Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Peace Through Superior Firepower




A phrase I like so much that I have it on a T-shirt


See? And with my favorite fictional gun, too

Tennessee Punt Gun


 Here is another interesting tidbit from my recent road trip.  The weapon at the top of the case is called a punt gun. And those rifles below it are full sized Kentucky and Tennessee rifles. Not exactly small guns themselves.



A punt gun is a huge fowling piece intended to be used while propped on the prow of a small boat or "punt". It was a smoothbore weapon of truly massive caliber that was used to shoot a large number of ducks or geese with one shot. Documents state that between ten and forty birds could be killed with a single shot. Which is good, because it probably took two guys with a ladder ten minutes to load it. This weapon was a matchlock as you can see in the above photo, and probably from the early to mid 1700's.



These photos were taken in the Pink Palace Museum in Memphis, Tennessee

Audie Murphy's uniform



These pictures were taken in the Willy Nelson Museum in Nashville, TN. (of all places)

The tag near the uniform states that the uniform and helmet were given to a friend of Lt. Murphy's by the name of Scott Turner. The displayed medals, 1911A1, Luger P08 and the dagger just out of the frame were found in the back room of a California ranch that Audie Murphy sold to Bob Hope in 1966.

For those that don't know, Audie Murphy was the most decorated US soldier in WWII and went on to star in many Hollywood movies, including one based on his own life and experiences in the war.

Cool stuff, and certainly something I did not expect to see.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Georgia tanks





M60 Main Battle Tank






Here we see what happens when I am stuck out of town for work and bored. I went out looking for some Taco Bell and paint brushes and found a M48 Patton tank. Awesome, right? So I decided to try my little phone camera and its effects. My phone, by the way is a Casio Gz'one Ravine. It is not smart, it does not have a touch screen. But amongst other things, it is close to completely waterproof. I was talking on it while in the shower this morning.

Do that with your precious iPhones, hipsters.

With this one I was trying to make it look like an old newsreel footage, so naturally I used the black and white filter. I think it certainly does not look like it was taken in Augusta, GA in 2012
  

How about a couple of fake nightvision shots?

Anything to avoid getting work done, I tried to make this one look like a thermal scope on white=hot.           For some reason this M48 was painted black instead of OD green or camo and I think that helped the effect. 

Both of these tanks are "gate guards" at American Legion posts in Georgia, hence the title.