When the icons die

They say bad things happen in threes.

That was going to be my opening sentence for a commentary I’d planned about the concurrent deaths of Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson.

Ed McMahon was the voice of “The Tonight Show”. Johnny Carson may have been the host, but would it have been the same without Ed’s “Heeeere’s Johnny!” and the outstanding chemistry between these two men? I think not. McMahon was also a Marine aviator during War II, and left college to re-enlist for Korea. He was an all-around patriot and nice guy.

Farah Fawcett was the poster girl for the 1970s. She transcended her assigned role as eye candy, worked hard at her craft, and went on to become an accomplished actress.

Michael Jackson, for all his weirdness, was a superb entertainer. He sang well, and danced like nobody’s business, as we say down South. I was never a big fan, but he was extremely good at what he did. The numerous allegations about his predilections for children, and the cosmetic surgeries, put me off, as the British say. Two of my favorite jokes about him—and there were many—were:

“Michael Jackson is suing the Marine Corps. He made a substantial donation; then he found out ‘Toys for Tots’ isn’t an exchange program.”

And…

“America is a great country! Look at Michael Jackson! Where else can a poor black boy grow up to be a rich white woman?”

I almost got slapped for thoughtlessly remarking that he was jealous and up and died because Ms. Fawcett had grabbed all the celebrity headlines last weekend.

I am older than Michael Jackson, and although I considered him creepy and definitely not a role model for anyone, I would not have wished his fate upon him. In this marvelous age of advanced medicine, when even a reprobate waste king like me can be successfully treated for cancer, he died too young.

By the way, when asked by doctors, I list Demerol as a drug I’m allergic to. Despite all the LSD I took during my misspent youth, Demerol is the only drug that ever made me hallucinate. When I suffered my life-changing injury in 2000, the doctors dosed me with it as a pain reliever. I reacted very badly, and changed into a chair-tossing werewolf. They switched me to pure morphine, and my recovery went quite well afterwards. There weren’t even any withdrawal symptoms after they kicked me out of the hospital, lending credence to William Burroughs’s argument in Junkie that the purity of legally obtained opiates determines their addictive qualities.

Jackson, Fawcett, and McMahon were all American icons. Each in their way represented a facet of American culture, and they will not be replaced.

I had not gotten this far in composing my eulogy when word came of a fourth death. There is apparently no counting bad things when they accrue to celebrities.

Billy Mays was the same age as Michael Jackson, give or take. He couldn’t sing, dance, or act. He was essentially a carnival barker, with a style that made me reach for the TV remote whenever one of his commercials came on. I wondered aloud if he even knew how to speak in a normal tone of voice, and groused that if he wanted to sell me something, he should not holler like a mouse was crawling up his trouser leg.

Then, I gained a measure of respect for Mays, through his Discovery™ channel program “Pitchmen”. He could speak normally, had a great sense of humor about what he did, and was a considerate, caring man. The stridency was just his style, and if you’re going to be in the public eye, you definitely need a sense of style. In his own way, he was as much of an icon as the other entertainers who have died recently.

The passing of Ed McMahon and Farah Fawcett was not unexpected. Both were in bad health. They died quietly, surrounded by loved ones.

Michael Jackson’s death was a shocker. Amidst his big plans for a comeback tour, he was called home to answer before God for what he may or may not have done. Ironically, his dying may have been his biggest comeback.

Billy Mays died in his sleep of an undiagnosed heart condition.

When my time comes I hope to go out like Billy Mays. My second choice would be having someone I love hold my hand when I say goodbye. For all the violence, accidents and general strangeness that have clouded my life, I have thus far avoided becoming a statistic. The older I get, the more I treasure serenity, tranquility, and the prospect of slipping into a final sleep without pain, fear, or bloodshed. Death comes to us all, but like these public figures that have passed away in rapid succession, a sense of style matters.

Farah, Jacko, Ed, Billy, you will be missed. May God bless and keep you.

A quick update to the previous rant

Regarding the previous post:

Mr. Ersland’s first name is Jerome. He has a spinal problem that is painfully obvious, as he is always seen in a cumbersome back brace.

The robbers in his pharmacy were 14 and 16 years of age, approximately that of the dynamic duo who killed my friend Leprechaun on a dark Atlanta street. One of Mr. Ersland’s assailants was definitely armed—it looks like a Glock—and fired a shot at him.

Ersland has made an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, and explained his actions. His co-workers in the store that evening were a mother and her daughter. They fled to a “safe room” in the rear of the store, but after dropping one thug and pursuing the other, Mr. Ersland returned to the store, and heard the younger woman screaming in the back. He feared she had been hit by the robber’s bullet that took the watch off his wrist in passing. The downed robber was conscious and moving. Ersland had no way of knowing if the thug was armed; it turns out he wasn’t, but one firearm per stick-up is usually enough.

Thankfully, except for the bullet that grazed Mr. Ersland’s wrist, none of the victims were injured in the hold-up. It wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of the robbers.

A lawyer/commentator suggested that charging Mr. Ersland with first-degree murder is a “back-door” way of acquitting him of any serious malfeasance. Normal people—armed or not—don’t show up at work wondering “how many people can I shoot tonight?” This incident was not pre-meditated on Ersland’s part. If you’ve never had a gun thrust into your face, I can assure you that the adrenalin level is off the charts, and the primal fight-or-flight reaction overrides any nonsensical consideration like “what will a jury make of this later?”

Hopefully, a jury will enforce the wisdom behind the old saying that “you pay your money and you take your chance.” In this case, the bad guys lost. It’s not quite as surreal as the coroner’s jury I sat on about that convenience store shooting, but the lesson is universal.

By the way, it was the younger of the two robbers who brandished and fired the handgun. Would you trust the judgment of a 14-year-old threat-screaming child behind the trigger of a 9mm weapon if said weapon was in your face?

The jury is yet to be chosen, and eventually someone will attempt to portray these two kids as victims of some sort. We live in interesting times.

Advocating for an American citizen...what I meant last time

There is a pharmacist out in Oklahoma by the name of Ersland. I’ll get his first name correctly on the next follow-up to this theme you’ve heard before; I don’t take written notes on the news. Mr. Ersland sells aspirins to grumpy old ladies, condoms to embarrassed teenagers, and life-supporting drugs to those who under-appreciate the true work of pharmacists.

Mr. Ersland is now charged with murder. A while back, a couple of thugs entered his store. One of them cocked a semi-automatic pistol, shoved it in his face, and demanded booty from him—either drugs or money; whatever.

Mr. Ersland drew a revolver from a hidey-hole, and shot the punk wielding the pistol. He chased the other bandit from the store.

There are some legal issues involved in what happened next. The bad-ass “alleged suspect” was shot five more times. The videotape allegedly shows Mr. Ersland retrieving a second handgun from a hidey-hole, and calmly giving the downed robber what we socially deviant types refer to as “good-bye shots”.

Not that anyone of great import reads this blog, but I want to give Mr. Ersland the best chance, so I’ll just flash back to a few life experiences while I pray he has the best possible lawyer. We will be following this one. Now, for the personal point of view:

I am a big fan of those real-life cop programs—I call them “dash-cam-video shows”—that feature surveillance camera footage and, yes, tapes from cops that are involved with chasing down suspects. The footage is grainy, and the language is censored, but us grownups get the gist of it. The alleged suspects in these tapes strike me as dumber than mud. Don’t pull a gun on a cop, don’t run from a cop, and don’t curse at a cop. Cops have bigger guns, faster cars, and they can out-cuss you on your best day. (Respect is a dead concept today, so we’ll leave it there.)

In 1970, I worked the counter at an Arby’s restaurant like many kids in those days. One night, following a pre-closing bonanza of four buses of hungry kids coming in from the homecoming game at the high school across the four-lane, two gentlemen of color strolled in with a shotgun and a handgun. They demanded money; we gave it to them. The following morning, I was fired for “not being an Arby’s type of person” because I didn’t grab the manager’s .38 from under the counter and take on the 2–to-1 odds against superior firepower.

In 1975, I sat on a grand jury and heard a case involving a stake-out cop who shot an armed robbery suspect in a convenience store. The cop had his version of what happened, and the clerk had his version. The “alleged suspect” had a surprised look on his face, and was not available to testify in court, due to his appointment with the coroner. The diverse versions of what had happened, from the cop and the employee, caused everyone in the courtroom—including the judge—to laugh themselves silly. File that behavior by the perpetrator under “buy the ticket, take the ride”.

In 1979 some miscreant hopped off a big-city bus bench and attempted to hijack a step-van I was driving with the doors open for fresh air on a hot night. The van contained thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment. I put a .20–gauge shotgun in his face and told him “Sure! Hop in!” End of incident. He caught the bus.

In 1985, my father was murdered in the driveway of our family home. This crime remains unprosecuted, although the cops and I know who did it. The first shot of four took Dad in the shoulder, knocking a 78-year-old veteran down to wait for his killer, maybe knowing what was coming. The other three were in the head.

The following year, in 1986, one of my best friends was killed in an attempted street robbery. A companion was also killed. The robbers—aged 13 and 15—got nothing of value. I am godfather to “Leprechaun’s” child.

Personally, I have been shot, stabbed, severely burned, and blown up. There is no drama in this statement of past facts, but it is germane to the point I want to make.

I have zero tolerance for people who think power grows out of the point of a gun. When I taught combat shooting, I cut my instruction off at “Shoot until the assailant goes down. Don’t try to shoot the gun out of his hand; that’s a one-in-a-million shot.”

What I didn’t tell my students—because it would be inappropriate—is that once the attacker is down, you reload PDQ, walk up, and give them a good-bye shot or two in the head.

In Oklahoma, they have an enhancement to the “Make my day” law called the “Stand your ground” law. Simply put, if there is a threat to loved ones or property, you do what has to be done until that threat is removed.

“Make my day” laws exist in a number of states. If someone is across the threshold of my home, especially if it’s the middle of the night, I own them. I don’t have to turn on the lights, say “Boo!”, “Stick ‘em up!” or anything. Gun control is hitting what you aim at, and the addendum is target certainty before firing.

Watching the much-publicized videotape of the incident in Mr. Ersland’s pharmacy brought back a number of unpleasant memories. No one wants to do what he did. He had co-workers in that store, and he was the “front man” responsible for them.

I won’t try his case here, and I trust a jury will see truth from any notion of political correctness when it comes to—hopefully—dismissing these charges.

I was going to mention a Baton Rouge, Louisiana case from the 1980s here, involving a man whose 13-year-old son was kidnapped and raped by a trusted teacher. The man responded by blowing the “alleged suspect’s” head off on national TV. (Dan Rather led the CBS news with it that night.)

That might be a bit extreme. It is definitely not a role model. That man, and his family, deserves the time to heal, and they deserve their privacy after all these years.

The punks who killed my pal Leprechaun got the benefit of the justice system. They got “life”, which in most states is about seven years unless you murder a celebrity.

The cops have never been able to make a sustainable case in my father’s murder. It remains a case of justice undone. The cops gave me names, and some vaguely satisfying details that there is a God, because the shooter fell under a large truck some years subsequent to 1985.

Truth be told, if some creep had run into my store as they did with Mr. Ersland, and I dropped one with an initial barrage of return fire, I would’ve shoved a fresh magazine into the Browning .40, and given the scary little shit five more in the head, too.

I seem to recall a righteous citizen named Bernhard Goetz who had zero tolerance for nonsense on the New York subways about the time my daddy got killed.

Don’t try this at home, kids. We’re trained professionals. Uncle Obama will take care of you’uns, and us old dinosaurs will shuffle quietly offstage. Remember, call 911, assume the passive surrender posture—head down, ass up on the floor, like you’re worshipping Mecca—and the government will take care of you.

For those of you who question the validity of my previous statement: sorry, I don’t teach shooting any longer, I don’t know anyone to call who might sell you black market ammunition or automatic weapons when the federal “gun grab” comes, and you’re on your own when it comes to dealing with this socialist demon you chose to run things.

I’m old, tired, and in the way. All I have to look forward to is thumbing my nose and yelling “I told ya so!”

Again...IT'S NOT WHAT I MEAN!

Ah, it all moves too fast these days!

Let’s see: the government has taken over banking, insurance, and the automotive industry. “GM” is now “Government Motors”, and Chrysler isn’t being sold to FixItAgainTomorrow [what my old Corvette mechanic called Fiats], it’s being given away to them. Pontiac is dead, and the only Hummers manufactured in the US from now on will be the under-armored wrecks we use in Iraq, where we surrendered last month. North Korea is threatening nuclear holocaust, and under our financial sponsorship of the United Nations, we are replying to them in very harsh language. Health care and gun-grabbing are next in line. The president says we’re out of money now, but like any other facts, why should we let truth stand in the way of a good idea for social engineering?

While the Speaker of the House of Representatives—the most dangerous woman in America; Hillary is thankfully marginalized—is now starting a war with our major intelligence agency—brought into being by Franklin Roosevelt, the most dangerous man of the 20th century—she says “we should take ‘inventory’ of our lives”, or something like that. I read that to mean thusly: since the government is now our nanny and sole voice, the government should now take an inventory of how we live. As Bill O’Reilly likes to say, stop me if I’m going wrong here.

Meanwhile, some wild-eyed gang called ACORN is sucking up millions of taxpayer dollars, and thugs calling themselves “The New Black Panthers” are standing around in front of polling places threatening people with truncheons and shouting racial epithets without being charged under the law.

(Stop me if I’m going too fast, or playing loose with the facts. I’m just channeling what I hear on the news. I don’t get out much, and have too much time on my hands.)

If some black guys with billy sticks stand in front of where I’m headed to vote, I’ll consider myself intimidated. There is a law against this, and it was enacted to deal with the kind of redneck trash that, as a true son of The South, I have spent my life refuting. I can’t confront such thuggery; to do so will get me charged with violating someone’s “civil right” to conduct voter fraud.

As for Ms. Pelosi: she should take a note from Alcoholics Anonymous. I used to drink too much—way more than I boast of now—and going to AA meetings for some years seemed like a good idea at the time. One of the tenets they hammered into us was the principle of not taking an “inventory” of another person. If I care to assess myself, to deal with what is screwing up my life, that is acceptable. It is recommended. On the other hand, I have learned from experience and empirical wisdom that it is not the right thing to judge others, no matter how wrong we might think them to be. People are going to do what they’re going to do. My belief in this is what differentiates liberals from conservative Libertarians. I am one of the latter.

I expect to be called a racist for calling out the Black Panthers. Save your pixels, kids. I’m from Georgia, born and bred here. Calling me a racist is hurling spitballs at a battleship. I grew up with the stuff you only see in movies like “Mississippi Burning”. I knew it was wrong from six years of age. I got brought up a little better—and though I’ll get no Politically Correct credit for it—I hope my children will be even better folks if they think, address the truth, and see through that which blinds us to that truth.

The woman of history who fascinates me the most is Joan D’Arc. The man of history is Wyatt Earp. Leaving St. Joan behind for a moment, let me comment on Earp. That day at the OK Corral, his brother Virgil is on record shouting “This isn’t what I want!” at the Clantons and McLaureys. I mentioned this once before, when this modest blog went completely off the rails with a disparity between what I meant to say, and what turned out in what Stephen King calls “the adventure of writing”. Once again, what Virgil Earp yelled is applicable. THIS ISN’T WHAT I WANT!

Not that pointing out the obvious has any less credibility or relevance; I just get tired of repeating myself. America is a train wreck, and I’m standing alongside the tracks waving “bye-bye”. I only meant to take up advocacy of a single American, which I’ll deal with in the blog post above. As for what I’ve said here, think about it.

Are you scared yet?

Say good night, Jay...

Seventeen years ago, I plugged in a new-fangled device called a VCR, and said good-night to Johnny Carson. Friday night, I guess I established an old-folk’s tradition by saying good-night to Jay Leno.

I guess it boils down to a variation on the cliché question: “Elvis or The Beatles?” In this case, it would be “Leno or Letterman?” I’m more a “Dave” kinda guy, even if our politics don’t agree. (I’m usually asleep or in some meth-frenzy insomniac movie-mode by 11:30 at night, but that’s beside the point. I sit up at 0430 in the morning to watch stuff like “Komodo vs. Cobra” because I can’t sleep, not because I think there’s any inherent cinematic value in it.)

Mr. Leno bowed out gracefully. I got a clue that I might have been missing some amusing stuff all these years when he ran the “Best of Jaywalking” segment. The gang of kids at the end of the show was cool. Johnny Carson had a dark side, but Leno always seemed upfront. After Carson, I always considered “The Tonight Show” to be light-hearted entertainment, no matter whose case Leno was on during the monologue.

Jay Leno has one of the best car collections in the Western World. His appearances on gearhead shows like “Rides” and “Overhaulin’” were always good-natured and built good will. At the same time, I always got the impression that Mr. Leno would never really drive those cars fast.

I don’t know how many vehicles David Letterman owns, but he’s on record as a speed merchant, especially during the commute from Connecticut to The Big Apple. I’m on record as an unreconstructed speed-demon, too. Perhaps it’s this outlaw spirit that takes one over in the wee hours of the morning that makes me a “Dave” guy instead of a “Jay” guy.

I doubt I’ll watch Jay’s new prime-time show, if it comes to fruition. Between trash programming and commercials, I watch little network TV, opting for junk movies or endless re-runs on The History Channel or MTV—Military TV, not the other guys—rock ‘n roll died about the time I drove my Chevy into the levee, and all that.

You did well, Mr. Leno. You showed grace and style, and you transcended the network office politics. You carved your legacy, and don’t need to work again. Go out and drive some of those hot rods really fast in the darkest hours of the morning, when the roads are empty. You deserve it.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water...

When I obtained my Water Safety Instructor certification from the Red Cross, part of it involved jumping into the deep end of the pool with my clothes and shoes on to rescue a “simulated” drowning person. Yes, I got water up my nose, and it was unpleasant. Yes, I punched the “victim” in the gut and dragged him to the edge of the pool by his hair. Nobody died, and had the scenario been real, I might have even gotten a “thank you” for saving someone’s life.

A few years ago, I underwent a medical procedure called a “nerve connectivity” test. It involved sticking needles into my legs, running an electrical charge through them, and measuring some sort of result on a computer. The neurologist kept apologizing when I’d jump and wince. When it was over, I told him that if I was guilty of any unsolved crime he’d care to name, I would have confessed to it about the second time I got shocked. [By the way, the computer made a sound like a chainsaw when the current was applied.]

We need to transcend this “torture” nonsense. When you’re tossed out of a chopper a thousand feet over the South China Sea, the water doesn’t sting the inside of your nose; it’s hard as concrete if you haven’t figured out how to soar like an eagle before impact. Real torture leaves lasting damage, like high-pressure air applied to the sinuses, or high-amperage electricity coursing from the big toe to the most sensitive regions of the body.

Already a domestic terrorist—a double-murderer—is appealing his case on the grounds the Chicago police “tortured” his confession out of him. He may walk, because in that toddlin’ town, they call enhanced interrogation “a trimming”. If Osama Bamalama succeeds in closing Gitmo and brings the terrorists home to stand trial, how long will it be before they are appealing—and winning—their cases because Pizza Hut didn’t have their order there within fifteen minutes?

A statistic that Osama Bamalama didn’t mention in his pre-rebuttal to Dick Cheney the other day is that one-in-seven terrorists released from Gitmo have returned to jihad. We need to get off of the tired mantra that our holding captured terrorists at Guantanamo Bay is somehow serving as a “recruitment tool” for yet more terrorists. Evil is its own recruitment tool, and the recruits are more enabled by an apologetic president debasing America internationally than they are by allegations that imprisoning detainees in Club Fed is somehow abusing them. I saw how the Cuban Marielitos were detained—in American prisons on U.S. soil—in the 1980s; the conditions were far more brutal and oppressive than today’s detention regime. Where was the international outcry then? Why is Jimmy Carter not being retroactively criminalized for approving the Bureau of Prisons and Immigration & Naturalization Service policies that resulted in such brutality toward [mostly] innocent Cuban refugees? There is a double standard in play here that is frightening. Cubans were being killed by American prison guards, not through calculated acts of torture, but by spur-of-the-moment beatings and choke holds. What did the Cubans do to deserve this? They acted out in time-honored convict fashion by hurling urine and feces at their jailers, and screaming to be released. What do the terror detainees at Gitmo do? They hurl urine and feces at their jailers, and scream to be released. The soldiers who run Gitmo don’t respond by beating or choking the terrorists; they maintain their honorable bearing and shower off the filth of doing their duty as quickly as possible.

Three—count ‘em—three high-value suspects have been waterboarded, including that Khalid John Belushi look-alike who oversaw 9/11. There were 15 students in my WSI certification class. Doctors were present during the three waterboardings. There wasn’t even an EMT in the gym when we went into the pool. The trained professionals who administer the actual waterboard techniques were judicious in their application of discomfort. The trained professionals who acted as drowning victims in the WSI classes also simulate panic, attempting to drag their fully-clothed rescuers under by climbing on them, illustrating how a victim can kill their savior in dire circumstances. (I got a high grade for gut-punching my “victim”, knocking the wind out of him and ending all struggling long enough for me to take control of the situation and drag him safety. I was also reprimanded for the technique, but the professional “victim” admitted it was surprising and highly effective. No harm, no foul, and we laughed about it over pizza and beer later.)

I am heartened that Dick Cheney is becoming the voice of the Republicans in the face of these hysterical, retroactive witch-hunts. It would be unseemly for former president Bush to speak against the current regime, in spite of the precedents set by such Democrat luminaries as Jimmy Carter and Al Gore during the Bush Administration. How Mr. Cheney must have chafed at the bit when he was in office! He must have been dying to reply to the nonsensical trash and outright slander offered up by the Democrats, but propriety restrained him. Now the rules have changed, thanks to our precedent-setting liberal friends, and the gloves are off. You go, Big Dick!

This 'n that; lotsa torture

Just a few notes and a general thank-you:

UPI has received, to date, over 9500 visitors and nearly 13,500 page views. To my constant readers and those who drop by sporadically for a dose of alienated craziness, I thank you. The only other time I was ever accorded the undivided attention of over a thousand people was in the 1970s, when my old rock band The Nobz opened for The Tubes at Atlanta’s Fox Theater. The Internet is a colder venue, but if time and circumstances have made me a bit more articulate than singing back-up on such gems as “Lawnmowers in Love”, “Pet Rock” and “Disco Chainsaw”, it’s nice to have a forum for my cognitively-dissonant ramblings. I long for the days when I still had my sense of humor, but the world has turned into such a grim, nihilistic place that any humor I find in current events or social trends is so dark that I dare not express it lest I be sent to a re-education camp for the politically incorrect.

Apparently, people occasionally search my archives here at Blogger™, and check out yesterday’s news. The dreaded “Anonymous” left a comment on last year’s “The nigger lover”, saying my writing was so terrible and bad, it’s “terribad”. Okay. I published it, since there wasn’t any outright profanity involved. I would’ve appreciated suggestions for how to improve my style, but none were forthcoming. Please don't write in telling me how good I am; sycophancy does not become what I do here.

I waver between stream-of-consciousness writing and lessons learned from Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style and United Press International’s Newswire Stylebook. Those used to be the Bibles of journalism, before subjective ideology superseded straight reporting as the standard for the historical record. Back in the day—as a freelancer—I filed a few stories that were picked up by the other UPI. I never forgot what my journalism teacher—a crusty old fart named Phillip S. who was a reporter with a press card in his hatband and a pencil and small spiral notepad in hand—told me about the nature of the job: “You aren’t there to be the story; you’re there to record what is happening.” Phil taught me how to edit copy, work an offset press, and write a story that tells the truth without editorializing or spinning the facts. In a perfect world, he’d be the managing editor at the New York Times today.

Another Occasional Reader left a comment at the previous post: “I like seeing an individual who isn't conflicted about what constitutes torture.”

There is a lot of buzz about what constitutes “torture” these days. As an aficionado of sleaze, I am aware that people will pay big bucks per hour for certain kinds of “torture”. Just as appeasers are fond of saying “one person’s ‘terrorist’ is another’s ‘freedom fighter’,” I am fond of remarking that “one person’s ‘torture victim’ is another’s ‘client’.”

Today’s terrorists are so lucky! They get paraded around in women’s underwear; Hell, that’s worth $300 an hour to clients of certain mistresses. They get a little water up the nostrils; it stings, but I underwent that as a pup learning to swim.

Let’s try some techniques from Vietnam outlawed by the Church Commission when Mr. Peanut became the dress rehearsal for The Manchurian Candidate:

Technique #1 was something referred to as “The Bell Telephone Hour”. The old-fashioned field telephones used in Nam required an internal generator-capacitor system to send a ring tone down the wire. (You’ve seen this in countless war movies; the beleaguered commander spins the crank, and HQ responds at the other end.) It doesn’t take a lot of imagination or expertise to run a couple of lead wires off the generator, and tape them to the genitals of “a person of interest”. The amperage is high; it’s the amperage that kills you, not the low-amp 50,000 volts of a police taser.

A quarter turn of the generator crank is enough for screams and body spasms; use your imagination for further turns of the screw.

More sophisticated interrogators made use of high-pressure air hoses; the same devices you use to inflate your tires to 32 psi at the gas station. Compressors are small, and can be powered by a standard car battery. With a thumb-release nozzle, similar to an airbrush, and applied to the nasal and ear cavities, these things could produce immediate results.

Technique #3 was something I’d like to apply to Osama Bin-Laden over Ground Zero in New York: “Flying lessons.”

The ters who caused 9/11 are infamous for taking flying lessons in America. I have some make-up lessons for them. Again, this was a tried-and-true method in Nam until CBS caught a session on tape and blew the whistle.

Pick three enemy combatants who all know approximately the same information. Take them up in a helicopter to 1100+ feet, and hover.

Don’t ask the first contestant a single question. Toss him out to show the other two players you are serious.

Ask the second individual what you need to know. Standard responses are fear of the third player, that they will rat him for telling, or in the case of jihadists, defiance.

Two chances at an answer are standard. Any further resistance…don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

The third contestant invariably answers questions.

If we’re into being kinder and gentler, he gets flown back to base and given special consideration as a Pavlovian reward. Back in the day, he got to see if he could fly; just so no awkward questions arose later. Bin-Laden should be televised nationally over the WTC crater learning to fly.

I have few compunctions about dealing with evil. There are numerous incidents from post-Civil-War Reconstruction to the Indian Wars to War II that are stains upon our perceived American honor. Dunking terrorists in a swimming pool and giving them wedgies pales in comparison to the looting, burning and massacre at Darien, Georgia, to Wounded Knee and Powder River, to the out-of-hand summary executions of Nazis alongside the roadways to victory in War II.

If my writing is “terribad”, it may be because I’m the master of the run-on sentence.

A poll taken last year indicated that a large percentage of pet owners would throw their beloved critters into the ocean for $1,000,000. I’d sooner take a manslaughter rap than have you muscle up on my dogs; I think a lot more of my pets than I do of some scumbag whose avowed purpose in life is to slaughter Americans. If a terrorist has knowledge of an impending incident that will take the life of your child, would you be as repelled by the interrogation techniques I have just described? I think not.

Think about that when you see The Manchurian Candidate bowing to dictators, apologizing for the American existential spirit, and assuming a posture of weakness and submission while trying to subvert America into a European ideal of collective surrender.

I used to be disgusted; now I’m just amused.

Can you say "Jeemp"?

The ancient Chinese had a novel way of dealing with the condemned. They would collect feral cats, and starve them for a while. Then the condemned malefactor would be brought forth to a public place, bound hand and foot, and stuffed into a muslin or burlap bag. The cats would then be placed into the bag, and it would be sewn shut. Then a gang of jolly factotums would beat the bag with bamboo canes. Cats, especially the stray, feral variety, do not like to be treated in this fashion. They have a primal tendency to lash out with fang and claw at anything near them when they are in a dark, hostile environment. Given unrelenting abuse, even your household puddy-tat will do you in, if he/she has enough friends and you're in the bag with them.

The Muslims used to have a device that resembled two rowboats, except it had holes for the wrists, ankles, and neck. A person would be pinioned in this "boat", and they would be force-fed milk and honey until they could hold no more. After a while, nature would take its course, and the interior of the "boat" would become, shall we say, rather funky. A while after that, flies would come, attracted to the odor. They would feed on the waste products befouling the interior of the "boat". Flies also lay eggs, and those eggs hatch into maggots. Maggots are not particular about their cusine; they will feed on anything. Once the milk and honey was withheld, the maggots would consume all the offal in the "boat", and continue eating their merry way into whatever else might be at hand, like a hapless human body. It would take days to die, being eaten alive by maggots, and the agony is so exquisite that it defies human imagination.

Whoever sent me the Backdoor\Jeemp\C: computer virus deserves either—or both—of these fates. I would drag a folding chair to the beach, and pack a lunch, just to feast on the screams of some hacker being devoured by maggots or clawed to death by feral cats. This was not the 1 April virus that was ballyhooed in the news; this was a direct, personal attack with a new variant of an oldie-but-goodie. It lodged itself deep in my System Volume Information registry, and established numerous restore points. It lurked in protected, hidden files deep in the bowels of HAL-9000 Mark II. It issued false commands, dropped down command menus, and would scroll down them until it found an active command, then execute it. It seemed to be possessed of AI [Artificial Intelligence]; it had an uncanny awareness that I was going online to register and download anti-virus software, and would relentlessly navigate me off the registration page before I could finish filling in the required fields.

The first cleansing of my hard drive yielded the deletions of two Trojan downloaders (Agent AZ), Backdoor\Bot\67157, a 2006 version of Win32\Sobig\F@mm, and the insidious \Jeemp\C:. My outdated McAfee virus scan couldn't cope with it. My Diskeeper™ defragmentation program would identify it, but my Windows search engines couldn't locate the file. I had the registry number, but no way to get at the bastard and manually delete it. BitDefender™ flushed out the five major problems and destroyed them, but \Jeemp\C: kept coming back. The Windows Service Pack 3, RegCure™, Registry Mechanic™, MalwareBytes.com™ and SuperAntiSpyware™ scans all made the thing go dormant for a while, but as soon as I tried to do anything, on any program, the false commands and the diddling with my scroll lock and number lock would be back with a vengeance. It would delete data from open files, destroying unsaved work, and forcing me to re-open saved versions of said files repeatedly. It would actively engage and block any anti-malware site I tried to Google™ on the Internet. I called several friends of United Possums International on the phone, and asked them to kindly circulate e-mails and a posting at ScrappleFace to the effect that I was not accepting e-mails—deleting them as rapidly as they came in—and certainly not replying to anyone or composing any new blog posts, as I didn't want to spread the joy around.

My bacon was saved, so to speak, by the two Macs: Merle M. and McAfee. M.M. sent me a link to McAfee Sunday night. I chased it deep enough into their site that I found a 30-day trial download of Security Center 2009™. This thing took about two-and-a-half hours to download. I started at 2100 hours last night; at 0630 this morning, the dreaded registry code did not appear when I defragmented HAL-9000 for the umpteenth time. I purged restore points, cookies, my browser history, cache, and a bunch of other stuff I'm too groggy to remember. I deleted several .exe programs that I will have to restore after I avail myself of food and sleep. It's 11:45 as I write this; I'm past 24 hours without sleep, and feeling it. When the Insomnia Monster visits, I like it to be on my terms, not sitting feverishly at a computer, shedding tears and shouting "Please, God, let this work! I'll buy the damn thing if it works!"

Guess what? I think it worked. I wouldn't be sending this if I didn't think it has. I have been piddling with various programs since 0630, and I haven't gotten the first bogus command. The scroll and number lock lights have been constant and dependable.

I think I killed it. Diskeeper™ could locate, identify, and defragment the virus, but you cannot take direct action from that program. I had to do three forced re-boots this morning before the thing disappeared, but purging the system restore points unprotected the files, and the updated McAfee™ program apparently eliminated the nasty little bug. Despite the socialist predations of the Manchurian Candidate and his Congressional myrmidons, I cannot find solace in my fine Kentucky whiskey this month. That budget is blown; I have to go pay the piper over at McAfee.com. Better to be sober and virus-free than to sit here hammered while some basement-dwelling creature drives my computer without me setting a finger to the keyboard. It's money well spent if I don't have to go through this again.

I did not post the comments to the most recent post at UPI. All e-mail went to Internet Hell as soon as it arrived. Since I'm running a week behind, this letter is doubtless going to become my latest blog post. Osama Bamalama is moving too fast for me to keep up. There's a headbanger song with a refrain of "Let the bodies hit the floor!"—all I can understand of the lyrics. I don't do crank and oxycontin, so most of that yowling and growling is lost on me. I like the guitar riffs, though. I want to see how this 63% approval rating for The Manchurian Candidate shakes out when the bodies literally start hitting the floor and he's whining for the UN to write someone a letter telling them how really, really angry we are.

Hide somewhere and watch.

This could have been an attack by a drug-peddling Hindu telemarketer who got tag-teamed by the little woman and me some weeks ago. It might have been someone who disagrees with my [conservative] Libertarian point of view. Or, it might just have been one of the princes of Africa who send me those letters fishing in the wrong pond and promising millions of $USD if I'll only send them my phone numbers, bank account codes, PINs, and my Social Security number.

A word to my wise friends online: please be judicious about sending me e-mails. If I have been remiss about replying or acknowledging communications in the past, I am now obsessive about not doing so. I don't open any attachments unless you know the Secret Squirrel unlisted phone number, and call to tell me I should peek at your—safe—attachment . Previously, my attention to online shenanigans has been dictated by ignorance, apathy, and indifference: "I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't matter anyhow." Interspersed with that are the occasional bows to health matters. Now, I'm proactively hostile towards my e-mail, so be gentle with me when you write. I have too many firewalls and too much virus protection now; lag time on all my programs is, like, forever while they get scanned.

A passing observation for the non-political

I am getting too tedious about politics, screaming “I told ya so!” repeatedly. There are too many firearms in the house. This is a formula for disaster, although formulas for disaster seem to be the guiding national policy these days.

Ah, well, enough of that. I only have one question these days: “Are you worried yet?” When the answer is “Yes”, I’ll pop from my spider-hole like any good NVA. Until then, I am not running; I am taking cover as a good soldier taught me, and staying out of the way of incoming that has become too intense to dodge.

What chaps my hinder this week is something I have been catching between news snippets for far too long.

I’m a newshound, and my bedroom TV wakes me with the—so far—reassurance that America hasn’t been attacked again, and the world as we know it isn’t ending. Then, I play for a half hour with the notion I can play Russian roulette with a clip-loading pistol, then I try to get a more constructive perspective on the day.

First, there was a clever ad for a “home security” company featuring a man and his alluring wife in bed; their first night in their new home. She wakes up. “Honey, I hear something downstairs.” “I’ll go check,” he says bravely. Then he creeps to the bedroom door, peeks out like a nervous 12-year-old girl. When the burglar kicks open the back door, he pees himself and runs to hide until the B----- Security Company calls to make sure it isn’t a false alarm…which in California will get you a $250 fine from the locals.

So now we have a teenager who kisses her parents good-night for a night on the town. She then climbs onto an exercise machine, plugs in the rock ‘n roll, and begins making the miles. Seconds later, the two hulking thugs who have been stalking outside the large, plate glass window smash the front door open. May I write the rest of this script?

[Dispatcher] (in some state 600 miles away): “This is B----- Security. Are you all right?”

[Terrified teen]: “Two men just broke the front door down! The alarm went off!”

[Dispatcher]: “I’m sending help right now! Unfortunately, the local authorities will take twenty-to-twenty-five minutes to arrive. In the meantime, these men will drag you out of the house, drive you to a secluded location, where they will rape you and stab you repeatedly before dumping your body under a freeway overpass. Your parents will come home to find the police standing around waiting to give them a citation because five neighbors called to complain about the hooting siren at your house. They might drop the charges when your parents notice the blood trail and the fact you’re missing. Do you own a gun?”

[Terrified teen]: “No! It’s against the law!”

[Dispatcher] “Well, good luck, kid! Please stay on the line for further assistance.”

Yeah, I’m a sick puppy for thinking of this kind of stuff. On the other hand, you think this kind of stuff doesn’t happen every day?

Okay, what’s wrong with these respective pictures? It’s not like finding Waldo, or Elmo, or whoever. What common household tool, according to the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution—a tool that lies there and does nothing unless you pick it up to use it—is missing from these two scenarios?

If you live in LA, or Georgia, or New York City, do you really want to depend on a well-meaning dispatcher in Arizona to call your local cops at 3:00 in the morning and tell them haul ass to your home because the siren is hooting?

I can think of at least one sound that is a lot more disturbing, and familiar, to the average sociopath than the wail of a rooftop siren. It’s the distinctive “click-clack” of a .12 gauge shotgun racking a shell into the chamber. Second place goes to the “click-clack” of the slide actions of any number of semi-automatic pistols charging a round.

A lot of states still have the “make my day” law. After the “click-clack”, you don’t have to turn on the lights, or yell “Freeze”, or any of that movie stuff. Good combat shooting dictates you ascertain your target is clear and hostile, and then you go for it.

Firearms have saved more lives than they have taken. I have kept large-caliber handguns in or on the headboards of my beds for decades, and never once have they jumped onto the floor, run out the door, and journeyed down the block to rob the local 7-11. I strongly resent the phrase “gun crime”.

So, Sponge Bob Brave Jammies might feel more protectively macho, and Terrified Teen might still be alive if there had been something slightly more lethal, but equally benevolent as a hammer was around the house somewhere.

There is a political aspect to all this, but I’m not going there right now. Those People aren’t just picking your pockets; when they finally ruin your country and you want to revolt, will you have anything more threatening than a finger to wave at them?

The choice is yours. Would you like that siren on the roof, or would you feel more comfortable with that “click-clack” when your children are sleeping just down the hall?

It’s just an uncomfortable advertising trend I see these days. Call me crazy, go back to sleep.