take that Black Bart

Oh cap guns, the guns of my youth.  Those little red rolls with the black explosive dimple.  Pow!  Take that Black Bart.  I don't  remember exactly how they worked, seems like there was a chamber in the handle and then you thread it through something, and the trigger mechanism drew a new cap into position under the hammer, and the spent caps emerged from the top of the guns.  There were even some guns with a barrel that turned and you inserted a six cap round into them, which was way cool, but you had to reload after every six shots. 

As Old Dog points out. although getting shot was a form of losing. it was also an opportunity to develop your thespian talents, I like to think I put on a pretty good display.  After a discreet amount of time for mourning, you were allowed to declare yourself a new man and rejoin the fray.  We also had the concept of the dying breath, where, while knocking on heaven's door, you were allowed to do a few things, shoot a few people, run down a block, climb a fence, before the sweet breath of life left you. 

One Christmas it seems the whole neighborhood got burp guns for Christmas.  I think they were supposed to be automatic weapons, when you pulled the trigger a satisfying brrraap sound came out  and maybe something lit up.  We killed each other and were killed maybe hundred times before we came in to eat Christmas supper.

My hood was never very well armed explosive wise. There was talk of cherry bombs and M-80s but the only thing we ever actually had was ladyfingers.  Ladyfingers.  My face is red at how wimpy we were.  We did have something of an missile force.  If you loosely wrapped the head of a match in tin foil and heated it with another match the gasses would fly out the back and the missile would be propelled, oh about a foot.

Swamp donkey.  I had to look that one up.  When you ask Mr Google he supplies several of those urban dictionary sites where well, any asshole, I'm sorry, internet expert, can supply a definition and they vary accordingly, but the most common definition seemed to be some unattractive woman, who would take advantage of a guy when he was in his cups and soil his purity..  It made it seem like they were sort of evil, reaping their unwary prey.  Like some guy would don his beer goggles and get lucky with some woman not up to his high standards and then blame it all on her.  Made me a little embarrassed to be a guy.  I think it also meant a boar in the south.

I agree with those reliable news sources.  It would be interesting to know how they compiled the list.  Did they take a poll, did they consult experts?.  One way you can tell is that when one of them gets something wrong, it's a bit of a scandal, so they have reason to avoid that, whereas if Fox news gets something wrong it's a shrug of the shoulders and calling the exposer a liar, and no real reason to avoid that happening in the future.


I don't think genes are specific enough to have a gene that goes for blood sacrifice to some god and also for mass murder.  It's not  like you have a gene for mountain climbing, you have a gene for seeking excitement and that may lead you to climbing mountains or racing cars or writing cleverly worded posts to the Beaglestonian in the morning.

Sacrifices actually were pretty logical.  You were surrounded by forces that you didn't understand, but maybe if you gave them something they would go easy on you or do you a favor.  A big bribe.  Certainly logical.  How exactly this decapitated cow was going to please the god of harvests is a bit tricky, but maybe the god just saw that people were doing something for Him, even if the sacrifice didn't do Him any good in particular, it was a little show of respect, a kissing of the ass, which is always appreciated.  Isn't that what's behind all the great cathedrals and all those psalms weighted down with praise?