Checking in

Oh, the horrors! Imagine, a bedroom in Kentucky with a single, spent, .22 shell casing. The only thing unusual is that it is ".22 shell casing" singular. Like the guy from Alaska who nevere had never heard the term "mosquito bite" in the singular.

 

 

No boarding-up in Eaton Rapids.

I will suggest to "the kids" that they top-off their gas tanks Monday but they are adults.

Trailers

12' long by 7' wide

I am in the market for a trailer in a casual kind of way.

Michigan has a stupid way of licensing trailers. It is a one-time fee of $200 good for as along as you own a trailer. That kills the market for low-end trailers in Michigan. In other states, a person with a modest budget can buy a trailer and get a few years out of it and it works out. In Michigan, that $300 trailer is $500 out-of-pocket to get it on the road.

The reason Michigan went that way was to balance the budget by pulling future income forward in time. They figured that it was better to get the $20 fee X 10 years up-front and that solved a problem...for them...for one year.

This one was priced right but it was very heavy and the axle was welded to the frame. I imagine it would shake the fillings out of your teeth at highway speeds.

I passed on it.

The guy selling it had lots of other stuff for sale

4" wide tow-straps. He had piles of them.

.

Happy Hollow Wieners

 

New Green-Deal Biden

 

Jobs. IMPORTANT jobs!

 

Arrested physical and behavioral growth an adaptation to hive-life?

 

Locust were one of the plagues in the Bible. They are still with us.

Scientists determined that some types of grasshoppers morp into locust when a certain population density is reached. The grasshopper-to-grasshopper contact releases neurotransmitters (serotonin being one of the important ones).

The neurotransmitters trigger physical and behavioral changes.

Locusts belong to the grasshopper family but unlike their harmless relatives they have the unusual ability to live in either a solitary or a gregarious state, with the genetic instructions for both packaged within a single genome.

Locusts originate from barren regions that see only occasional transient rainfalls. While unforgiving conditions prevail, locusts eke out a living as solitary individuals with a strong aversion to mingling with other locusts. When the rains come, the amount and quality of vegetation expands and the locusts can breed in large numbers.

In deserts, however, the rains are not sustained and food soon becomes more and more sparse. Thus large numbers of locusts are funnelled into dwindling patches of remaining vegetation where they are forced into close contact with each other. This crowding triggers a dramatic and rapid change in the locusts' behaviour: they become very mobile and they actively seek the company of other locusts. This new behaviour keeps the crowd together while the insects acquire distinctly different colours and large muscles that equip them for prolonged flights in swarms.      Source

 

This is very speculative, but I wonder if humans have that same kind of plasticity. We certainly see very different behaviors in crowded environments.

There are also physical changes that have been difficult to explain. For one thing, the lower human jaw has been shrinking and there has not been enough selection pressure (that is, enough mortality due to large lower jaws) for it to be attributable to genetic shift.

Could humans possess the inherent flexibility in our genetic hard-wiring to morp into hive-dwellers when packed together?

Where I am going with this is that smaller lower jaws are linked to pre-adulthood. The jaws need to elongate to receive wisdom teeth. Maybe the hard-wiring arrests the maturation process so the hive-dwellers are in a perpetual state of arrested development...say the level of a fifth-to-eighth grader for many attributes.

Imagine the disappointment in some neighborhoods

 

The word going around the internet is that Macy's is having a spectacular sale on whites.

Don't bother going to the site, though. All I could find were sheets and towels on sale.

Furthermore, I guess "white" isn't white any more.

Local talent

The second and third image are the same buck.

Nice to see what is running around the neighborhood. 

Now, if I can just get them to wander onto my property in firearm seasons in the daylight when I am carrying a firearm...

Conversations about fish

 

The Kid is obsessed with big fish.

I was pummeled with questions asking my opinion of the largest fish in the Grand River (Lake Sturgeon, but lower reaches), the upper Grand River (length or weight?), the hole where we were fishing....this lake, that lake, the other lake.....

Winter is coming. Northern Pike might become our main target since they can be reliably caught through the ice

In the course of our hours-long, rambling discussion the subject of Northern Pike (Esox lucius) came up.

 

If the success of a species is measured by its range, the Northern Pike is a very successful species. One factor that contributes to their success is that they are more resistant to oxygen deprivation than many other species. 

Take a small pond, cover it with snow. The aquatic plant-life dies or leaves blow in before freeze-up and the decaying vegetation depletes the oxygen. That is why there are many ponds with only bullheads in them.

Pike are not a glamorous species. There are still fishermen who brag about killing every one they catch because they consider them "trash fish".

 

Pike ARE slimy and to do compete for the same forage base that bass eat. They also have a mouth full of teeth that can hurt you.

They also have been introduced by enthusiasts into waters where they were unknown, thereby upsetting the local ecosystems.

And, because they can live in low quality water, the fish caught from such waters can have an off-putting, decaying-vegetation flavor.

Niche player

One of the questions the Kid asked was "If you  had a farm pond and could only stock it with five species of fish, what would they be?"

I thought it was a dandy question.

My original answer was minnows, bluegills (bream), largemouth bass, channel cats and crappie.

The problem with that mix is that bluegills tend to run-away reproductively and the pond manager must take steps to ensure there are enough large predator fish to beat down their numbers.

Northern pike would be an acceptable predator of bluegills and has good survivability in small ponds. They also have decent reproductive success when the pond has a stretch of low, marshy shore that floods in the spring.

Inbreeding depression

One issue with small populations is that they are subject to inbreeding depression. Inbreeding depression is often the culprit for sickly, puppy-mill puppies and the decline of Dynastic lines like the Egyptian Pharaohs.

The opposite of inbreeding depression is "hybrid-vigor" or heterosis. The reason hybrid-vigor is in quotes is because the word "hybrid" implies an out-of-species cross.

Our conversation turned to the possibility of creating a more vigorous line of northern pike to use in stocking farm ponds. Perhaps using eggs from the thicker-bodied Eurasian strain of northern pike or (more practical for us) eggs or milt from pike in small, Dakota or Montana prairie potholes crossed onto Michigan small-pond pike.

In addition to make big fish for the Kid to angle for, it might produce a fast-growing apex predator to put into farm ponds to knock-back bullhead and bluegill populations. The cross would have the advantage of being a native species but with a bit more "zip" in growth-rate.

It is time to grid our lions and put on the armor of God

 

For our struggle is not with flesh and blood
but with the principalities, with the powers,
with the world rulers of this present darkness,
with the evil spirits in the heavens.
Therefore, put on the armor of God,
that you may be able to resist on the evil day
and, having done everything, to hold your ground.
So stand fast with your loins girded in truth,
clothed with righteousness as a breastplate   -Ephesians Chapter 6

It is called "Fishing" not "Catching" for a reason

 

Looking downriver

No fish pictures today.

 

I think lower water temperatures were a factor. I gave the Kid an assignment, to use the power of the internet to see what was biting, where they were being caught and what folks were using for bait.

Looking upriver

It looks like we have a standing Wednesday fishing date. It will be interesting to see if he sticks with it if we don't catch fish.

We need to work on his clothing. He was wearing crocs, shorts and a tee-shirt. It was 53F at three this afternoon. He stuck it out till 6, though.

Painting trees

I am going to "flip" most of my Shenandoah pear trees over to Asian pears, probably Korean Giant.

Shenandoah is vulnerable to sun-scald. That is where the sun thaws the bark in the day and then it freezes at night. I don't know why Shenandoah is so much more vulnerable than any other variety.

Painting the bark white reduces the likelihood of the sun thawing out the bark. It also reduces the emissivity so they freeze more slowly since they are less efficient at radiating heat

I like Asian pears, especially the later varieties. They have a very long period where they are ripe but still hang on the tree.

I am lichen it

I want to get lichens growing on the flags we put beneath the eves.

Many researchers now believe that lichens are a symbiotic relationship between three species. My plan is to crumble up the old bark and rub it into the tops of the flags.

Yeah, I am retired. Why do you ask?

Urea crystals in the bottom of a bucket

You can click to embiggen

I left a bucket with about a 1/2" of urea prills outside. Of course it rained.

Then I stuck it in the barn where I forgot about it.

You heard of crystal meth...this is crystal piss.

At the grocery store

The only category that was hammered was the Mexican food. Everything else was fully stocked.

Maybe it was a supplier or distributor related issue.

Home-field advantage: Lessons

Please feel free to correct me or add to the list.

The group in possession of the territory will have a huge advantage IF they invest time, energy and resources into its defense.

Barbed wire is your friend. It is devastating to aggressors who never encountered it before. It buys time if they have.

Water cannons are your friends. These are not new-tech.

Exploit the environment when you can (temperature).

Use light to your advantage.

Shallow kill-sacks or fire-zones to reduce the chances of blue-on-blue.

Interlocking fields-of-fire are your friend.

Elevation can be your friend as long as you have several egress plans.

You will have to win in four courts to prevail: You must win in the court of Newtonian physics. You must win in the legal court. You must win in the media circus and you must win in the court of public opinion.

There will be times when the Rule-of-Three-Ss applies.

There will be times when one-shot-and-escape-to-fight-another-day is your best option.

Your weapon-of-choice has an optimum range relative to your opponents'. Understand what that range is, plan-and-execute the battle to keep you at that optimum range.

Get inside your opponent's O-O-D-A. That is how Brad's forces flushed Colton's forces into the Claymore's kill-zones.

A relatively small number of capable fighters are often better than a mass of wannabes who step on each other's toes.

Only hits count.

Even "low value" assets can be useful as eyes-and-ears.

Shield your highest leverage assets. Alex screwed up when he left his water-cannon operators exposed.

The enemy will adapt. You will lose if you do not.

There are people nominally on the "other side" who are sympathetic to your plight. Those fire-hoses feeding the water cannons didn't sprout out of the ground. Somebody sympathetic to your side "misplaced them".

The side of order and private property have all the tools we need EXCEPT "leaders" who to refuse to use those tools.

The speculation in the story was that species like Schroom and Cunningham could be found in very specific niches within the ecosystem. It is like fishing for catfish in a deep hole on the outside of a steep bend in a river or fishing for smallmouth bass where the rocks are the size of hens' eggs or larger. Schroom was one-layer-of-separation from the Deep State but very close to a huge income stream. Cunningham live in the cracks within a large corporation.

Home-field advantage: Afterward

Brad, Darryl and the squad met at a truck-stop in Upper Sandusky, Ohio before splitting up to go their separate ways.

They had a quick post-action debriefing.

Darryl brought up the subject of Lawton. “The kid has a lot of potential. He handled himself well.”

Brad said “He fell out of protocol when he took that head-shot. He didn’t tell his guy on the ground,”

“We were all out of protocol” Darryl contradicted him. “It went rodeo pretty fast. Lawton had a good shot and he took it.”

“A head-shot, though. Wasn’t that a show-off move?” Brad asked. Secretly he was pulling for Lawton but somebody had to play devils-advocate.

“He shoots prairie dogs in Oklahoma at that range. Did you know he was named for the town where his dad grew up. He goes out there every fall and shoots prairie-dogs at three, four-hundred yards. A prairie-dog is a lot smaller than a human head” Darryl continued to advocate.

“Well, you got a point” Brad conceded. “He is too far away to train with us, but I can call the crew in Romney and see if they can hook him up with a group in Michigan.” 

*

***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***

Michelle Schroom, Senior Partner in the legal firm Bloud, Zucker, Schroom and Tattomb died in Lansing, Michigan while leading a candle-light vigil for the victims of Right Wing aggression.

No ceremony is planned.

Donations may be sent to Friends-of-George charity.

Bloud, Zucker, Schroom and Tattomb is Michigan's largest full-service legal firm specializing in providing legal services to State agencies and Municipalities.

***END OF PRESS RELEASE***

*

I woke up in a hospital bed. I had tubes taped to the back of my hand and my back hurt.

Vince was watching me as I shook the haze out of my eyes. He watched me finger the stitches on my belly.

Vince answered my question before I could voice it. "Good thing you only need one kidney."

“Where is Lizzy?” I asked through my dry-mouth.

“You are welcome for me being here” Vince responded. “Lizzy stepped out for a cup of coffee and some fresh air.

I took a sniff. “What the hell? Is my room next to the morgue?”

“Nope. What you are smelling are the riotors. They have been trickling into the hospital for hours” Vince said.

“Why the hell did they put them next to my room?” I asked querulously. Hey, I was still shaking off the anesthesia.

“They aren’t. They are four floors down” Vince snickered.

“Well, they should turn on the fans.” I complained.

“You don’t think they thought of that?” Vince said. “They started to stink once they started warming up. People were puking, they smelled so bad. The only good thing is that the puke couldn’t make it smell any worse.”

“The Emergency Room finally decided to stuff fifteen of them into each Covid isolation room to warm up. The only problem is that the Covid rooms vent to outside and the intakes are picking up some of that stink.”

*

Alex was having the same issue with the men who had been operating the water cannons. He made an emergency call to Kolkata, India. That is a privilege paying $10k for 500 grams of powder gets you.

The lead chemist informed Alex that a bath filled with Epsom salts was moderately effective at disabling the enzymes, but the bather had to soak for at least two hours.

The chemist wanted to know how effective the product was.

Alex told him it ramped up slowly but seemed to be “pretty effective, once it got going”.

“I meant culturally. Here in India even the children of the highest brahmin class become untouchable when they smell like someone who skins dead animals. They are ruined socially and professionally” the chemist said.

Alex could only imagine how quickly corpses went blinky in India when there was no refrigeration.

“Culturally...” Alex thought for a second. “In America people who don’t have fresh, minty breath are untouchable. I imagine it will be the same here.”

*

Cunningham searched his pockets for his phone. Not finding it, he started to hyperventilate.

He calmed himself. All he had to do, he told himself, was to pick a direction and start walking. Surely he would run into an urban area where he could adapt.

Looking around at all of the buildings, he saw they were all dark.

Randomly picking a direction, he started walking south. He was from Connecticut and he could not imagine that he would have to walk more than a quarter-mile before encountering “civilization”.

*

The Prosecutor filed multiple, first-degree murder charges against each of the seven old veterans.

Internationally renowned attorney, Aaron Ducat defended them.

The Prosecutor relied solely on video evidence in the first trial. Video of the defendant raising his gun and shooting. Video from the scope mounted on the rifle and the resulting hit.

It was a very compelling presentation.

Ducat destroyed the Prosecution in his first cross-examination.

The only evidence the Prosecutor showed the jury that linked the person firing a weapon to the subsequent fatality was recorded from a high-tech scope. Other video evidence...presented by that same Prosecutor...showed the defendant firing a weapon that did not have a scope mounted on it.

In fact, that weapon was entered as evidence and Ducat asked the Prosecutor’s expert witness if it was even possible to mount a scope on a virgin, un-drilled Model 1903. Of course the witness was compelled to testify that it was not possible to do so.

The subsequent civil-suit for defamation of character and false arrest was settled out-of-court but was widely believed to be for $2 million, each. 

Ducat proved once again proved that his reputation was earned and not just fancy advertising.

*

Bert woke up on the floor beside the couch in Alyssa’s living room. The couch had been way too short for him to stretch out on.

Neither had felt like sleeping.

Alyssa cooked up a pound of spaghetti and Bert ate it all. Then she cooked up another pound and he at that too. Suddenly, his appetite was back.

They talked till three in the morning.

Bert dreamed about Therese that night, the first time since she had become ill. She was holding a cup of tea the way she always did to warm her hands on cool mornings.

“I am in a good place here, Bert” she told him.

“Why didn’t you get a hold of me earlier?” Bert asked.

“These things have rules. I couldn’t contact you until you had accepted your new mission...and your mission had accepted you” Therese said.

“You mean Alyssa?” Bert asked.

“Yes. She seems like a nice girl. You will be happy together” Therese said.

Covid is the Democrat's best argument?

 

Data as-of 10/22/2020. Ten worst and ten best states for Covid fatality rate. Raw data harvested from Statistica

From official data, number of fatalities divided by the number of Covid-19 cases.

The states show are the ones with the ten worst and ten best fatality rates.

Average of the ten worst states is 5.2% fatality rate.

Average for the ten best states is 0.9% fatality rate of 17% of the average of the ten worst.

Usually, in a contest, you lead with your strongest weapons, your heroes, your best arguments.

Does it seem crazy that the Democrats (who own seven of the ten worst spots) are accusing the Republicans (who own eight of the ten best spots) of horribly mis-managing Covid-19?

The Democrats are in deep, deep trouble if "Covid" is their best argument for replacing Trump with a Democrat.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

The Market Plaza, San Antonio, 1879

 

Thomas Allen born 1849 in St Louis, Missouri. Died 1924 Worcester, Massachusetts.

Traveled "out-west" and Texas in 1878. Texas inspired many of his paintings.

I like this painting because it captures everyday life in a city. It reminds me of the "Farmer's Market" of my youth. Farmer's Markets were the eBay and etsy of pre-internet America.

 

Meat is not meat until it is in the Pan

Charles Marion Russel born 1864 and moved to Montana at the age of 16. Died in 1926. Unlike Remington, the other great painter of western scenes, Russel lived out-west.

He was revered in his adopted home-state of Montana. One line in his obituary read "He never swung a mean loop in his life, never done dirt to man or animal, in all the days he lived."

I like the humor of this scene. It makes me think of squirrels that fell and were caught in the fork of a tree. "Now what?"

Home-field advantage: The last tent-pole

Ethan watched as the Marxist's victory slipped from his grasp. One minute all of the momentum was going their way. The next minute they were getting knocked back on their collective asses.

Ethan could see that the rioters who had been battered by the water-cannon were totally spent. The bruising, the broken bones, the onset of hypothermia had turned them into zombies.

Ethan’s only hope was to inject fresh-meat into the battle in some, high-leverage way. The only fresh meat he had were the munitions-porters.

He made his way to the back of the crowd where the munitions-porters had congregated.

“I thought I told you guys to start throwing fire-bombs?” Ethan railed at them.

The men shook their heads “No” and started backing away. They had seen what happened to the last six men who had thrown fire-bombs. They didn’t want any of that.

“It not that fucking hard” Ethan said. “Hand me a fucking bottle.”

Ethan was speaking with BIG arm motions. Leadership is 80% theater.

Lawton watched from three-hundred yards away. With his scope cranked up to 20X, the big arm movements had caught his attention immediately.

Ethan patted his pockets. Of course he had handed out all of his lighters. “Anybody got a fucking lighter?” he demanded.

The man who handed him the lighter quickly backed away. He didn’t stop backing until he was more than thirty feet away, but Ethan never noticed, intent on his 'job'.

The other men discretely did the same. They weren't afraid of Ethan, but they didn’t think it was healthy to be too close to him.

Ethan struggled to ignite the lighter. The flame blossomed and then the wind blew it out. Ethan had been so focused on projecting his personality he had not been paying attention to the wind. His second try was more successful and he started to light the Molotov cocktail in his other hand as his skull exploded. The bullet entered one inch behind his right ear and exited through his left temple, spraying a chunk of bone, blood, and brain tissue down wind as he crumpled to the ground, the lit Molotov cocktail underneath him.

*

One side-effect of the incredibly bright environment is that the smart cameras had adjusted. They shrank the aperture which vastly increased the depth-of-focus. The resolution maxed out and the frames-per-second also increased.

Lawton’s shot won the internet.

It was captured from multiple angles.

Gary was the first to see the implications. He zoomed in and ran the clip in slow-motion from all of his angles. If you had enough imagination, you could almost see the bullet strike. You could certainly see the gobbets of brain-tissue exploding out of the side of his cranial cavity. You could see lobes of red mist expanding out from the site of impact and exit. You could even make out some of the larger droplets.

CZZ’s camera also caught the footage.

Brice Cunningham happened to be watching the monitor slaved to that camera and watched the entire sequence unfold.

Cunningham lost it. He went bananas.

He pulled out his Glock and started shooting at defenders on the ground. On live television. Transmitted internationally. From a CZZ chopper.

*

There I was, just taking up the last quarter ounce in the trigger when I was struck in the back with a sledge-hammer.

I am a good Catholic boy and I rarely swear. Profanity, yes. Swearing, almost never. But sweet Jesus, that hurt.

And just like that I was out-of-the-game.

I vaguely remember Vince asking if I could wiggle my toes. When I said I could, I remember him rolling me up, into a fireman’s carry.

I may be big, fat and ugly but Vince is big, fit and ugly.

I also remember a crazy ride in the back of a pickup truck, but it all went gray after that.

*

Pilot Doug Lykios's first clue that things had gone sideways was when the cameraman transmitted "Our passenger is shooting a gun at people on the ground."

Between the noise of the chopper and his head-phones, Lykios was essentially deaf.

Lykios's gut instinct was that aircraft that fire at the ground become magnets for return fire. Instincts took over. Lykios rolled the chopper to put the fuselage between the people on the ground and the vital bits that attracted Manpads. Vital bits like engines and tail-rotors, for instance.

Habits from flying over in the sandbox die hard, don’t you know.

Then, as he was dropping the collective to lose altitude he heard more shooting from the back seat.

MUTHER-FUCKER. God, how he wished he had never met Brice Cunningham. The prick had been nothing but trouble from the very beginning.

Cunningham was carried by CZZ as a long-term, unpaid intern. It quickly became clear he was far more than that and that he had somebody upstairs pulling his wagon. Somebody WAY upstairs.

The first month Cunningham worked at CZZ world-headquarters, a mid-level manager called Cunningham’s boss onto the carpet because Cunningham didn’t seem to be doing any of the tasks outlined in his official job description. Three days later the executive learned that he was being loaned out to an overseas affiliate...in Damascus, Syria with no bump in pay or title.

Word got around.

When Cunningham said he was riding along, Lykios didn’t kick. A man has to pay his bills.

So here he was with a non-manifested passenger and that asshole had fired on civilians from his helicopter.

He was in deep, deep shit. He knew this was the last time he would ever be piloting an aircraft.

Lykios did the only thing that made sense to him. He reset the transponder to 7500 and started flipped a switch that sent all external and internal comms to the onboard black-box.

Streaking just above ground level and putting the bulk of the high school between him and the shooters on the east side, Lykios muted the helmet mic, turned and Yelled to  Cunningham, “Where do you want us to put you down?”

Cunningham was slowly coming out of his rage. “Huh? Whaddya mean?”

Lykios responded, “The cops will scoop you up if we land back at the port. Probably in your best interest in getting dropped off somewhere else first.”

Lykios did not add that he didn't want to be anywhere near Cunningham when the cops found him. He was allergic to bullets whether from Cunningham's gun or the cops'.

*

Back at the Lansing Control Tower, Pete put down his cup of coffee. He had a blinking, red icon on his monitor.

Keying his microphone, Pete asked the pilot-in-question “You are transmitting code seven-five-zero-zero. Repeat, seven-five-zero-zero. Is that intentional?”

Pete heard the tower had one other 7500 back in the late seventies but it was a fat-fingered pilot.

“Affirmative. Squawking seven-five-zero-zero.” Doug transmitted back with no emotion in his voice at all.

He had just confirmed that he was being hijacked. The way he saw it, he had just been forced to deviate from his filed flight-plan by a lunatic who had demonstrated he was not afraid to use his pistol. By a narrow definition of “hijacked” that is exactly what was happening.

“Roger” Pete radioed back. “Per protocol, will support as needed. You are running the show.”

Looking at the elevation and air-speed and vector information, Pete blanched.

“Lost contact due to terrain, strongly advise add seventy feet to elevation” Pete said in the patented, clipped, laconic drawl used by all flight-controllers.

Pete transmitted to all aircraft in Lansing airspace. “7500 in progress. Avoid chopper traveling due east at 1020.”

That was not going to be too hard for the other aircraft. There wasn't much traffic 150 feet above "the deck". Only the suicidal, the extremely desperate or craft that were landing or taking off were likely to be found at that elevation.

Then Pete’s phone started ringing. Apparently, President Bower had been watching CZZ footage and Gary’s live-stream on side-by-side TVs. That shouldn't have been a surprise. The President was a notorious TV watcher and news junkie and only slept three hours a night.

When the President, even one who might be a lame duck, calls then things happen fast.

Back in the chopper, Cunningham asked “Who were you talking to?”

“Lansing tower. They thought we were having an air-emergency based on how our flight changed” Lykios replied using the helmet mic.

“What did you say?” Cunningham challenged.

“I told him we are a newsie chopper and we fly like this all the time” Lykios said.

Cunningham seemed satisfied with that answer.

Lykios muted his mic and repeated his original question. “Where do you want to be dropped off?”

“Isn’t there a college near here?” Cunningham asked. He figured a college was the best place to fit in. There had to be a cell of “his kind of people” there who would hide him.

“Roger. Michigan State” Lykios said, this time using the helmet mic so it was recorded.

When he had turned his head to yell to Cunningham in the backseat Lykios saw that the slide of the Glock was not locked-back, indicating that Brice had not shot the gun dry. Even if the slide was locked back, there were no guarantees that he didn’t have another magazine.

“Put me down on campus” Brice said.

Lykios set down in the middle of the intramural field south of Munn Ice Arena. Cunningham lost his phone as he exited the aircraft. He didn’t notice.

Lykios lifted off and rapidly climbed to 1500 feet.

Then he transmitted to Lansing Air Control. “High-jacker deplaned at following GPS coordinates.”

“Waiting for further instructions” Lykios transmitted.

“What is your fuel situation?” Pete transmitted. “Do you have enough to cover 70 nautical miles to Detroit Metro?”

Lykios did some mental calculations. He had refueled the AS350 B2 helicopter three hours earlier. Wind was fifteen knots out of the southwest.

“Barely. At cruise my ETA is 30 Mikes. I will only have 10 minutes of fuel remaining. I Need weather for DTW.” Lykios transmitted.

“DTW is reporting winds SSW variable 14 knots, 10 statute miles visibility, 10000 broken, temperature 27F, Dewpoint 23F time 23:24, altimeter 30.01. You are cleared VFR direct to Detroit Metro. You will proceed to a hot spot by the Sped-X terminal in the northeast corner of the airport. The hot spot will be marked with three, red, rapid-strobes in an equilateral triangle. Contact Detroit approach control 118.95 this time, ” Pete transmitted. Then Pete did the most unprofessional thing he had ever done in his life. He added “Good luck.”

Detroit tower instructed Lykios as he air taxied to the hot spot, “Do not touch any of the evidence in the aircraft. Shut down as directed, remain in the pilot seat until directed. Nobody may leave until released by authorities. Understand you and one passenger are the sole people on board.”

Lykios sighed and read back the instructions, confirmed it was just him and one passenger then added, "Hijacker was dumped at lat-long provided to Lansing. I have strobes in sight."

Next

Hat-tip to Old_NFO who helped me with the lingo. All errors are mine, primarily from additions I made after Old_NFO looked it over.

Pulling cars out of ditches

 

The scene of the extraction. 2' elevation contours.

I had a chance to pull a car out of a ditch today.

No names will be used to spare hard feelings.

The vehicle was a light-weight sedan similar to a Honda Accord. It was two-hundred yards off the road and tipped nose-down into a drainage ditch. The front bumper was in the water and the rear end was about four feet higher in elevation than the front.

The kid was thorough, I will give him/her that.

Sprite let me use her tractor and insisted that she come along to see that we did it right.

Whaddya do? It is her tractor.

According to this document, the center-of-gravity is very close to the rear axle even for four-wheel-drive tractors. That is why conventional wisdom for pulling stumps and boulders out of the ground is to use reverse gears on an ag tractor.

Sprite insisted that we had to pull the car out using the drawbar and forward gears.

She said that the tires were loaded (meaning the rear tires were filled with a chloride solution to make them heavier) and that meant we could only pull forward.

Her tractor. Her rules.

We got the logging chain run. Of course I made the kid do the crawl-under-the-car part. I pulled it out at an idle in first gear. Plenty of time to push in the clutch if it started to lift the front end.

The tractor walked right out with the vehicle. No problem there.

After getting everything put back at Sprite's, I hopped on the internet and the general consensus is that if you don't know how hard the pull will be, to pull in reverse. Unless you are on a hill, it is almost impossible to flip a tractor over pulling in reverse.

It turned out well, but it was another one of those cases where somebody added apples to orangutans and got kittens. Maybe somebody told that to Sprite and it stuck or maybe she only heard part of a conversation.

Boldly rushing in where angels fear to tread...

Belladonna was unhappy with me after I agreed with one of her friends that she has an "apple shaped figure".

Its all good now...

Romance in times of war and chaos

My operating hypothesis, one I have not used personally since I met Mrs ERJ, is that people have periods when they are receptive to new romantic encounters and periods when they are much less receptive.

It is like the pistil of a flower. It is receptive to pollen when it is sticky. I like that word "sticky".

You could ride a bus with a young lady for three years and she might be resistant to your suggestions of a date because she is not sticky. Or, she might break up with her boyfriend and be very sticky. Or, perhaps she graduates with her degree or lands a job that allows her to stop working her second job...maybe that makes her sticky.

The thing about "sticky" is that most normal, healthy people will not stay sticky for long. Somebody will pass within their orbit and make him/her unsticky.

I used this theory to explain to Belladonna why eligible guys seem scarce for her right now. She is on a mission and a "guy" would be a part-time distraction. When she is ready, when she is sticky, the guys will be all around her like bees around the horseradish when it is blooming.

She did not believe me, nor did she care to be compared with horseradish. It is tough to be one of my kids.

Evolutionary biologists would speculate that war and chaos are likely to make some personalities more sticky. The species must reproduce.

War and chaos increase mortality rates and decrease the time viable candidates are within that orbit.

That war-time bride who was so attractive in the war-zone sometimes does not work out after things normalize.

I would love to hear the opinions of my readers.

Home-field advantage: Once is never enough...

Forgive me for a song that is slightest off-topic. Love springs up even in the maelstrom of civil-war.

 ---Earlier---

...Alyssa threw her arms around Bert's neck to pull him down. "Kiss me" she insisted.

 

Bert initially resisted but then bent his head......

 

 

“Conscious thought” is a curiously imprecise term.

While the person doing it might think they are “conscious” of their thought processes, the odds are very much more likely that they are not.

Like an ant riding on a stick floating down a stream, the thinker might hold the erroneously belief they are the captain of the ship. In reality, the stick is beholding to every stray current, random puff of wind, finning fish and throbbing branch but not the ant.

The ant maintains the comforting illusion of control by knitting a retrospective narrative where every bob-and-weave was commanded by the Captain.

A few parts per billion of our first-love’s favorite fragrance, a strand of melody from our youth, the tiniest whiff of a pheromone, a partially-heard hurtful word or the mask on another person’s face slipping for a few, unguarded milliseconds...all of these can deflect the trajectory of our thoughts as surely as the side of a pool table deflects the cue-ball.

And so it is with thought. Many, perhaps most, of the factors that guide the avalanche of our thoughts are in a “machine language” that is not accessible to the menu-driven, pull-down-list functions of “conscious thought”.

Alyssa was ovulating.

Bert’s soul had been aimlessly wandering in a trackless wasteland. And then, in the space of a few heartbeats the featureless, smoldering cinders were dominated by something new, something with the solidity of a medieval castle, something that sprung fully-formed out of nothing.

Bert’s mental trajectory ricocheted like a sleep-walker plowing into the edge of a door that had never before been left open.

Bert had a mission.

One second he was thinking about the handgun in the glove-box of his car and then an instant later he was fully committed to seeing that NOBODY dare hurt this vulnerable woman-child. Ever.

Bert glared at the hooligans rattling the door handle. He flipped them the bird. His finger looked as big as a banana in his yellow, work glove.

Alyssa dug her fingers into his shoulders.

“My GOD!” she thought. “He isn’t a roly-poly teddy-bear. He is a grizzly bear.”

His deltoids felt like cinder-blocks beneath his work coat.

Coming up for air, she turned and saw the hooligans had departed for healthier climes.

She pushed him back. “Here, put these on” she told him as she reached into her backpack for the hoodie and hat.

Bert did not argue

*

 

Lonnie Keonig was fed-up with the highly limiting rules-of-engagement.

He didn't intend to use his bayonet on the young man tip-toeing through the tangle-foot. Lonnie was 78 years-old and way too old for that shit. What could they do to him?

At fifteen feet he could not miss with his Springfield, Model 1903. The softpoint hit the aggressor precisely between his nipples, turned the aggressor's lungs to chocolate mousse before shattering Th8 and Th9 vertebrae and then severing the aggressor's spinal cord.

Norm Kudha, forty feet to Lonnie's south reached the same conclusion a split second after Lonnie did. His shot was an inch higher and crushed the Th8 and cut the strings holding the man up.

The smartphones recording the video were in magnification mode. The aggressors appeared to be within five feet of the two old men when they discharged their weapons.

Gary played both streams on his channel.

Don't trifle with old men. They have nothing to lose.

*

The rioter was perched at the top of the 8-strand fence with one leg on the defender's side and the other on the rioter's side.

His drug-addled mind was slow in processing what he saw.

Ethan had told the group that the defenders would be shooting blanks.

Something about how his two, slightly-faster peers collapsed gave lie to that information.

The slight hesitation was all it took for the water-cannon to find him and send him cartwheeling back into the crowd.

*

Old man McCorkle was nobody's fool.

The lights from the chopper were annoying but he just yanked the bill of his Detroit Tigers baseball hat down over his eyes.

The crowd was so tightly packed coming through the gap in the tanglefoot that even the full pressure of the water-cannon on the closest rioter was not sufficient to push them back.

So he pointed the cannon higher and started peeling them off the back of the crowd. As effective as the cannon was when hitting rioters in the chest, it was five times more-so when hitting them in the face. Truth be told, it is possible that a few necks were snapped in the process.

McCorkle didn't care. Nobody told them they had to come to HIS neighborhood and burn down HIS house. FAAFO.

 

*

The infiltraters from the west were busted flat.

The only way they could cross the wind-scoured, concrete pad was if nobody was looking for them.

Vince and I were shooting prone from our position and another team positioned closer to the high school were adding pressure.

Good optics, a steady rest, adequate technique and a great trigger will always beat volume-of-fire when the battle starts at a distance. Gregious's team was pinned down with no forseeable exit.

*

Reinforcements started to pour into the rioter's ranks as the first wave of men pulling wagons full of munitions arrived from Lahoma Street.

Next

Weird

 

Winchester Model 1894 designed by John Moses Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.

 

Colt Model 1911 designed by John Moses Browning

I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

 

M2 .50 Caliber Machinegun designed by John Moses Browning

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

 

Barrett Model 82 designed by Ronnie Barrett.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

By Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

Elizabeth Barrett-Browning died in 1861, 33 years before the first of these marvels hit the market. How did she know???

Quick summary of the blogger meet-up in mid-Michigan

It was genuinely humbling to be sitting at a table with a group of such intelligent and helpful people.

A huge range of topics was covered.

Glocks: You want to hate them but they are like the old, ugly mutt that cheerfully does everything your high-dollar purebred is "too good for".

Japanese products: Characterized by balance. Not overboard on any one attribute at the expense of any other attribute.

Magazines: The most expensive magazine is the one you cannot trust but leave in inventory anyway.

Dunning-Kruger effect: People don't know what they don't know.

Airplanes: If boats are holes in the water you throw $20 bills into, planes are black-holes that suck $100 bills directly out of your bank account.

Fuel reserves: Technical term for the last third of the fuel the gas tank. That is, one-third to get there. One-third to get back. The last third for Murphy.

Space: One of the people at the meet-up lived for extended periods in several other countries. He wants to stay in the US. One point he made is that even in congested areas we are still spread out compared to other countries and there is room for tactical maneuver.

Tourniquets: They hurt when tightened. Pain is the patient's problem. Getting the patient to the E-Room with a pulse is the problem of the person applying the tourniquet. Get training.

News organizations: Hopelessly biased.

Civil unrest: Surprisingly little was said about civil unrest. The general expectation is that it will spike immediately after the election. Estimates of duration ranged from two-weeks to "until two-weeks after the President (whoever that might be) is sworn in"

CUR part two: Everybody had a plan

CUR part three: B recommends that if you do nothing else, buy sheets of plywood and decking screws. Windows are a weak point whether you are talking hurricanes or civil unrest.

Mr B: It was a privilege to meet him. To give you a mental image of what he is like in the flesh, think of the coolest guy on Miami Vice and then put Teddy Roosevelt's personality into him and you would be in the right zipcode.

The Shekel: Laser-like wit. Cauterizes as it cuts.

Scott: Solid guy.

Scott's dad: Swiss Army-knife of a guy. At one time he trained K-9 officers for the Michigan State Police.

Normalizing risk

"Normalizing" is a word used by engineers when they divide some unknown by a known, easy-to-visualize parameter.

Examples might include reporting acceleration rates in "Gs", or the acceleration rate of gravity, or reporting the velocity of a flying object in "Mach" the speed-of-sound in air under normal conditions.

I chose the US average death-rate due to traffic accidents as the denominator when normalizing the risk of death-by-Covid.

On average, there are 11.2 deaths per 100,000 people due to traffic accidents in the United states in a year.

There are 107,000 residents in Eaton County, Michigan. We are credited with 11 deaths due to Covid since March, 2020. That yields an annualized rate of 15.4 deaths per 100,000 people. 

Normalized against the rate of traffic fatalities, you are one-third more likely to die from Covid in Eaton County than you are to die due to a traffic accident.

What do you call a dog with no legs?

What do you call a dog with no legs?

It doesn't matter what you call him. He won't come anyway.

Biden signs

I was walking in the neighborhood around mom's house when I was struck by the number of houses that sported both Biden signs and signs advising passers-by that the home was "protected" by a security company.

Should the extreme left wing of the Democratic party complete their metastacizing of the Dems, those homes will be able to economize by cancelling their security contracts.

Why pay to have an electronic security company watch your house? They don't actually guard it. They pass the alarms to the cops.

No cops, no point in a security company.

Expect puppy-mills producing pitbuls, rotties, dobies and other large dogs to kick into overdrive.

Expect sales of chain-link fences to go through the roof.

Two years from now, expect kids getting their faces ripped off by large, in-bred, bored, poorly-trained dogs to be a weekly occurrence.

Expect that to be the "progress" of the Progressives.

Social Workers

A few months earlier, I posted about "Community Policing". There was some follow-up regarding the dearth of people willing to be Parole Officers.

Pawpaw pointed out that Corrections Departments have no problem hiring Social Workers to be Parole Officers. They cannot just walk into the job. They need additional training.

But, by-and-large, Social Workers haven't shown much willingness to apply for jobs as Parole Officers. That is a bit of a mystery because there are more Social Workers than jobs.

So it begs the question: Will there be enough Social Workers willing to do the work formerly done by the police? Or, do the Progressives intend to force the Social Workers into the Policing? Maybe they will make Policing a mandatory, ten-year internship for Social Workers or perhaps a mandatory 500 hours per year of continuing education to retain their license.

Home-field advantage: The fog of war

Alyssa shivered as she waited in the air-lock between the outside doors and the interior of the Hall-of-Justice.

Word had gotten around that she was there and roving groups of….lovers?….had been rattling the handles on the doors to gain entry.

The Hall-of-Justice was an architectural marvel. The outside doors were heavy panes of tempered glass.

Alyssa was unsure about the amount of abuse the doors could sustain.

She was regretting having used so much of the can of wasp-spray she carried in her purse on the security cam. Katy had told her the thick, foaming gel was just the ticket for blinding cameras. Unfortunately, she could not put it back into the can to use on the groups of thugs that appeared intent on breaking into the building.

She heard a clatter coming down the stairs.

*

Things were not going well for Alex’s defense.

The operators on three of the water-cannons had been rendered inop in the short time he had been hyper-focused on neutralizing Tarkenton and riotors were climbing over the fence.

The rioters who had pushed through the tangle-foot were now pushing on the 8-strand, barbed wire fence.

They didn’t have a chance of pushing through it because each double-wire strand had a breaking strength of 1500 pounds. What pushing on the wires accomplished, though, was to tighten the wire so agile rioters could gingerly climb over the six-foot tall fence.

Once inside the fence, they could find pockets where the water-cannons could not traverse and reach them.

Alex swatted the one operator who was at 100% to get his attention and told him to focus on knocking climbers off the fence.

Then Alex dashed over the closest cannon and directed the first man he saw to hop on the cannon and start blasting riotors.

“How does it work?” Old man McCorkle asked. He was willing to give it a try.

“Figure it out” Alex shot back as he dashed to the next cannon.

McCorkle had been watching the riot unfold and had noticed that the rioters had become proficient at dancing out of the way of the oncoming blast of water.

McCorkle noticed how everybody in the crowd was converging on the newly made gap in the tangle-foot. He sighted through the crude peep sights and aligned them with the middle of the gap. Then he cranked the quarter-turn valve on the side of the barrel.

A couple of the riotors had hopped over the top of the fence before the first water-cannon operator started methodically working the fence.

The single water cannon could not quite keep up so a few rioters were getting over here-and-there.

This side of the eight-strand fence, they were below the most intense part of the lights and could actually see. They started carefully picking their way through the tangle-foot. 

*

Alyssa had a plan. If she could convince Bert to pretend to kiss her, perhaps the thugs would get the message that THIS entryway was taken. Perhaps they would go away.

The door at the bottom of the stairwell sprang open and the opening was filled by the largest man she had ever seen in her life.

"Are you Uncle Bert?" Alyssa asked.

Surprised, Bert said "Yes."

Alyssa threw her arms around his neck to pull him down. "Kiss me" she insisted.

Bert initially resisted but then bent his head.

*

Molotov Cocktails started coming over the barrier again.

Alex called Darryl. “What the hell is going on? I thought you guys had this handled.”

“We are on it” Darryl said. “We have a slight complication that is slowing us down but we are whittling them down.”

The complication was the wind direction. It had clocked around a bit more to the south and the men chucking the fire bombs were turning their backs to the wind to light the wicks. That had the unhappy consequence of blocking the shooter’s line-of-sight and their rules of engagement were to shoot after they had captured the thermal bloom on their scopes.

Of course, they had ample evidence after the men had thrown their fire-bombs and they acted on that evidence.

That was small comfort to the defenders on the receiving end of the incendiary devices.

*

That was when Vince hissed at me "We have company!"

That was hard to miss.

The defenses along the western edge of the neighborhood were the least defended because it offered the least cover to attackers.

But just because relatively few resources were invested in the defense did not mean that our pants were pulled down.

We had run an ad hoc power-line fifty yards east of the train-tracks and approximately 370 yards west of our position on the berm. The power-line was connected to one of the ubiquitous, Honda generators and a picket-line of motion-activated lights were powered by it.

Those lights were coming on and illuminating forms percolating through the rail-cars on the spur.

Gregious had picked up a few more homies somewhere and decided to crash the party.

*

That about when Brice Cunningham decided it was time to start helping the Marxists.

The chopper had a three-beam Nightsun spotlight system. Cunningham powered it up and started shining it toward the defenders, telling the camera-man it was to help him get better footage.

Next

Ramblings

Legacy hires

I actively discouraged my children from working at the company(s) where I had worked.

That was based on having worked with dozens of coworkers who followed their dad into the factory.

With very few exceptions, most of them were bitter and angry. "Dad" had given them a map-to-the-top and that is not where the ended up.

Lay aside the fact that only one person can be at the very top. The fact remained that there were far more "High Potentials" in any department than there were openings.

I have little doubt that most of my co-workers would have been far happier and fulfilled if they had NOT followed in their father's footsteps, even if their career trajectory had been two or three levels below where they ended up. 

Disclosure: I was never a "High Potential".

I would rather have my kids find their own path and know that their successes and failures were totally their own. That is how learning happens.

I am baffled that Biden, Pelosi, Kerry, Clinton feel compelled to bring their children into the family business.

I guess the difference is that my ego serves God, my family and me in that order. The others, I suspect the order is inverted: Ego serves itself first, then "self", family and Party.

Interruptions

According to news sources on the internet, Trump was interrupted by the moderator at last night's debate 31 versus the Biden being interrupted twice. 

I hold out little hope that the undecided will notice.

It calls to mind a short video clip an instructor showed us decades ago. It showed a woman interrupting a man.

The instructor told us to summarize the video we saw.

Then she showed us the video a second time, stopping it just before the interruption.

The man interrupted the woman and the woman did not stop talking in deference to the man. It was crystal-clear when the instructor pointed it out.

So it is with Trump. The press interrupt him and Trump refuses to accept the Dominance play. Due to deep-seated values and conditioning, the Liberals and undecided see it at Trump being rude.

Weeds

 

I have been engaging in an internet discussion with one of my internet friends regarding the loss of flying-insect biomass.

Estimates vary. Some claim there is no solid evidence of fewer bugs but anybody who drove in the mid-West in the '60s will call BS on that. Others contend that a number between 75%-to-90% reduction is probably defensible.

Numerous causes have been suggested but there are few, natural experiments A-B-A are available to untangle the mystery.

One major player is likely to be loss of 40 acre fields. A grid of 40 acre fields separated by 20' fence rows loses 3% of the land-area to fence rows. As farms consolidate due to economic pressures, farmers bulldoze the fence rows. The motive is not to regain the 3% of land but to reduce the labor and facilitate the use of larger, more efficient equipment.

A quick census of some of the species growing in my pasture

 

Another potential player involves mowed lawns. A well manicured lawn typically hosts relatively few species of plants. Pastures and fence rows typically have much higher diversity.

Fake News Friday: Rice University caves to BLM demands

 

Stung by allegations by the BLM movement that Rice University's name is a White Supremacist dog-whistle intended to discourage peoples-of-color from applying, the Board of Regents recently voted to change the University's name to be more inclusive.

The university formerly known as Rice University is a competitive admission, academically rigorous university in Houston, Texas.

Home-field advantage: Scrambling

It had been 9 years since Frank Tarkenton had last quarterbacked for his high school football team back in Minnesota.

Life had been so full of promise back then. Frank was a rangy 6’-4” tall, quick on his feet and smart. He could throw the ball like a rifle-bullet.

None of the big schools were interested in him. Frank blamed his team-mates. The team just couldn’t seem to put enough “W”s up each season to attract scouting interest.

Frank had sulked through life, bitter and cynical until the Marxists found him. After that, his life had purpose.

Sheer habit is what caused him to keep his ball-chucker pointed down, masked by his thigh. Habit from his years of quarter-backing had him scooting “out of the pocket” after launching his missiles and faking the run to pull defenders.

Frank wasn't there by the time the water-cannon had drilled through the crowd.

He was the quickest on the uptake when the water cannons started searching out and whacking the ball-chuckers.

Frank adapted by launching from different points. He would scoop up a missile from a wagon, dash to the line while winding up and throwing. Then, immediately after his follow through, he would duck down below the crowd and scurry away from the searching jet of water.

Frank was tearing them up.

His arm was not quite as strong as when he was 18 nor was he quite as quick. But he was plenty accurate and the ball-chucker gave him velocity way beyond what he had ever been able to achieve when throwing the pig-skin.

The guys on the water cannons had just the quickest glimpses of “the tall guy” and a flash of the orange ball-chucker before one of the cast, concrete missiles came rocketing in.

Alex cursed the fact that he had not thought to provide the water cannon with protective shields.

“Quick!” Alex said, grabbing the closest man. “We need to get something in front of the guys on the water cannons.”

The best the man could come up with were tailgates from the pickup trucks. It was a piss-poor solution. “Extras” attempted to hold them up as shields but Frank’s missiles came in so fast and so flat it was difficult to hold the heavy tailgates in a position that provided protection without obscuring the water cannon operator’s vision.

Seeing what was going on, Frank started targeting the men trying to hold the tailgates. It was not pretty.

Losing water-cannons re-energized the rioters. Ethan was able to get them turned back on and swarming the barriers.

One of the rioters found a section of tangle-foot that was not staked to the ground or shackled on one side. Such is the nature of working in the dark. He pulled it up and flipped it over, onto the adjacent prefabbed tangle-foot section.

The rioters surged through the ten-foot gap in the tangle-foot and started pushing against the fence.

Alex called his precision shooters on the roof of the high school.

“I could use a little bit of help down here” Alex said.

“Want us to start dumping people?” Darryl asked.

Alex was tempted. Very tempted.

“No, what I really want is for you to “pattern” the asshole who is tearing up the men on the water-cannons.”

Lawton overheard the conversation because Alex had communicated on the precision shooter’s common channel rather than directly to Darryl.

“I got that” Lawton said.

Frank had been weaving through Lawton’s sector. Lawton’s sector was slow. He nailed a few arsonists and then the mist from the water-cannon had prevented any others from lighting up more.

From his over-view, Lawton radioed Alex “Stand next to the second water-cannon from the north.”

When Alex was there, Lawton said “Can you see the rioter near the back of the crowd wearing the pink hoodie?”

It took Alex a few seconds to find him. “Yup, I see the guy.”

“When I say ‘NOW’ have the guy on the water-cannon lift his jet to hit the gap just to the left of the guy with the pink hoodie” Lawton said.

“To the water-cannon’s left or the pink-hoodie’s left?” Alex asked for clarification. Left depends on which way you are looking.

“To the NORTH of the guy in the pink-hoodie...but close enough to brush him” Lawton said.

Lawton followed Frank with his scope. He saw him launch two missiles from other places along the back edge of the crowd. Then he saw him glide toward the wagon closest to the pink-hoodie guy.

“Get ready...” Lawton transmitted.

Lawton figured it would take at least a second for the jet of water to cover the distance from the muzzle of the cannon and where he expected Frank to launch the missile from.

Frank kept the missile covered with his left hand as he started into his running-wind-up.

“NOW!” Lawton said loudly enough to startle the other two shooters on the high school roof.

Frank stood up, face-on into the jet of water that suddenly appeared. It had opened up slightly as it covered the distance.

It rocked Frank’s head back and the high pressure water crammed up his nostrils and into his mouth. It created excruciating pressure in his sinuses.

What Frank could not know is that he had been scouted by both Division I and Division II universities. Scouting is labor intensive and most of it is done by game films.

Had Frank been able to read any of the scouting notes on him, he would have read “Great team. Should have won more games. QB: Good athletic potential. Cannot take a hit” 

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