Free seems to be a pretty popular word, so I’ll use it.
FREE! FREE! FREE!
Well, actually, I should have used only two “FREE”s. They would be for two of my published e-books on Kindle, “WHAT IF” and “AND CRAWLING THINGS LURK”.
Starting tomorrow, April 5, and running through April 9, they will both be free.
Such a deal! Check ’em out.
When the Democratic (?) People’s Republic of Korea passed sentence on a tourist on Wednesday, March 16, 2016, they once again demonstrated to the world that they are about the best example around of the term, “Evil Empire.” Some weeks ago, it seems, a 21 year old American man, a University of Virginia undergraduate student no less, demonstrated that Americans can be about the best example of the term, “clueless arrogance.” While I truly have sympathy for the family and friends of Otto Warmbier, it is hard not to slowly shake my head and solemnly intone, “Did he really think what he was about to do was nothing but a harmless, college stunt to show his girlfriend back home how gutsy he is, and that if he was actually caught, that the government of North Korea would simply wag a finger at him and say, ‘Ah, these college kids’?”
Apparently, he was caught trying to steal a propaganda banner as a trophy and memento of his trip. Stealing a propaganda banner from a country that was ready to launch nukes over a Hollywood movie that made fun of their (tyrant for life) president. Stealing a propaganda banner from a country that uses propaganda along with threats of nuclear holocaust as their primary method of communication with the outside world. Hell, why not go for spectacular? Make a sidewalk chalk portrait of Mohamed in downtown Tehran?
I have to wonder why anyone, other than a dedicated diplomat on a directed mission from his government would visit North Korea, anyway. I know many people do, but why? The government of North Korea apparently wonders the same thing since they are ready to arrest and accuse about anyone that does visit of being spies, even dedicated diplomats on directed missions.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s the thrill of seeing how close a person can dare to get to the crumbly edge of the precipice, sort of like plummeting to the earth while wearing a suit about as aerodynamic as a flying squirrel and zooming between rock pillars or down-hill skiing in prohibited areas where a person can see if he can skim the moss off of tree bark without exchanging an arm for it. Is it that some people, mostly Americans, it seems, have the idea that they can do whatever they want when they travel about the world because they just want to make the most of their trip and they don’t really mean to cause harm and they can do stuff like that at home without spending the next fifteen years at hard labor in prison. And why are the edges of precipices allowed to get so crumbly, anyway?
When are Americans, and anyone else, going to realize there are places in this world that are plain not welcoming. These places don’t operate with the same rules and values as here at home. They sometimes do things to outsiders that you have to wonder isn’t simply a deliberate provocation for war, but is more probably just more fuel in their furnace of bluff and bluster to make the world believe they are too terrible to mess with. They may even believe it, themselves. But the thing is, because they can do it, they will. And if a clueless tourist happens to get caught in the tangle, well, he just adds value to the game.
Listen, now, kids, because this is important, and you may be tested later. When you travel abroad, take your wonder and your awe with you because there are some marvelous things to experience in the world. But leave behind your arrogance, your juvenile sense of humor, your daring-do. People in most countries around the world have a sense of national pride at least as great as that of Americans, and usually justifiably so. Don’t belittle their country. Experience it and admire it, maybe even brag about your own, but not at the expense of theirs. Their own sense of humor may be very different from yours, so don’t expect or demand that your joke is appreciated. Listen to their jokes and learn a new culture that may be as good as what you left back home, and is most likely much older. And please, please, please leave behind the idea that you can–should–are expected to–leave behind a mark to prove you were there. It is so not cool to make your own carving next to one left by a neolithic ancestor or etch your own version of runes on a Stonehenge monolith. I can almost hear the plaintiff cry, “Why is everyone mad at me? It was just a joke. Don’t you people have a sense of humor? All I did was draw a stupid mustache on an old picture that wasn’t all that good, anyway.” as the guards at the Louvre in Paris escort a clueless tourist away from the Mona Lisa.
Oops. Seems the release of Wolfehaven is not quite imminent. In fact, it will be delayed for some time. During the time I took to ponder the situation, it occurred to me that I was getting ahead of myself. Actually, ahead of the story-line of Refuge Omnibus. Yeah, I could have gone ahead and skipped six years into the future after the events of Raven, but that would mean missing out on all the things that happen during that period. Then, I would have to either just forget about including those stories or pulling a Star Wars and inserting them later. But I’m not sure that is such a great idea. A lot of folks probably like what Lucas did, but I didn’t so much. Maybe I’m too linear, but I think flash-backs are best when used for the betterment of the story-telling, not to cover the mistakes of the author. Not that George made a mistake by starting his series with number four and inserting one through three later. Maybe he never intended to include what took place in the first three episodes and was talked into it to keep the gold mine in operation. Maybe it was only after getting to the end of the series that he got the idea for what occurred in the times before the original starting point and thought, “What the hell, maybe people won’t notice.”
In any case, I’m not going that route. Not yet, anyway.
So, Wolfehaven has been set aside. It is still a good–no, a great story–but its time has not yet come. Instead, the next installment in the saga of Jason Wolfe’s search for Refuge will pick up where Raven left off. I am well into the story-line, which I won’t divulge at this time, but it is going well. Be aware, also, that I have at least one more pre-Wolfehaven episode to do before I allow those six years to pass undocumented.
My sincere apologies for this screw-up. I was looking forward to it, myself, because Wolfehaven really is a good story. I do hope this little bump in the road won’t cause you readers to abort your journey through Refuge Omnibus.
Sometimes it’s hard getting through a newspaper without having to grab a pencil and jotting down a few opinions. Sometimes they make enough sense and are relevant enough to post. More often they don’t, so I just lay them aside. When I read them later, I often toss them into the round file, but sometimes they strike a chord. Sometimes it depends on what things have been making recent headlines. And, then, sometimes I just go back through them and get all worked up again. When that happens, I think…yeah, post it.
Here are a few short ones:
Leave or stay in Iraq
Should we delay leaving Iraq? That’s a question we’ve been asking for a few years. Should we leave thousands, or even hundreds of troops there for yet another year to keep trying to arm, train and advise the Iraqis to step forward as one and protect their own? If we give guns to any three Iraqis, two of them will shoot either each other or the third. A bloodbath may be unavoidable whenever we do leave for good. Remember the chaos surrounding the last chopper out of Saigon? It’s a different world now with different issues, sorta, but the result may look the same. We have already delayed a decade even as we vainly tried to justify going there in the first place. Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution once said he would “wait until we have an Iraqi government, and do it with the Iraqis together.” Well, I suppose it’s conceivable there might be an efficient, effective Iraqi government someday, somewhere, just not in Iraq, at least not until sometime after Hell freezes over, although probably before there is peace in Israel. Unless another Saddam comes along and is allowed to beat and bash Iraq into the single nation we are insisting upon, one once again held together by the brutality of a steel fist, the chances of a unified, let alone functional, national government over all of Iraq is about as likely as one in Afghanistan.
Tribal Conflicts
I have come to the conclusion that the problems in the Middle-east, Africa, and most other areas in the world are not solvable by methods that the civilized world is willing to use. Those societies are still based on tribal law, whatever that may be. Problem is, with more than one tribe involved, more than one set of laws are pushed. Then it’s a matter of which tribe is strong enough to force their laws on every other tribe. No matter what advances these countries make, any disputes will be settled in the only way they know: by whichever tribe is strong enough to push their solution to fruition and God, Allah, or Zeus help the local innocents if either side has access to modern weapons. Civilized (?) countries may become involved because of natural resources or strategic locations that might affect their national security, but there is only one way to end the tribal wars that result in so much brutal slaughter. A national leader from the area involved, if it is to remain a sovereign nation, must rise to power and exert such brutality in his enforcement of whatever laws he deems appropriate that everyone else stops fighting and cowers in fear. Remember Sadam Huisain? When it comes right down to it, most cultures in this world cannot be trusted with weapons more advanced than sharp knives, and dull ones would be better.
Re: Complaints of women wearing yogi pants in Montana (did you hear about this one?)
One or more guys (I don’t remember just who they were) up in Montana got all worked up about women wearing tight–really tight–pants, the kind that don’t leave a whole lot to the imagination. I guess all those womanly shapes are giving them too many ideas; the kind righteous, married men shouldn’t be having. And, of course, the fault is all on the women, not the guys. Yeah! If a woman is assaulted it’s her own fault for putting temptation right out there where a guy can’t avoid it! Right? Yeah! Apparently, that’s the thinking behind all the good reasons the women in the middle east have to wear enough to make a person have to guess what gender they are, except that a man over there certainly wouldn’t wear such a thing. Over the centuries, even a lot of the women over there don’t feel comfortable unless they are covered over. Do all men have as much trouble resisting their own lurid impulses as those in fundamentalist worlds where a woman, a supposed creation of God, must always conceal her body beneath shapeless tents in order for men to not be exposed to temptation, or is it just the righteous few? Did God really create what He did and then give it all to men, and that everything is for men to use or abuse as they see fit? Are men really so great, so deserving? Yeah? Well, why? Is God really so petty and devious that He created women’s beauty to be a temptation against which men are tested daily? Is God really so small? Could a god so small create something as grand as the universe—or even conceive of it? Or did God, in creating the universe, create men and women and all the rest from tsetse flies and butterflies to vales and whales, from quarks to quasars, so that they all may exalt in the beauty and magnificence of all existence, and in so doing, in His? If there is a God, I would find this latter description much easier to accept of the author of all creation.
And, then, there’s this. Are we alone?
As inspiring as a lot of letters, papers and declared opinions might be regarding the chances, hopes, and/or fears (?) of ever discovering evidence of life anywhere other than Earth, they still present the concept of finding life “out there” as an “if” proposition instead of a “when.” Okay, I understand a fact is a fact only after it is proven, but come on!
Don’t you think it’s sorta presumptuous to think the entire universe was created just for us. We can’t even see a vast majority of it. Try this: Imagine some of the microbes on a crystal of silica containing exactly 147 facets in the middle of a southern California beach look out at all the other grains of sand close enough to see and opine that microbial life is probably there, too, given the vast number of potential grains. But, ignoring trillions of grains stretching out in all directions, other microbes reject that possibility, arguing that their creation in the deposit of whatever it was that plopped onto their grain could only have happened by divine intervention, thus they are unique on all the beach, plus on all other beaches, as some claim to exist, although probably in some other dimension since there is obviously not room in creation for more than one beach. And besides, they point out, in all the thousands of grains they have looked at, none are crystals of silica with 147 facets, which is obviously an absolute requisite for life to occur at all.
Could happen.
Yay! It’s finally here…well closer, anyway. My new novel, WOLFEHAVEN, is completed and about ready to publish. I just ordered a paperback proof, which should be in my hands in the week after Christmas. If I don’t find any problems, I’ll hit the PUBLISH button and it’s a go. I have already gone over it so many times I see it in my sleep, so I don’t expect problems. Of course, you never know, but there you are. It will be available both in paperback and as a Kindle e-book. What’s it about? Well, it’s number three in the Refuge Omnibus series. You know, REFUGE and RAVEN.
The events in REFUGE and RAVEN reduced the remnants of humankind to Stone Age hunters and gatherers combined with scavengers among the bones of what came before. RAVEN ended with Jason Wolfe leading his small convoy of survivors out of Adobe Creek, heading north. WOLFEHAVEN finds them six years later only a few miles from Adobe Creek where they settled on the north bank of the Russian River a dozen miles from the coast. They named their new home Wolfehaven.
Emmie, accompanied by Raven and Satan on a two or three day wilderness walk-about, uses her special, human-magic to save Sherri and her children from men sent after her by the leader of her village to kill her. Emmie must use more of her magic to not only help transport Sherri and injured Satan back to Wolfehaven for treatment by the village’s healer, Lila, but also to evade a kryl capture mission while en route. Witnessing all these feats that she has been taught can only be wrought by the minions of the Devil, Sherri quakes in fear that her flight has brought her and her children into a land of witches.
Before Emmie and Raven return, two of Wolfehaven’s young men, one black and one white, rape thirteen-year-old Tina. When she escapes back to the village, naked and bloody, she realizes she can’t tell anyone who did it, so she claims it was two strangers, one black and one white.
After Emmie and Raven and their entourage return to the village and Lila heals Sherri and Satan, Sherri witnesses yet more witchcraft put to more good use when she and the village watch Emmie and several others with telekinetic abilities to install a huge waterwheel in the river to provide electrical power. Afterwards, celebrations are put on hold when two travelers arrive, one black and one white. Seeing a way to avoid identifying the true rapists, Tina says it was these strangers. This results in a trial in which Sherri’s surprising, critical input changes everything.
Just where did The Donald come from…really? No, I don’t mean which planet, although that might be a legitimate question. I mean, is he really an honest to goodness candidate for the office of President of the United States? A job with an annual salary, including benefits, that is about what he makes in a day? Or is it an hour? And this is a guy that can’t stop crowing about how much he is worth. Is it that he has all the money he needs or wants (no, seriously), and that he really does want to make this a better country, at least in his opinion? Is all his bombast just a holdover from his days on TV when such a thing would improve his show’s ratings, and he really doesn’t know any better than to think it is also appealing to thinking people out in the real world? Are all the outrageous opinions and ideas for solutions of the nation’s problems that he keeps coming out with really from his mind and heart (assuming he has either)? Or is it something else?
Are we all being taken for a ride?
Is this whole Donald Trump for President thing nothing but a red herring?
Is it all just something to outrage and occupy anyone not in the GOP’s inner circle while the other candidates look pretty good in comparison? I can see Trump going along with something like that. He’d love being the face on every TV news broadcast and the headlines of every newspaper, even overshadowing the Democratic candidates. That is, if he really is the obnoxious fool everyone is assuming him to be. Maybe when he was a kid, all he really wanted was to be a clown when he grew up. But Daddy merely laughed and said, “No. Here’s million dollars, now go play like a good boy.” Hell, he may actually be a smart, serious businessman who had developed an on-screen persona for a popular, money-making TV show that is ready-made for this role, and he is merely doing his part by temporarily staying in character for the Grand Ole Party as he was asked. He’d get to be as obnoxious as he wanted, the worse the better, until the true GOP candidate secured the nomination. It could even be someone chosen long ago by those deemed to be the power behind the throne, perhaps someone not yet included in the present horde of candidates who could be smeared by the mud being slug about, someone to be brought out later when Trump has done all the damage he can safely do and can be withdrawn. And then, with a big-business-friendly president in the White House, he could go back to concentrating on making even more weekly millions while trying to score with Miss Universe or whatever he does for diversion.
And, when you consider it, a lot of that could also apply to Carson?
The only thing that would work better for the GOP would be if Trump and/or Carson could then be switched over to grab the nomination for the Democratic Party…maybe as president and vice-president. That way the GOP’s true candidate would win the election by unanimous vote. Even Reagan wasn’t unanimous.
Okay, if he really does withdraw from the GOP and runs as an Independent, I’ll withdraw these “suggestions” that, otherwise, seem to me to be altogether reasonable.
I mean, come on, people! Donald Trump is a successful, billionaire businessman. He may have gotten his start with a million dollar stake from Daddy, but he, not Daddy, still turned it into billions. How many MBA’s could do that? No way could he have done that if he was really the obnoxious fool he is portraying to the public. It’s entertaining, but, frankly, I don’t buy it.
Does the GOP have anyone devious enough to put something like that together?
I wonder what Carl Rove has been doing lately.
Okay, now, folks–put down the pitchforks. This was all tongue-in-cheek. You know, just joking. A great, elaborate hoax like this could never really happen…not in America…not in the twenty-first century. …Right? …Could it?
“You’re talking about people who have no rules.”
That’s what deputy Scott Lewis of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department was quoted as saying in “Tasers used weekly at county jail” in The Press Democrat on Wednesday, November 4, 2015, about people in custody who are subdued with Tasers and other forms of control when they refuse to submit to control, something that reportedly occurs at the Sonoma County jail about once a week or so.
He also said, “This isn’t a college campus. These are people who, for a million different reasons, don’t have the same behavior control as other people.”
Other people, for various reason, are saying these methods are also used as extra-judicial punishments, or, at the least, as an unnecessarily extreme method when lesser methods may be just as effective, or even more so.
When Esa Wroth, a young man of 28 years, was being booked for DUI, he was apparently uncooperative enough to be tasered 23 times. There is apparently a 29 minute video in support of his claim for three million dollars. It does seem to be a bit excessive–both the 23 times and the three million dollars. You have to wonder what he did that he had to be zapped 23 times.
Seems to me it would have been better to just delay booking until he is sobered enough and calm enough to cooperate. If there is a policy requirement that booking must be completed immediately upon his arrival at the jail facility, that may be one of the problems. Maybe they should take another look at their policies and question if they are in need of improvement.
I my days behind the badge, I took in good number of people to be booked who were less than cooperative. One way to handle them was to pound them until they did cooperate, although, I actually never did that myself, nor did I ever see it done. Another way was to con the guy into cooperating. It’s not all that hard to do with some of them. I arrested a guy for fighting in the street. Since he might still be around, I’ll just call him The Mountain (he was big, like one click was all I could get on the cuffs when I put them on his wrists). Fortunately, he didn’t resist arrest or give me any problems until I was almost finished with booking. In those days, we had to do three separate, original fingerprint cards, one for our records, one for the state, and one for the FBI. I finished everything with The Mountain’s booking except for the last two print cards. That’s when he said he wanted to make his phone call. I told him he had to wait until we finished booking. He said, he he wouldn’t let me finish booking until after he made a phone call. I could have hit him over the head with something, or maced him or some other senseless violent act, none of which would have convinced him to let me finish the booking. I could have just locked him in a cell until he agreed to complete booking, something that I had done with many others. If he had to sit there for a day or so…oh, well, his choice. Instead, I said, “I’ll tell you what, Mountain, if you’ll let me do just two more of these cards, I’ll skip the rest for now and let you make your phone call. Okay?” He thought about it for a few seconds and said, “Okay. It’s a deal.” We finished the two cards, he made his phone call, I put him into a cell, and he went to sleep happy. Our policy was to complete booking on any arrested person–if they cooperate. they don’t, they go into a cell until they do. However, they could not be bailed out or get released in any way until booking was completed. And in those days, when we used actual ink on paper for fingerprinting, we did not want to try to book a falling-down drunk who might have to hang onto my shoulder with his inky hands while I rolled the fingers of his other hand. He would just wait until he had slept it off in the tank.
In today’s law enforcement, there seems to be an urgency to regain control. At times, I agree, there is a legitimate reason for the immediate restoration of control. But there are a lot of times when a little patience will accomplish more that tasers, batons, pepper spray, and fists, and a lot of times even quicker. If a policy demands something to be accomplished immediately, whether it is booking an uncooperative arrestee or overcoming a barricaded gunman, maybe it should be reconsidered. Few things–other than a brick wall–are justifiably inflexible. And, it would be beneficial if even a brick wall could flex at times, like in an earthquake.
Some people shouldn’t own dogs, or probably any animal if the way they treat their dog is any indication. I’m not talking about beating them or starving them or anything like that. I’m talking about simply not understanding dogs and how they should be treated. And, really, it all comes down to one simple thing an owner should–must–know about dogs: dogs are pack animals. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to have a whole pack of dogs in order to made each one happy. What it means is that dogs kept in isolation, not just from other dogs, but even from the family that owns them, is cruel. It is torture for them to be alone. To a dog that has grown up with a human family or joined a family as an adult dog, (even if it only a single person) that family is his pack. And the human has to be the pack Alpha, but that is a whole other subject that I won’t get into at this time. The dog will protect that family (his pack) with his life, if such a sacrifice is called for. So, why do people get a dog and then make him spend the rest of his life in an outdoor pen? That’s like adopting a child and not allowing him out of his room–ever. Even if you visit the child in his room every time you take him his meal tray, he is living in solitary confinement, starving for social interaction. It is no different for the dog in a pen; it is still a life sentence of solitary confinement. Remember how zoos used to keep all their animals in small cages, especially dangerous ones like the big cats? Remember how horrible and totally unnatural it seemed to confine such creatures in those small cages, away from others of their kind, condemned to a life of pacing back and forth? Why do some people think it is okay to treat their own dog like that?
My inspiration for this rant is my neighbor. He doesn’t know me and I don’t know him, so I’m not too worried about him complaining about me ratting on him. I moved into my current house about a year ago. It’s in a middle-class residential area of single family homes, and it seems like at least every other house has at least one dog–a large one. Both houses on either side of me have large dogs. The one directly behind me, and both houses on either side of it have large dogs. Beyond that, I can’t say. But I know more are out there from the barking that goes on. Although that is mostly during the day, it also happens at night, so some of them–actually, quite a few, it appears–spend the nights outside. Which brings me back to my opening remark, that some people should not have dogs. The neighbor to my west takes his dog inside at night. I’m not sure about the one to the east because he doesn’t bark at night, and even seldom during the day. Probably goes inside.
I do know about the one behind me. I have looked over my back fence to see what the circumstance were. What I saw was a dog run about ten feet wide and maybe twenty-five or thirty feet long. I couldn’t see into it, but there appeared to be a shelter of some sort at the near end where it butts up against the back fence, so he apparently can get in out of the rain or hot sun. I saw a food dish and a water dish, and nothing else within view except the dog. That is his world. He is a large dog, some kind of hound, so the amount of room in a 10 X 30 foot enclosure doesn’t amount to very much. He can walk, but not run. You ever see a dog that doesn’t like to run? Or cock his leg on a few trees? Or chase a ball? I wonder if he knows what a ball is. Many a time I’ve heard him barking in response to children playing in the neighborhood, and his whining bark is clearly a plea to join them. But he can’t because he’s locked up. Sometimes I hear him exchanging barks with other dogs in the neighborhood like they are conversing. Sometimes he breaks out in a typical bay of a hound, and the other dogs join in for a good old sing-along. Sounds sorta like a wolf pack. It doesn’t last long, though. I don’t know if the other dogs are hushed up by their owners or if they just get bored. The hound never gets hushed up, though. He can bark and bark, for an hour or more at a time, sometimes late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, and he is hardly ever hushed up.
He appears well fed and healthy looking, so he is tended to, somewhat. He’s just ignored–until hunting season, probably. From my back door, I can see a small deer head mounted on a wall inside his owner’s house. Maybe he gets to go out into the woods to flush out a deer or two for his owner to shoot. Or not. I don’t know if the owner shot that deer or not. He may have bought it at a garage sale.
So, back to my original question, why do people have dogs and treat them like this? Is it a cultural thing? Do some cultures dictate that dogs should be kept outside and away from family except for meal times? If that is the case, what is the purpose of the dog? Are they supposed to be watch-dogs, protectors of the homestead? But, if that is the case, couldn’t they do a better job from inside the homestead instead of penned up outside it where they can’t do anything about intruders except bark at them? And if they bark constantly like perpetually penned dogs are apt to do, their barked warnings will likely be ignored, anyway. So, again, why have a dog? Some people shouldn’t.
Okay! Enough, already! How many times do we have to have this conversation? What does it take for the message to get through?
Guns kill people.
Three words that are simple, easy to pronounce, and are clear in meaning. Yes, people kill people, too–usually with guns. Did you note that? Usually–with–guns. Yes, they may also kill with knives and clubs and poison and any number of things, like sharp pencils. But, if they use those weapons, they usually only kill one person and then run like hell. The great (?) thing about guns is that they can shoot one person, point the damned thing at someone else and shoot him, too. Then, if so inclined, do it again…ten times…twenty times…or more. There is really no limit to how many people they can kill one right after another as long as they have preloaded their clips and don’t forget to point the muzzle end of the gun at the victim instead of themselves.
Ah, but then comes the argument: The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. What a great soundbite! Unless you stop to think about it and all the ways it’s a terrible soundbite. Imagine if all the folks who considered themselves to be good guys–they just don’t wear white hats so we can tell they are the good guys–were walking around with S&Ws or Berettas or Colts, or any of those other brands manufactured for the primary purpose of easy, multiple killings, in a handy pocket or purse. Now, imagine a scenario in which a bad buy (but one without a black hat) takes his gun to someplace like an elementary school or a college campus or a darkened movie theater (hey, it could happen) to see how many innocents he can shoot before a good guy with a gun stops him. Because it’s a popular movie, lots of good guys are at the theater with their wives, children, girlfriends, boyfriends, or alone. At a pre-selected (or maybe not) point in the movie, he pulls out his gun and starts shooting in all directions because he knows about every seat is occupied. Naturally, when the good guys see the flash of his shots and hear the booms, they surmise that it has to be a bad buy because good guys don’t do that sort of thing. So a good guys slaps leather, draws a bead on the shooter, or just points his own gun in his general direction since it’s so dark he can’t really see him, and starts shooting. After all, the bad guy is still shooting, people are still screaming and falling over each other, so immediate action is needed. However, all the other good guys, none of which are wearing their hats, see the flashes from his gun and assume there are two bad guys, so they all open fire on both of them. Of course, in the darkness, none of the good guys shooting at presumed bad guys can actually see their targets, but, action is needed. Each one knows he is a good guy, and, because people are screaming, he knows bad guys are (probably) shooting them. Before you know it, every other person inside the theater is shooting at gun flashes in every direction. Meanwhile, the bad guy who started it all is sitting in the corner watching and laughing; or maybe he just turned and left after his first few shots, knowing all the good guys would finish what he started.
This particular scenario has not happened–yet. Not this complete scenario, although one may have come close. But there appears to be no end to the insanity in this country, so hang in there. The above described action adventure may be coming soon to the theater near you.
Source: Pitts: If Sandy Hook is ‘bearable,’ what is | The Press Democrat
Old Guy Who Writes 