This fella goes to a gunshow and buys a whole bunch of ammunition, a whole bunch.  He leaves the show and puts it in the back seat of his convertible.  It was a nice day so he has the top down.

On the way home he stops at a gas station to fill up and while he's doing so, a very attractive blond drives up next to him and notices his ammo.

"Hey Mister, would you trade sex for ammo?" she asks.

"I don't know.  What Calibers do you have?"




(As told to me by a the president and CEO of an ammo company last week.)

All The Best,
Frank W. James

This is a 1911 pistol from Rock Island Armory.  (BTW, the "Rock Island" in the trademark is NOT the Rock Island Arsenal positioned near the Quad cities in this country but rather the island of Corregidor in the Philippines.)  The gun is chambered for the .22 TCM round.  It is a wide body 1911 and holds 17 cartridges.  Important point:  In this cartridge, this pistol has NO recoil.  None.  Nada. Zilch.  I liked it.

This is the factory .22 TCM ammo.  Out of the pistol they claim it has an over 2,000 fps muzzle velocity with a 40 gr. projectile.  I thinks it is entirely possible and makes far more sense to me than the 5.7x28mm or the 4.6x30mm "PDW" NATO rounds.


I got to fire and work briefly with the New Miroku built Winchester 1873 carbine in .357 Magnum caliber.  The gun I fired was extremely accurate.  I ended my string after I hit 2 stationary clay birds on a hill side at 100 yards in a row with my last two rounds.  The round was Winchester's white box 110 gr. .357 Magnum, but the MSRP is pricey.....well over $1,000.  Nice gun, though.


This is the New Beretta ARX-100 which is their 'Made for USA' civilian market version of their new select-fire military assault rifle, the ARX-160.  It uses a lot of plastic in its construction and the gun has a bevy of admirable features, but it also has a different 'feel' which I believe is due to a completely different center of gravity.  I'm not saying it's good or bad; just different.  Due to the bulkiness in its middle it would take me awhile to get used to it.


I also got to work briefly with this POF select-fire AR in .308 Win. caliber.  Extremely well built carbine, but I have to say that this particular gun was L-O-U-D!!!!  I mean really, really LOUD.  Still, it was an accurate, extremely so on full-auto, and a fun gun to play with.

That's about it.  I was gone all week and I will be in-'n-out for the next 2 weeks or more.  I've got 2 trips scheduled for TV work and then we are going out to Santa Monica to see Mike's film at the film festival, so posting will be as usual.......extremely sporadic....

All The Best,
Frank W. James

It was either, "Naw, IT"S NOT WET..."

or it was "Here Hold My Beer and WATCH This!!!..."

A local neighbor got stuck last week while I was in another state on business...

All The Best,
Frank W. James

I was driving for more than 270 miles today so I listened to Fox News on sat radio for a good while (I tuned to CNN during the commercials, but for once there was little difference) and it appears that Richard Nixon was a wanker compared to President Unicorn and his team. 

I mean even Nixon never tried to wiretap the Associated Press????

Add to that the fact they used the IRS to target their political opponents and it makes Old Tricky Dickie look absolutely benign by comparsion.

I still say this idiot and his team is incompetent, but even I didn't realize how venal they were in their ambitions.

This is one crooked son-na-bitch.  We knew that about Holder, but now even the whole world can see how crooked these clowns are.

Wonder how long they are going to last before Congress gets its act together?....

All The Best,
Frank W. James

The kid's poster for his first feature length film.  That's about all I've got for ya on Mother's day.

Well, other than the fact I'm working on a rewrite of the novel I finished a couple of years ago and I'm waaaaaay behind on getting stuff to the editor I hired.

Such is life....

All The Best,
Frank W. James

My cousins came in yesterday and planted the corn here where I live.  They did it in 2/3ths of a day and they made it look so easy.

The top picture is their CAT ag tractor pulling their new soil finisher.  It's 40 FEET WIDE!!! 

Chuck said, "We don't DO gardens!"
I said, "It's bigger than any garden I ever wanted."

The soil really worked up perfect and as you can see the ground had dried enough to raise a good dust.  Tile drainage in this area pays the dividends.

The bottom picture illustrates the fact except for turning around on the ends, It's Look MA, NO HANDS!  The tractor drives through the field on auto-steer and it runs off satellite guidance.

Hell I have a heck of a time working my new Android phone, I can't imagine learning how to operate the GPS auto-steer system, but it makes for 'straight throughs'...

All The Best,
Frank W. James

There is all kinds of hysteria in the MSM about 3-D Printers being able to 'manufacture' a handgun out of plastic without any governmental restraint, background check or other middling by some sort of overseer. 

This whole 3-D printable gun extravaganza has been developed to prove a point and that point is that 'Gun Control' is an exercise in futility against a determined opponent......and obviously the man behind this whole project is a determined opponent of gun control.

I'm not too wild about it either, but in my mind a lot of this stuff is a waste of energy and a bunch of hooey about nothing.  We (and by "We" I mean the human race around the world) have had the ability to manufacture very simple firearms for a relatively long time and it doesn't take any computer guru, a skilled machinist or even the possession of a high tech $50,000+ 3-D printer.

All it takes is a low-brass shotgun shell (any gauge) and a visit to the local plumbing supply store.

Go to the black iron pipe section.  Find a piece of the correct diameter that your low-brass (ie; low-pressure) shotgun shell fits into without an abundance of 'clearance'.  A snug fit is preferred but even if there are gaps, go visit the section with black electrical tape and tape the outside of the shell till it fits snugly into your selected piece of pipe.

That piece of pipe is your barrel and by federal law it must be at least 18 inches in length or you have a sawed off shotgun or a short barreled shotgun; which requires registration under the provisions of the NFA act.

Now then go find another piece of pipe that your barrel will just slip inside with very little clearance.  This piece is your 'receiver'.  It can be any length so 6 inches should work.

With a pipe threading machine machine threads on the end of the 2nd piece of pipe and find an end cap to fit those threads, but before securing it to the end of the 2nd piece of pipe, secure a piece of heavy cardboard or thin wood shingle and place a dull thumbtack in its very center.  Place this whole arrangement inside the cap that threads onto the end of the 2nd pipe.  That thumbtack is the firing pin.

When you are ready to shoot, simply insert the 'loaded' end of the first pipe inside the open end of the 2nd pipe and shove it smartly inside against the cap while 'aiming' the barrel at the object you want to shoot.

You don't need some $50,000 high tech 3-D printer.  All that is necessary is one low-brass shotgun shell (any gauge), some black iron pipe, an end cap and a thumbtack to make an untraceable firearm.

If you have multiple low-brass shotshells you can make multiple barrels in advance and probably reload this weapon faster than you can some single shot 3-D plastic gun made off a high tech printer.

Not only that it comes in a far more serious caliber.  Have you ever heard of a "...bloody rat-hole wound..."?

Now then with this information out and in wide circulation, is Chuckie Schumer going to try and outlaw black iron pipe, thumbtacks or low-brass shotgun shells???....

All The Best,
Frank W. James

We don't have all the details yet, but our son called yesterday and to let us know his film "OPEN MIKE AFTER THE APOCALYPSE" has been accepted as an entrant at the 2013 Santa Monica Film Festival. 

CORRECTION:  Okay, I got the location correct, but the film festival is wrong.  My son's film has been accepted at the "THE CINEMA at the EDGE Independent Film Festival" which is hosted by the Edgemar Center in Santa Monica.  The festival dates are May 30th through June 2nd, 2013.

Man!  That's still GREAT News!!!

It is totally his production and he had a LOT of help from people who read my old blog.  It runs 83 minutes in length and for such a young film-maker like him to get accepted is a major accomplishment.  He has a lot invested in this work and I'm not in any way talking about finances or money.

In other news; I worked one day last week on filming segments for GALLERY OF GUNS. We're filming this year in Peoria, Illinois and not North Carolina.

Strange how life turns out.  Visual story telling is what my son has wanted to do since middle-school and visual story telling is what film-making really is.  He graduates from college with a double major; Broadcast Journalism and News Writing and the very next day after he graduated I helped him move to Los Angeles so he could pursue his dream. 

I retire from farming and now like him I'm involved in visual story telling.

Due to the compliments I've been receiving for my efforts at this stuff, I now have a talent agent.  I'm NOT an actor (which is very apparent to most), but she said I would be marketed as a "personality".  I figure it's a lost cause but she is very upbeat and positive.  Although she did tell me she needs some 'pictures' to show clients. 

None of this was planned, but I'm pursuing it simply because retirement sucks!  It was time for me to stop farming.  It wasn't fun anymore and even now I don't miss it one bit......especially with this wet spring and the delayed corn planting.  (I've noticed that my gut doesn't do a flip-flop every time the weather report comes on the radio or TV.  That's a first for conditions like this.) 

I'm starting to enjoy this stuff and feel more confident in front of the camera.  I have no illusions about where it's going.  But it's something for me to do that's different from what I've done in the past.  It's challenging.  It beats conventional 'retirement' and maybe, just maybe, our son and I will be able to work together on one of his projects.

That's my Goal!...

All The Best,
Frank W. James

I've just finished watching a show on Current TV about the last 24 hours of Hunter S. Thompson's life.  I picked up on Thompson's writing immediately upon publication of his book "HELL'S ANGELS".  I bought a copy while I was still early into my collegiate career and my son found it  some years ago while he was still in his high school years and it has been his ever since.  (I think the actual copy is a 2nd printing of the work.)

I always admired Thompson for his writing style and the 'truth' of his writing.  When I embarked on my career as a 'professional writer', albeit as a 'shill' industry gunwriter (according to some), I followed many of the tenants he set forth.  The main one being an adherent to 'particapatory journalism'.  In plain language you had to actually do what you were writing about, whether it's a competition or a hunt or whatever.  You  had to get into the thick of it and write it as you felt it or experienced it.

I"ve learned over the many years I've been fortunate enough to be paid to write for publication that it's easy when you're young  to do this, but it becomes work, hard work in most instances, as you age.

The show I've just watched went on about how much 'pain' Thompson was in and how difficult it was for him to write because of his many years of alcohol and drug abuse.  I think the same thing was said about Ernest Hemingway after he committed suicide. 

Now, that I'm officially 67 years of age and OLD, the same as Thompson when he shot himself, I'm of the opinion he was a coward and a 'pussy'.  (If I'm permitted to use a colloquial terms that is politically incorrect.)  Life for most of us is a Son-of-A-Bitch and very few of us escape it without some major injuries or defeats, especially by the time most of us are eligible for Social Security Benefits.

In my case, I've lost a daughter that I mourn every day and, truthfully, every day it gets harder.

So, as far as I'm concerned I have no sympathy for poor little Hunter and the 'pain' he suffered.  I would gladly trade him his physical pain for the presence of a daughter I miss daily.  In short, you were wimp Hunter because you couldn't face the fact that as you got older it was harder and harder and far more difficult for you to write brilliant essays.

I know, because I struggle with this on a daily basis.  When we're young the hormones and neurons flow freely and with them comes the inspiration and the clarity of thought necessary to incite human libidos and minds of consciousness whether you're drunk or sober.  It doesn't matter.  It all works when you're YOUNG!  I know for far more reasons than I want to get into.

As you age there is no Viagra to excite the human thought because for better or worse we are all cynics; political, social and economic after we all have experienced "LIFE".

I know I'll never be the writer that Hunter S. Thompson was in his prime, but I also know I'm a better father and husband than he ever was on his best day.  And for me right now that's enough, but Boy it's still a son'na'bitch to write something worthwhile on a daily basis....

All The Best,
Frank W. James

I turned 67 the other day and as much as I hate to say it.  I'm way overweight.  I don't know that I'm gonna do something serious like try to lose weight, but I am getting somewhat bored with my diet.

Today I had to be down in the regional city for a number of things; both serious and frivolous.  I decided to eat lunch at one of the more popular sports bars on their south side.  (I live over 30 miles north of this city.)  In order to cut down on the greasy food that's been my usual staple I decided to have a "chef salad" for lunch.

I told the waitress to leave off the onions because I simply can't digest 'em like I used to.  Garlic is even worse.  It flat makes my stomach hurt about 20 to 30 minutes after I've eaten anything seasoned with it.  (As an aside; I have absolutely no interest in 'Italian' food that so many love.  I literally can't stand garlic.  I've never cared for pasta nor tomato paste, so once you take those 3 three ingredients out, what's left in terms of Italian food?)  This luncheon chef salad was a good change of pace for me and I enjoyed it..........except for the cucumbers.

When I was in Germany this spring, I tried some of their salads and they were delicious.  The cucumbers in Germany however have a very lite favor, almost like watermelon and they added to the overall experience.  I mean they were wonderful! 

Today, the cucumbers were like all American cucumbers and extremely heavy in taste and effect while they left me belching their memory the remainder of the afternoon.

Why can't we have cucumbers like those I experienced in Germany?  I know we can't have bread like they have in Germany because of the way our flour has to be milled for various reasons both private and governmental.  I also know we can't have beer like they have in Germany because of their 'purity' laws that are so strict and demanding, but you would think that some enterprising agronomist or plant specialists out there would recognize the superiority of the German cucumber and bring them over here with all the emphasis now being peddled on "...eating healthy..."

I suspect that like most things in American culture (and politics), it's all lip service and completely lacking of content when you scratch past the surface...

All The Best,
Frank W. James