going to post the list here.

Giant review thread on THR: http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=330104&highlight=monster+hunter+international

Gun Free Zone: http://gunfreezone.net/wordpress/index.php/2008/09/03/monster-hunter-international-by-larry-correia/

Mojo Philter: http://mojophilter.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/monster-hunter-international/

Uncle Hugo’s: http://www.unclehugo.com/prod/newsletterSection.shtml?seq=81&section=sfReviews

Daddy, Disasters, and Dragons: http://daddydnd.blogspot.com/2008/10/author-larry-correia-pages-452-wow.html

Cowtown Cop: http://cowtowncop.blogspot.com/2008/08/weekend-book-review.html?showComment=1219520460000

Lawdog Files: http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2008/01/monster-hunter-international.html

Madogre discussion forum: http://madogre.lefora.com/2008/06/28/monster-hunter-international/page1/#post496390

Goodread’s discussion thread: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2570856.Monster_Hunter_International

Glock Talk: http://glocktalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9964359

Bayou Renaissance Man: http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2008/01/monster-hunter-international.html

Somebody asked me on WTA what I was working on now. I’m not the kind of guy that works on just one thing. I kind of jump around, fueled by 64 oz Vanilla Cokes from 7-11 (and I don’t use the sissy vanilla, I go over to the coffee bar and squirt in 10 squirts of the French vanilla syrup, because that’s how I roll) Here is what I’m currently working on. With luck, most of these will see the light of day.

Right now I’ve got plans for the following MHI projects:

MHI:2 (from O.Z.P.) Rough Draft Done
MHI:3 (from O.Z.P.) storyline is done, not written
MHI:Alpha (from Earl) storyline is done, not written
MHI:Nemesis (from Franks) only exists as loose notes
An anthology of short stories from various other authors, and two from me, the origin stories for Holly and Trip
The MHI Employee Handbook (a collection of helpful essays for new Hunters)

In addition, I just wrapped up a screenplay called Void which I’m pitching to a local production company. They’re right down the road and have sold a few movies.  If they don’t pick it up, I’m going to show it around. It isn’t in the MHI universe, but it should be. It is a tale of mad science, alternative realities, and shape shifting monsters. I wrote the effects scenes to go along specifically with the kind of effects this local company is capable of doing. I’m digging it, and hope I can get it made into an actual movie.

There is a basic plot outline for a screenplay set in the MHI universe. I’m saving that one. It is the story of the TV news show Primeline, and their special episode where they investigate a day in the life of a professional monster hunter, then of course, it all goes horribly wrong.

Right now I am working on the revised actual book version of the Mr. Nightcrawler trilogy, the first of which appeared in rough draft form on THR.  It is an epic thriller written by me and NC. It is the only story that I’ve ever seen with two seperate writers, both writing their own protagonist in the first person, and these guys do not get along, up to and including a knife fight.  We’ve created an epic story of espionage, thievery, betrayal, destruction, war, revolution, murder, love, and redemption.  I’m as proud of it as anything I’ve ever written. 

We’re revamping Book I now. My part is probably 80% done.  My part of Book II is probably 70% done. The story for Book III is done, but no writing yet. Once we get I polished up, we’ll be farming it around looking for a publisher. I should be able to find someone now that I’ve actually got a resume as a professional type author person.

Once the Nightcrawler trilogy is wrapped up, I’m either writing MHI:3, or working on another project that’s been killing me to write for a year now. It is part sci-fi, part thriller, part action-adventure, part social-commentary. I can’t go into too many details on this one yet, but I’m as excited about this idea as I’ve been for anything I’ve ever thought of. It is the story of a reality TV show where the contestants compete to overthrow a country in a violent military coup.  Live.