Unless, of course, it’s too funny not to share.

Just got back from a local steakhouse with a few members of the conference committee and Steve Murphy. Swapped a few war stories, drank a few good beers and had a really good bison steak.

When we got back to the hotel, the conference chairperson buttonholed us in the exhibit hall to remind us of this evening’s planned entertainment, a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament and a Wii bowling tournament.

Chairperson: “Oooh, you guys are back! Did you enjoy dinner?”

Murph and AD: “It was great, thanks.”

Chairperson: “Now don’t forget, we still have activities going on tonight, so make sure you go Poker ‘n the Wii!”

AD: “Uummmm, sure. Can we both get in on that, or do we have to take turns?”

Chairperson (turning beet red): OhmyGod, I did not mean that the way it sounded!”

AD: “Too late, sister. Consider that one blogged.”

Or at least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Seriously though, really nice reception to my talks from the Nebraska Instructor Society. Tomorrow is the Nebraska EMS Association spring conference, where I’ll be talking out of my ass lecturing for three more days.

Wonderful people up here in flyover country, even if they do talk kinda funny.

The TSA security theatre was entertaining as usual, and this time, they used lubricant with the body cavity search!

Regular blogging to resume shortly from Cornhusker country…

I took her to the range the other day, and she tried out KatyBeth’s Smith&Wesson M&P15 .22.

Valerie DeFrance shoots an evil black rifle!

KatyBeth and I took her to Sunrise Catfish Farm, an entirely new experience for her. Apparently, back in Alaska, she just wades out into the crick behind her house and scoops 40 lb salmon up onto the bank with her bare hands. This whole “rod and reel” thing was a bit foreign to her.

Out of respect for the nice Mennonite family that runs the catfish farm, we didn’t use my preferred fishing technique, ala Hub and Garth McCann. We did catch a fairly nice stringer of catfish, though.

But the signature moment of the weekend came on Friday, when I went to the DMV to turn in the tags for the now-deceased Frankenhoopty. Valerie opted to wait outside while I went in, took a  number, and settled in a chair to wait my turn.

I’d been waiting perhaps fifteen minutes when a concerned patron walked in and said, “There’s a woman out there just lying spread-eagled in the grass!”

Now normally, this would be my call to action, but something about the warm spring day told me to hold off. “What did she look like?” I asked. “Long brown hair in a ponytail, pink shirt, green cargo pants?”

“Yeah, that’s her,” the concerned motorist nodded. “Maybe somebody should go check on her!”

“‘Y’all don’t mind her,” I chuckled, “she’s from Alaska. She’s just not used to decent weather, that’s all.”

Flash forward a month, and the receipt of an Academy gift card from a collection of people who never know what to get me for Christmas, and I brought home a new Taurus 709, otherwise known as the Taurus SLIM.

And a slim little pistol it is, too, barely an inch thick, with streamlined and contoured edges. I carry it in a Don Hume model 715M size 30C IWB holster designed for the Sig P239, and the rig practically disappears under a shirt.

Specs for the Slim:

Model: 709B

Caliber: 9mm

Capacity: 7+1 (with a promised 9 round magazine supposedly on the way)

Construction: Polymer frame, checkered polymer grips

Finish: Blued

Front sight: Fixed

Rear sight: Fully adjustable for elevation and windage.

Weight: 19 oz

Length: 6″

Barrel length: 3″

Action: SA/DA

MSRP: $459

As usual, you can find them new for significantly less than MSRP. I picked mine up at Academy for $359.

It’s a well-balanced gun, and points well. I have fairly large hands, and one of my issues with compact semiautos is that I am forced to adopt a grip that is somewhat awkward for me. The Taurus 709 is no exception, but despite having no place to put my pinkie finger, I had no problems shooting the 709 accurately. Hopefully, a 9-round magazine with grip extension will make for a more comfortable grip without sacrificing a great deal of concealability.

Sights are of the 3-dot configuration, and unfortunately, made of plastic. In their favor, they are well contoured, with no sharp edges, and are fully adjustable for windage and elevation.

That’s a good thing, because the Slim shot low and left out of the box. Normally, I’d blame such a grouping on the loose nut behind the trigger, but it seemed that everyone who shot the Slim had the same general grouping, while I had no problems shooting my other pistols accurately.

On an amusing side note, while my guest and I were shooting the Slim, one guy at the range buttonholed us and offered his entirely unsolicited opinion that the Taurus Millenium Pro 9mm he had bought for his wife was an unmitigated piece of shit because it shot waaaay left.

I replied that I’d had no such issues with my Millenium PT140, and then proceeded to chew out the bullseye at 10 yards with both his new pistol and my slightly older PT140.

It’s a poor craftsman that blames his tools, folks.

The Taurus trigger does take some getting used to, however. The trigger on the Slim appears to be a hybrid of the Glock safe action trigger, working the Taurus SA/DA action. I wouldn’t call the SA trigger pull crisp, but neither does it approach the suckitude of a Glock trigger, and that particular piece of engineering hasn’t appreciably harmed my accuracy. With the Taurus SA/DA action, the first pull of the trigger is single action, albeit with a takeup most appropriately measured in furlongs, but if for some reason the weapon fails to fire, the trigger resets to DA mode.

Not sure of the utility of that feature, though. If the gun doesn’t consistently go “BANG!” when I pull the trigger, I’m not thinking, “Gee, what a relief that I can pull the trigger again before I go through my failure drill!”

More likely, after making sure it isn’t the ammo, I’m thinking, “Ditch this unreliable piece of shit before it gets me killed.”

Recoil is easily manageable, and accuracy is as good as you could hope for in a compact carry pistol with a 3 inch barrel:

As you can see, I’m still a little left, and I threw one flier in there. Still, it’s a very shootable pistol, easily concealed and well worth the price. Round count is currently around 500, and thus far it has run without a hitch.

For a $359 concealed carry piece, the Taurus Slim is hard to beat.

That one call that makes it worth being paid chump change, makes it worth being disrespected by other medical professionals.

That one call that makes wading through the piss and shit and vomit seem like a fair bargain, even if the person whose hurts you mended will never know your name.

And sometimes, you don’t even know it was that one call at the time you ran it.

Beverage alert is in effect.

Enjoy.

By now, most of you EMS types have read about the South Carolina firefighter-paramedic who got fired over an Xtranormal text-to-movie video he posted on his Facebook page.

Opinions on the incident range from “Whatever happened to free speech?” to “Serves the idiot right.”

Without question, the video was in poor taste. It was profane, scatological, reflected poorly on EMS and the fire service, and played into every tired stereotype of paramedics and nursing home nurses. But hey, if poor taste and potty humor were a crime, I wouldn’t even have a blog.

In my opinion, Colleton County Fire Rescue’s administrators bungled the handling of the incident, and overreacted by firing the medic in question. My guess is that they had no formal policy on social media, but you can bet they, and others, will develop one after this brouhaha. Let’s hope the policies developed are more even-handed and well thought out than their handling of this incident.

Here at The Borg, we were reminded of our social media policy after this story hit the news. I can sum it up for you in one sentence: “Don’t act an ass in public while representing yourself as an agent of this organization.”

That’s pretty broad, and open to much interpretation, but that’s all that really needs to be said. When you post, respect patient confidentiality, don’t air your agency’s dirty laundry in public, and don’t make any statements you’d be ashamed to own, because there is no such thing as anonymity on the internet.

Above all, I think this guy’s biggest sin in posting this video is that it just wasn’t funny. Just another tired anti-nursing home rant, really, one of a gazillion such war stories told by paramedics every day.

I’ve seen a number of these videos across the blogosphere, and none of them are particularly funny. I’ve thought about making one myself, but they don’t have any pure EMT characters, only cops and firefighters, and I reject that on general principles.

Then again, the original was a pretty hard act to follow: