Weekend Open Thread: The Seal has been Broken Edition

Welcome everyone. I regret to tell you that our annual nightmare has returned…

 

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I find it amusing that she joined in on the joke. The song is terrible, and I pity retail workers everywhere who are going to have it on loop for the next 2 months.

You can’t hide…

Scarier than anything on Halloween.

I am not ready for Christmas. Heck I am not ready for Thanksgiving yet. I am however ready for our weekly look at the  KNIFE Magazine Events Calendar .

This weekend we have the Pigeon Forge Spirit of the Steel show, where Mark is for the weekend.

Fall Spirit of Steel Pigeon Forge Knife Show

Plus 2 more…

WKCC State Line Knife Show

Texas Custom Knife Show

Next weekend there are a 4 more, which might be the busiest one on the calendar…

Friday Night Blade Affair

Wanenmacher’s Tulsa Arms Show

Fall California Custom Knife Show

NCCA Peabody Show

 

Halloween night…

The morning after…

Second Halloween,

Anyone watch Great Pumpkin this week?

Anyone wish Charlie Brown would haul off and kick Lucy?

Do any of you still watch Forged in Fire?

Apropos of nothing at all…

I will return to that at the end.

Our weekly musical selection…

Only one musical selection tonight. Not because I haven’t been a Sublime fan since college, but because most of their best songs are pretty NSFW, and Santaria has the best video by a mile. Bradley Nowell died of a drug overdose shortly before their breakout album released, and he appears mostly as a hologram in this video, released posthumously. As a side note, Lou Dog, the Dalmatian, who featured prominently in their videos, song lyrics, and was a fixture on stage with the band, lived out his life with Sublime’s band manager, dying in 2001. I am not the only one who was curious about this, since it autofilled after “what happened to Lou Do(og Sublime)”

Time for our weekly giveaway, brought to you by Rosecraft Blades.

Rick K. was our winner last week, and by coincidence we happened to have two of the Castorea folders –  which was his first pick. So all but the Physicians are on the board for this week’s winner, Stuart B. Take your pick of any of the others…

Usual rules apply for next week’s drawing.  Up to 5 comments or replies are your entries, new commenters get double-credit, and their comments get held in moderation the first time out until I can approve them. Good luck everyone.

As for the Physicians… Thank you Hocky for your very thorough evaluation and documentation of the knife. Seems like your biggest knock on it was the backspring, which I noticed too. I think part of that is an endemic issue with Physicians design. The blade is so long that there is a lot more leverage. I notice this on vintage ones, which I have seen more than modern, but until now hadn’t thought about it much. The pen blade requires a second spring, and the knife is relatively narrow, so the sacrifice is made in spring tension. The other Rosecraft traditionals have really nicely stiff springs.  We have a Beaver Creek Barlow in the office that is a wonderful two hand open.

The other conversation topic of note last week was bears.

I had many black bear encounters over my 2 decade guide career. Two of note. Mostly because they went exaclty how they should have. The first was on a one client trip. We were sitting on a large rock having lunch on Greenbrier Creek, and my Spidey-sense made me turn around.  I saw an adolescent male who was curiously walking up the creek towards us. My client took off like a prom dress, I jumped up on the rock and started waving and shouting. It turned around and walked the other direction. I pulled out my camera, and took a couple of pictures (I couldn’t find in a timely manner), but when I stopped shouting he started walking back towards me. I threw a couple of rocks in its direction, and the ricochets convinced it to scamper off.

The other was actually kind of magical.

 

I was scouting ahead of my clients (a dad, grandpa, and teenage son), when I crested a mobile-home sized boulder and saw a mama bear and 3 cubs crossing the stream about 40 yards upstream. Mama was between me and the cubs, and I hunkered down to watch for a minute. I waived my clients up to me and we “Kilroy’ed” our heads over the boulder.

 

Mama knew we were there, because she went to the third cub in line and bit it on the butt to hurry it along.

It was the animal kingdom equivalent of mom giving her kid a ‘dope-slap” on the back of the head and saying “hurry up dummy”. It was one of the most remarkable things I have ever witnessed.

I am more afraid of squirrels.

That was actually my favorite meme of the week. This one is a meme classic, that I think I have shared before.

Where is Bob Ross to paint this…

Happy little clouds of exhaust.

My son liked that one.

Too soon?

Personally, I never think it is too soon to laugh at a Darwin award.

Or dad jokes.

 

Or literal potty humor…

 

I’d be suspicious too…

Clever…

The struggle is real…

Unexpected turn…

All work and no play makes Clay a dull boy…

Somewhat related…

Jack just wanted some peace and quiet to write.

How would you like to be stuck behind that for a long drive?

I love these warped children’s books.

Most cats give off “I’ll shank you” vibes.

For Mark R…

Memes are how I relate to people…

 

 

I do it because the WOT is one of our most viewed post every week. Which leads me to…

I have moved this to the bottom of the post. Not because I have wavered in my support of Israel destroying those who deny Israel’s very right to exist, but rather because it breaks up the flow of the WOT when it is wedged in the middle.

Feel good story of the week:

Dee Snider of Twisted Sister has responded to the Israeli Defense forces (IDF) playing his band’s hit song ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’.

After being asked by TMZ at the Los Angeles International Airport if he was okay with the IDF using the band’s 1984 track, Snider said: “You know what? Israelis, the assault on the Israelis, people are losing sight of something. People saying that, ‘Oh, the response is gonna be too intense for what happened.’ Well, you don’t get to decide on the response when you do heinous things to civilians. You don’t get to say, ‘Oh, that’s enough, that’s enough retaliation.’

He continued: “No, it doesn’t work like that. When you cross that line, you’re burning people, you’re slaughtering people, you’re raping people, you’re just killing people after what happened at that festival, you don’t get to say, ‘Okay, your revenge can be this much.’ No. Payback’s a mothereffer. And I come from that school. You cross that line, you know… Shit’s gonna happen.”

Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider responds to Israeli forces playing ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’

He actually goes on to give a very articulate defense of freedom of speech as well, and even not censoring people who use the song with whom he does not agree.

A few more relevant memes…

Queers for Palestine is like Chickens for KFC.

Just a reminder that “From the River to the Sea” is a call for genocide of the Jewish people and an eradication of the State of Israel.

 

They say that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to say nothing. I will not be silent so long as I have a voice.

 

Have a good weekend everyone…