Halloween shotgun match in Arizona – with MHI action

I received this e-mail a few days ago:

Larry,
Vids:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8KLhLYybbc

I thought you might like to see what we did for our Halloween shotgun match:

Stage 1 Monster Hunter International

SETUP: Shooter will begin at the low ready in Box 1. His shotgun will be fully loaded with the safety
engaged.
PROCEDURE: At the buzzer, the shooter will engage the two Wights until they are fully neutralized. He will then move to Box 2 and engage the Vampire until the heart is destroyed (no red remains on the target or 5 hits). He will ground his shotgun, retrieve an edged weapon (either from the table or from his person) and behead the Master Vampire (switched to cutting in half; people kept launching the sword). He will then retrieve his shotgun and move to Box 3. While moving to Box 3 he may engage the Seeing Eye of the Cursed One. After the Eye has been neutralized, he will engage the 10 tentacles of the Cursed One.

Me on all 4 stages:

Bloodfeast on Stage 1 boomstick division:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwqEB3ChM0Q

Discussion Forums:
http://www.arizonashooting.com/v3/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=86799&start=90
http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=90788

—Russell Phagan
Cavalry Arms Staff

 

Okay, now that is pretty darn awesome.  I’ve shot a lot of 3gun, and designed a lot of 3gun stages, but I’ve never had anybody do one based on a book that I’ve written before!

And here is another post about it from WTA:

http://wethearmed.com/index.php?topic=6384.0

MHI isn’t just a book, it is a movement!

Socialized Healthcare. The Suck that will not Die.

I’ve seen a lot of commentary today about how Nancy Pelosi is insane to push a healthcare vote the Saturday after the Democrat trouncing in the elections this week.  Republicans aren’t even a factor at this point. It is a given that none of them are voting for this beast.  The only question, since the majority Americans hate this bill, is how many Democrats are willing to throw themselves on the sword and lose their cushy jobs next election?  

This week’s elections demonstrated that the Boy Band of Politics Barack Obama’s star power has lost its luster. The people are royally pissed. Democrats know that if they vote for the healthcare bill they are going to get tossed out of office. Pelosi is pushing it anyway. 

Here is the thing. Pelosi isn’t crazy. (well, not that kind of crazy at least)  She knows exactly what she is doing.  Like I predicted several months ago, Barack Obama will be a one term president, and he knows it.  The true believer ideologues know that.  This is a suicide mission.  They know that this bill is garbage, but it is also the ultimate power grab. Should it pass, the government will control our health, and by extension, since everything effects our health, they’ll get to control everything. This new bill talks about guns and vending machines.   

Pelosi doesn’t care that a bunch of democrats will lose their jobs, because she is in it to win it.  If this passes, then America will be changed, and it will be almost impossible to change it back.  Pelosi is a Marxist, and Marxists are patient. The blue dog democrats are expendable.  All that matters to her is to shift the country further left.  Nancy would love for them to vote for this, then lose their seats, because her work will have been done, and it is hard to untighten the noose when you’re already swinging from the gallows.

This bill isn’t about insuring the sick, lazy, poor, stupid, or your Cousin Pooky. This bill is about twisting America into a socialist country.  If all it was about was forcing insurance companies to be more competitive or to take people with pre-existing conditions, they could do that with a five page bill.  This thing is now 1,900 pages. 

Think about that for a second.  1,900 pages.  Take four reams of paper and stack them on top of each other.  The bill from August was 800 pages shorter, and none of our congressmen had read that one either.  Just what kind of bullshit is going to be crammed into this one?

Unemployment is officially around 10%, and most of us realize that stat is understated. Yet somehow our government’s top priority is pushing a bill that everyone knows will increase unemployment and raise taxes.  Obama has now spent more money than anyone else, ever, combined, in one eighth of the time, and his next big idea is a bill that creates another hundred federal bureaucracies.  The American people’s priorities might be jobs and prosperity, but Obama’s is priority is total Marxist control.

“Silly, Correia. Obama’s not a Marxist. Enough of your terrible right wing hate speech.”

Oh, my apologies.  However could I think that a guy who has hired a bunch of self-proclaimed communists, and who surrounds himself with union thugs, and who’s mentors were Marxists, and who hung out with socialists in college, and who has fostered unprecedented power grabs in record time, and who’s employees seem to quote a lot of Mao, and who has never pushed one single thing that Karl Marx himself would disapprove of, could possibly not be as pure as the driven snow!

After the stimulus bills, the government controls or directly oversees about thirty percent of our economy. With healthcare they’ll gain another 18%.  That means that the government will be controlling about half of our nation’s economy.  So, wait a second… will all those people who told me I was crazy for calling Obama a Marxist last year finally admit that I was right when the government controls HALF of the business in America?  No?  So,when then? 70%?  Is he still a moderate when the government controls 99% of the free market?  I won’t know, because I’ll probably be in a ‘reeducation’ camp by then. Net neutrality, don’t you know.

In the last election, the Republican beat the Democrat in Virginia by 18 points.  This is a pretty evenly divided purple state.  Then the Republican won in bluest of blue New Freaking Jersey. JERSEY!  I didn’t know they still allowed Republicans in Jersey. Pelosi has held up New York 23 as a victory, which is kind of strange when you realize that the Democrat (endorsed by the Republican) beat a 3^rd party candidate (who the GOP actually spent money attacking), after the locals got sick and tired of people who’d support healthcare and went RINO hunting, and the liberal Republican she-hag only dropped out of the race a week ago.  He lost by 5%, which ironically is what the Republican got because she was still on the ballot.  So picking up that one congressional seat was somehow better than losing two governorships, Nancy? Now that is some good spin.

This is it guys.  This is the big push.  This isn’t about healthcare. This is about control. I’m sick and tired of politicians wanting to control my life. I just want them to leave me ALONE.  So now I find myself counting on the friggin’ Democrats as the last line of defense to do the right thing… That is unnerving.

MHI in Leatherbound Hard Cover?

Okay, here is something a little crazy for you to consider.  A bunch of people have been asking me about the possibility of a hardcover copy of Monster Hunter International.  I ran this past the publisher, and she said that it was a possibility eventually, as this has happened with other Baen series that have become really popular (like Miles Vorksogian and Honor Harrington), however, I’ve still got a way to go before that, and an omnibus edition once there are more MHI books out is more likely first.

But…  a limited run of these would be a possibility:

http://www.eastonpress.com/intro2.asp

So, the question is, how many of you would be down for a leather-bound, fancy, signed edition of Monster Hunter International?   The downside is that you pay for quality, and it would run about $50.  No, you don’t get to pick what kind of monster the leather is made out of.  (but if anyone asks, you can tell them that it is real minotaur). 

So what I need from you is to post in the comments here if you would buy one of these.  Please, only post if you really would pony up the money, because I need to get an actual idea if this is doable or not. 

Thanks.

Book signing schedule

November 12th – Mysterious Galaxy, 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
Suite #302 San Diego (858) 268-4747   7:00 PM

November 19th – Barnes & Nobel, Dana Park Village Square
1758 South Val Vista Drive Mesa, AZ 85204 (480) 545-8507 3-5 PM

November 19th – The Poisoned Pen, 4014 N Goldwater Blvd. Suite 101
Scottsdale, AZ 85251 (480) 947-2974  7:00-9:00 PM

December 5th – Barnes & Nobel, The Promenade Shops at Centerra
5835 Sky Pond Drive, Loveland, CO 80537 (970) 663-9473  1-3 PM

December 5th – Barnes & Nobel, 8374 South Willow Street
Lone Tree, CO   80124 (303) 706-9660 5- 7 PM

Monster Movie marathon week

To get in the mood for my favorite holiday, (and because Mrs. Correia was visiting her parents all week), I watched a mess of monster movies.  As many of you know I’m a bit of a monster movie nerd, and I’m getting ready to start writing the 3^rd MHI novel, so I need to get my geek on.  So, in order of how I watched them:

Severed, Forest of the Dead http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0428390/

This one was okay.  It was a decent bleak zombie flick, and considering the basic plot, it wasn’t nearly as obnoxiously preachy as I expected it to be.  Basically a logging company uses genetically modified sap to make trees grow faster, and if I’ve learned anything from the movies, anything with genetics involved automatically equals zombies or mutants.  When a bunch of enviro-morons go out to protest, the sap causes somebody to turn into a zombie, hilarity ensues. And by hilarity, I mean about an hour of grey, depressing, zombie stuff, followed by pretty much everyone getting eaten.

Surprisingly enough, Severed attempted to be a little deeper than most zombie movies, and tried to make the characters plausibly flawed.  The environmentalists weren’t the saints that Hollywood usually portrays them as, and most of the loggers were pretty normal human beings… until they made it to the second logging camp, where it had turned into Lord of the Flies.

Which brings up a pet peeve of mine, and I personally blame this on George Romero.  Where does this idea come from that within a week of trouble, all of us blue collar background types will suddenly build a Thunderdome? 

Trick R Treat http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0862856/

I was actually surprised how much I enjoyed Trick R Treat, but maybe after watching an hour and a half of granolas being eaten in the rain, it was time for something a little more light hearted.

TrT is made up of several interconnected stories, with a little opening and closing story bracketing them in.  We’ve seen this done in the horror genre many times, (remember Creepshow?), only this time it was pretty seamless. The best part was once the movie was over, when you want to go back and watch it again just to catch all the little clues that you missed about how everything is intertwined.

The less you read about the plot, the better. Just watch it.  And don’t watch the preview either, because once again, Hollywood just loves to show bits during the preview that give stuff away. (don’t get me started on the preview for Quarantine. Hey isn’t that Deb from Dexter? Oh, never mind.) 

You’ve got serial killers, the chick who played Rogue, werewolves, ghosts, surly Brian Cox, zombies, poison candy, razor blades, black magic, Helo from Galactica, revenge, and a cute little guy with a sack head with a stitched on happy face and button eyes that will kill the ever living hell out of you for breaking the ‘rules’.

I rate this one a Woot. Everyone who likes monster movies needs to get this one.

CHUD http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087015/

A classic.  Though I absolutely despise most of the characters, and find myself wishing that the Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers would have been able to eat more New Yorkers. 

The plot is needlessly convoluted in order to introduce us to a bunch of unlikable jerk offs, who then proceed to unravel the mystery about toxic waste turning homeless people into flesh eating mutants. Eh… I can think of worse things to use Manhattan for.

Regardless of how bad this movie actually is, every monster movie geek must see it at least once. The only thing that holds this back from true awesomness is that more of the main characters needed to die, preferably painfully.  “Oohh, look at me, I’m a trendy fashion photographer. I don’t like guns. I’m so clever… Oh NO! It’s eating my FACE!”  and then it would have been perfect.

Night of the Creeps http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091630/

Another classic, and one that we’ve been waiting for to show up on DVD for a long time.  Think Revenge of the Nerds, college frat movie, mixed with alien slug zombies and you’ve got the basic idea.  This is an absolutely great B movie. It is cheese, but it is good cheese.

Tom Atkins is great as the butt-kicking, retro-pulp, tough guy detective.  Too bad how it turns out, because MHI would totally have offered this dude a job.

Mexican Werewolf in Texas http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756689/

A werewolf movie with no werewolves.  It is actually about chupacabras, but I guess Mexican Goat Sucker in Texas was already taken.  This one really doesn’t have much to recommend it, which is too bad, because there were some decent performances from a few people, and they actually made it look pretty decent.

But overall, it was just kind of blah.  There wasn’t a lot of stuff that made sense, then there were good bits they could have did more with that they didn’t, then there were some idiotic subplots that dragged it down.  My favorite bit of stupid was when there was a monster attack, and literally three minutes after that scene, the survivor retells the whole thing, with flashbacks.  So we get to see flashbacks of something that we just barely watched.  That’s just sad editing right there.

Also, this movie falls under that dreaded shade of stupid, where the only people it is okay to stereotype and make fun of are red-staters, dippy-ass teenagers are the real heroes, and everyone in Texas is a bigot.

Rated Meh, for suck.

Shaun of the Dead http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365748/

And finally, on Halloween night, the greatest buddy-comedy/romantic-comedy/zombie-movie/dramas ever made.  There is not much I can say about this one. If you haven’t seen it, then you’re missing out.

I watched this with my kids.  One of my kids got a little freaked out (as it actually turns into a real zombie movie there at the end), and didn’t want to go to sleep.  So I took the time to walk her through the Correia Family Zombie Response Plan.  “See this one?  It can blow a zombie’s head clean off. We have five of this particular model.”  “But, Dad, what if we run out of ammo?”  Opens crate. “That’s ten thousand rounds.”  “Oh, okay.  Night, Dad.”

 

I have the coolest fans ever

From Moose on www.wethearmed.com

And in other news, Kirk, who paints awesome miniatures, is working on SPOILER ALERT 

SPOILER ALERT

SPOILER ALERT

certain character cough * E.H. are his initials *from the final scene from MHI. 

http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=kirk+pfau&init=quick#/album.php?aid=73747&id=693609801&ref=mf

He is going to have the armor all torn and hanging off of the werewolf.  I can’t wait to see the end results.

Someone is wrong on the internets!

This was posted to the latest comments in the HK. Because you suck. And we hate you. thread.  (written in 2007 and still getting hate mail).  This is the kind of crap that I have to deal with.

If you get a sneer from HK for wanting to handle an MP5 at the shot show, it’s because you don’t have a class 3 license.  If you do not have a class 3, you cannot handle a fully automatic weapon.  To have disdain for someone following FFL laws is moronic. 

Huh… Is that so?  First off, you don’t get a “Class 3 License”. There is no such thing.  You pay a transfer tax and purchase an NFA item. There is no license.  The “3″ comes from Title 3 FFL, which is a machine gun DEALER.  Not owner…

So apparently it is now illegal to even TOUCH the majesty that is HK, unless you have a license so special that it doesn’t actuallyEXIST.  So, help me out here, do if a regular person goes to the range and rents a full auto weapon, does he have to get a provisional imaginary license to shoot it?

Holy crap, exercise some critical thinking skills once in awhile.

IF the MP5 was so cheap and you hold it with such disdain, then why whine about not being able to handle one on a forum?  And if the MP5 was such a piece of crap, then why do most tactical teams use one?

Sigh… Okay.  How many tactical (I so hate that word) teams use M4 carbine variants now instead of HK?  Apparently “most” is a subjective term, applied only after an analytic survey of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 loadouts and the covers of Dick Marcinko novels.

Not that I care about the MP5, but I do own a USPC, which is one of the best built handguns on the planet.  Let me enlighten you as to why they are overpriced pieces of shit.  Unlike the Glock, which has a few stamped tool steel parts internally.  All of the HK USP &; USPC internals are EDM wire cut, tool steel parts, that are machined and then heat treated to the A class scale of RC hardness.  Not the C or D class as the overly hyped Austrian counter part. 

Forged in the fires of Mount Doom by the hands of Sauron himself, the HK is the greatest implement of destruction known to man.  HK’s plastic frame isn’t made from petroleum that came from inferior plants millions of years ago, rather the petroleum used for HK’s advanced polymers comes only from the fiercest of T-Rexes. 

Unlike the overly hyped Austrian pistol, HK does not have cheap plastic parts such as the spring loaded bearing, extractor depressor plunger, spacer sleeve, spring cups, firing pin channel liner.  Which will melt and fuse if exposed to too much heat. 

Oh man, you know it is a strange day when I find myself defending Glock…  They’re okay (I put them about equivelent to the HK, only with an easier to use trigger), and I have seen Glocks break, but I’ve never, ever, never seen one melt… Where to you shoot?  Inside a toaster oven?  Have you actually engaged in a gun battle on Mercury?  In Hell?  “Hey, Satan, take that!  click  Oh no! The fires of Hades have melted my spring cup to my firing pin channel liner! NOOOO!”

Thus if you are in a desert situation like Afghanistan or Iraque

Where the &%$@ is Iraque?

you have a great possibility of this pistol malfunctioning on you than a USP. 

Who the hell do you fight in “Iraque”?  Lava men? 

The S.O.C.O.M. uses a USP style pistol on steroids called the Mark 23.

Who is “THE S.O.C.O.M.? Is that like the Artist Formerly Known as Prince?  Do you mean SOCOM, Special Operations Command?  Like the guys that spent a whole bunch of money buying Mk 23s to sit in arms rooms, unused?  Oh man, what about the guys at THE Socom who have 1911s?  He he he… Man, I bet having cool guys carrying an old, metal, American gun blows your mind.

There is a reason that this pistol is used and not a Glock, S&W, Beretta, Colt and such. 

I don’t think this guy really realizes where pistols fit into the grand scheme of warfare, but I wonder how many Beretta M9s have been used lately in comparison to the Mk23?  And too bad the Glock melts in the Fires of Iraque, because somebody might want to tell all those contractor types that mostly hand out Glock 19s.

It’s because none of the other pistols were able to pass their stringent endurance and reliability tests.  To my knowledge, no Glock frame has withstood 30,000 rounds of constant fire with +P ammunition. 

Wow.  That’s amazing information. (wrong, but I guess technically it could be considered information). 

 

So yes, HK may be overpriced in your opinion, but you do get what you pay for.

Best $500 gun you can get for $800! 

And if you are happy with your Glock or Taurus then I wish you well and happiness. 

And I wish you well in your continuing struggle against your Lava Man oppressors.

But please realize that your disdain for such a well made piece of engineering is only due to your own ignorance of the products.

You got me there.  All those years I sold machine guns, and I never even realized I didn’t have the proper licenses to even let people touch the HKs!   Good thing HK sued all the airsoft companies and people making .22s into oblivion, or some regular civillian might actually, you know, shoot one, or something.

Thank you.

No really, thank you.  I can’t make this kind of stuff up, and whenever I’m out of ideas of things to make fun of on my blog, one of you guys turns up.  What would I do without you?

Lava Man poster, courtesy of Miguel of Gun Free Zone.

Signing stuff

So tonight’s signing was good. I got to hang out with John Brown and Dave Farland, two awesome guys and great writers.  I learned something about Dave tonight.  He was the creative writing instructor at BYU for a long time and has travelled the country teaching writing workshops, that I knew, but what I didn’t realize is that he’s taught something like 300 people who later went on to get published, and has had something like 40 students eventually end up on the NYT bestseller list.  That’s damn impressive.

Tomorrow night is Orem. Saturday is Layton 12-2 and West Jordan 3-5. 

The San Franciso trip is cancelled at the end of the month.

Nov 12th we’ll be at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego.  Then I think we’ll be in Torrance on the 13th.  (will confirm).  The one in LA on Saturday the 14th has crapped out on us.

So do I have anyone on here who happens to live in the LA area, who works at a bookstore, or happens to really like their local place?  If so, post it here. We’re shaking the trees to find something else on short notice.

The MHI 625 is done

Courtesy of Mike Smith:

 

 

Work done by Jim Lowe of Montclair VA.  As David Kantrowitz said in the previous post, there is just something about the 625 that makes you want to shoot a monster in the face. (he has one in his books too).

The Media is a bunch of idiots

So this last week the Whitehouse declared war on FOX News.  Apparently because only 95% of the media outlets give Obama a free pass, if he could just reign in that last 5%, and get them to toe the party line, then everything would be just peachy.

The Whitehouse wants to control all of the media.  

Think about that for just a second. I know that I have people who read this blog who are Democrats.  A sitting president of the US wants to destroy the single dissenting news agency. Doesn’t that scare the crap out of you?

If George Bush’s top people had started having public meetings with Republican leadership about how to hurt CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, the New York Times, and the Huffington Post, can you imagine the massive institutional freak out that would have caused?  And rightly so.

And yes, Bush sucked too. We know. (and that never gets old as an argument, really) but moving on, gentle Democrat readers, doesn’t the idea of having the Whitehouse stomping on dissenting opinions unnerve you?

On a related note, I’ve heard a lot recently about how it is somehow unfair that FOX’s ratings are so much better than their competitors.  Give me a friggin’ break.  Out of all those highly educated journalists, there wasn’t one person that sat through a business class?  If your market is the American public, and we live in a country that is split roughly down the middle as far as personal beliefs go, and there are, say 20 big media companies… Only 1 company competes for the right 50% while 19 companies compete for the left 50%… What part of that 1 company on the right side getting larger market share comes as a shock exactly? 

Oh, except I forgot that all 20 companies claim that they’re not right or left. They’re all in the middle and totally unbiased… Ha Ha Ha! Man, that’s some funny stuff right there.

The traditional media is losing its viewers and readers by the ton.  Everybody except for FOX is hemorrhaging money. Yet, they’re still too ideologically driven to focus on reality. They’re losing viewers because we’re smarter than they think we are. We’re pretty good at knowing when we are being lied to.  When I can get more realistic reporting from the Onion than from the New York Times, there may be a problem afoot.

Media is a giant joke. The American people know it. Everybody but the media seems to know it. When ACORN was caught on video breaking hundreds of laws in five different cities, the regular news wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. Even though this is an organization that was getting billions of dollars of tax money (and will be again at the end of October, but you didn’t hear that on the regular news either) because it didn’t fit with the ideological prism, then it didn’t get reported.  Thank God for the internet, talk radio, and people still having the ability to talk freely.  Hell, even John Stewart was offended that the media missed this one.

Once again, I’m ahead of the cultural curve. I’ve distrusted and hated the news for a really long time.  As somebody who started out as a child gun nut, it didn’t take too long for me to realize that EVERY SINGLE report or article involving guns was riddled with factual errors, outright lies, mistakes, misstatements, made up stats, and quotes from morons.  I was probably about fourteen years old when I came to the conclusion that if the news got this much stuff wrong about a subject I actually knew about, how much were they screwing up on the topics that I wasn’t familiar with?  (well, now that I’m older, I realize that the answer is ALL.)

Aerial photos showed that there were more people at the big DC tea party than there was at inauguration.   Somehow that was a record crowd of about 1.5 million for Obama’s historic event, but it was like “tens of thousands” of angry right wing crack pots who are too ignorant to want socialized healthcare.  But the media still doesn’t get why we don’t believe them when they say they’re unbiased.

Don’t worry though, when the traditional media finally goes bankrupt, then the government can just bail them out.  I’m positive that nothing bad could possibly come from having a state run media, especially since Obama has packed the Whitehouse staff with communists and people who really look up to Mao.