Wallets out, please.

Who cares that it's to support a cause to cure a disease that will statistically strike some men that you know?!?

We are talking salacious content by some of your sexiest bloggers, and you can make this happen.

At any get-together of bloggers over the last few years, it's been hard to miss that Mike and Jennifer are very fit.

And this last year or so, that Stingray has been hitting it HARD on the Crossfit.

And that Jay G has over the last couple of years turned very lean.

Comes now the horse race at the end of this month of Kilted To Kick Cancer, and we've got Stingray promising to wax his tender nethers, and if he gets enough donations, he'll introduce his newly-hairless promised land to Jay, with video documentation for your sordid entertainment.*

We've got Evyl Robot's wife Jennifer promising to put on a PVC catsuit, and video it for your pleasure. I don't mind saying that I put in a second donation for E.R., simply on that basis alone. I don't think that I'm being too forward when I tell you simply this: You want this to happen. This Internet will be a better place for it. 

Then, Evyl Robot promises to get into drag if he wins, and frankly, this guy is pretty damned hetero, so it will be awkward. However, as I mentioned, he's really fit, so he'll probably rock a nice little black dress, or even a little cotton gingham number.

Jay G will not only shave his moustache, but he'll provide naughty poses in kilt upon demand. Honestly, he's just half a bottle of spiced rum away from anything you'd suggest. Ask me how I know this.**

Donate to Jay.
Donate to Mike (with Jennifer in support.)
Donate to Stingray.
Oh, and if you want to make a healthy medic from Louisiana happy, donate to Ambulance Driver.
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*And, likely, for the use of Colorado law enforcement.
**I really should write up that weekend in St. Louis in April.

Made.

I was getting my ammo together to shoot a local tactical match, when the range officer mentioned casually, "I didn't know that you had a blog."

Me: "A... 'blog', did you call it? Isn't that where geeks write down their inanities for imaginary people to read?"

Him: "Something like that. I found this blog with an author named 'Matt G," who is a gun-friendly Texas cop, and it occured to me that you must be him."

Me: "'Matt G', you say? No last name listed? Huh. Sounds like he's trying to stay somewhat anonymous."

Him: "I'll be sure and respect his privacy, then."

He's a good man.

Let's cause a disturbance in the force.

My friend Stingray is crazy.

Wait. That's not quite right. He's sane enough to be moral and to focus his attentions towards projects with worthy goals. But he has NO brake pedal in any game of  Double-Dog-Dare-You. He won't back down. It's, uh, dangerous, to play chicken with this man.

So he's taken this Kilted To Kick Cancer fundraiser pretty seriously.

Stingray just told me: "As of ten minutes or so ago, I'm ahead of Ambulance Driver by $195, behind Jay by $1145."

Now, that lag behind my new friend Jay may seem a bit much, but I promise you that whatever Stingray is promising he'll do to reward a rally? He'll do. It may not be pretty, but I bet it's entertaining.

Go give. See what that nut will do, next. Or? Humiliate him by sending the money to Ambulance Driver, and watch Stingray drop another notch.
I suppose that Jay could just be pushed over the top, too.

Let's put at least a few bucks into the kitty to help end prostate cancer, please.

Mishmash.

--Without going into details, that free iPhone tracker app works. Stick it on your kid's phone, with the settings so that only the account holder can see where it is. Also works for your own phone, if you trust the phone company with that info. Lots do, lots don't.

--My new FD bunker gear came in again, with the proper color striping on it. (It had designated me a captain, before.) It's so clean. It has no odor. No smoke or sweat or mud. It has never been anyone else's before. It has a drag strap on the back. It has my name on the back in 4 inch tall reflective letters. Between that and my professional tag over my locker, I really feel like I am a member of the team. One of the firefighters laughed and said, "Hey, you finally are somebody!" I actually kind of got that feeling, too.

--I worked a house fire recently. The ambient temperature in the shade was 101 degrees when we arrived. We fought mostly to save a portion of the house, which we did. But we lost a lot of it. Wearing an insulated suit with a cowl over your neck really makes you hot before putting on that SCBA and going into a smoke-filled hot burning building. This in turn makes you suck harder on that air. No one much talks about the cooling effect of the gas expansion from that sweet compressed air. The simple desire to get cooler can make you take bigger gasps so that a tank that should give about 30 minutes lasts about 10 minutes. Or less.

--Note to the President: With the recent murder of our US ambassador to Libya, I wonder where our recently-decommissioned FB-111s* went. Are they mothballed? Did we sell them to other countries? What would it take to re-commission them? Oh, I know that there are other planes serving their old role just fine, or better (see: B1B Lancer). But I think that the psychological impact of a Tripoli sky full of Aardvarks again would be worth something. 

With an average speed of 600kmph, it should take a hair less than 9 hours to get a flight of Lancers there. Mr. President, if you want me to believe that you're a tough guy, get off the whole "I gave the order to the guy who gave the order to the guy who told the guys to kill Bin Laden." Instead, put on your game face, pick up the phone, and convince Spanish PM Rajoy that he'll hardly notice a squadron of jets flying 5 miles over the neck of the Iberian Peninsula.

I know that you like to have crib notes, so here's your flight plan, which I made just for you:

Click To Embiggen.

--My suggestion? Drop a few hundred GPS-guided inert practice bombs on our own embassy in Tripoli. It's our soil, after all. The kinetic kill to those who hoisted the black flag over our soil will be just as real, and the message sent just as strong: "We could have made this hit using a conventional bomb, or a fuel-air bomb, or even nucs. And we did it with obsolete planes. Don't piss us off." No collateral damage. Just stack one nose cone into the fins of the previous practice bomb.

--I'm taking PADM 5010 at university this semester. "Wow, graduate Public Administration courses are so exhilarating!" said no one, ever. I'm waiting for my books to arrive. If I hadn't bought them used on Amazon, I'd have been out $250 to $400. As it is, I'm out about $100 for books for one three hour course.

--I took an off-duty job last week guarding a bridge over an interstate highway. It didn't go anywhere. I went up onto it and took a camera phone picture of the traffic going by underneath.

--When I stepped barefoot outside to get the mail this morning, I found some public works guys picking up branches and throwing in the back of a truck, so I helped them. When my shirt rode up while pitching brush, one of them laughed that I had a pistol holstered. Yeah, if I've got on pants, I do. The family of the late former sheriff and police chief Herbert Proffitt undoubtedly wishes that he had done so, to.  Proffitt was 82 and recently retired for the second time, when while checking his mail he was gunned down by a former customer of his, harboring a 40 year grudge.  It is your duty to make it hard for them to kill you, and/or your tribe. Do your duty.  Otherwise, someone else is going to have to clean that mess up, and that involves apprehending the right desperate armed murderer without getting hurt. What's the first step in dealing with a snake bite? Kill the snake.

--I'm about to try to step up for a local citizen that's without much resources. We'll see if I don't screw this up.

--My brother and I talked a bit today about religion. I was surprised at how close we were were on the subject, which we hadn't talked about in some years. But it was one of those conversations where neither one of us would have gotten upset if we had discovered that we were at opposite ends of the spectrum, either. I am happy that he and I are at this easy-going place in our relationship.

--With a high of 75 this weekend, we may have finally made it through the long hot death march of summer. But I don't trust it not to give me triple digit temperatures again, until I'm well into the second half of my second month ending with -er.

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* Ask your National Security Advisor to get you Condi Rice's number, and ask her what these are. Don't rely on your party's defense guys to get this one right!

Wiping our mouths and moving on.

While working out hard for his new job, my partner hit a dog while bicycling, face-planted, and injured his head badly. While he recovered in hospital, I heard his wife, who was understandably shaken by the nearly-tragic event, tell him "The bike goes. No more bicycling, ever."

I didn't say anything. She loves him dearly, and was speaking from her heart. She perceived that this veteran police officer's nemesis was a Trek bicycle. She wanted to eliminate it, even though riding it had given him low-impact, fun workouts which were integral to his losing weight and getting fit, which in turn was part of the equation that had resulting in his just having been informed that he was getting his dream job.  He is now employed there, working hard and winning.

I think about how we as a nation responded to the worst national day of my life, exactly 11 years ago today.

"Never again," I heard said time and time again.

That was silly talk. Of course our nation will be hit with tragedy again. That's part of what comes when you're the most powerful nation on the planet; you become the target. And if I haven't made it clear in my rants here, or you're new, understand this: no amount of expenditure will stop us from being attacked, somehow. But our nation overreacted. In the name of safety, we imposed undue restrictions on ourselves, and spent inappropriate amounts of money, and perpetuated military actions that could have been shut down far sooner.

When an enraged punk manages to land a punch on your kisser, the toughest and most effective thing that you can do is to wipe the blood off your mouth, smile, and tell him that he hits like a little girl. That is, not to stop down, curl up into a tight ball, and say (incorrectly) "he can't hurt me now."

When it happens again, let us resolve to conduct business as usual. Oh, sure-- hit back if there's a shot available. but do not overreact. Do not cease the free enterprise that actually made us great.