Slick Rick and his Bag of Tricks

There isn't really a point to the post title.

Oh wait!  Yes there is.

So the big thing now is fighting "Slick."  I know it's the big thing now because I read it in SWAT magazine and it was further expounded upon in a thread on Bacon Survival.  It means stuffing crap in your pockets and fighting out of that, instead of using some form of LBE.

I've seen it before now, though I never knew what the TOTALLY OMG SWEET operator term for it was.  I think Tam even mentioned something about the Mk 4 Jeans Back Pocket Magholder in one of her posts a couple years ago.  Fundamentally, it is a good idea in the sense that it gets you to stop fiddling around with your toys and actually learn to fight.

But this is a continuum to which there are apparently limits.  Sure, you can cite endless statistics where you only need the ammo currently in your weapon, with maybe one reload, and say you are covered.  If anyone suggests anything more, it is obviously because they are a gear encrusted mall ninja with no hope of survival loaded down with all those extra magazines and tourniquets.  I get that principle and really, despite the inevitable snark, I approve...but how "slick" can you get?

Anyway, what I want to tell Slick Rick and his crew is-why aren't you learning to fight empty handed?  Isn't that the "Slickest" method of all?  If you don't train with a chest rig because you aren't ALWAYS wearing a chest rig, should you stop training with a gun because you aren't ALWAYS wearing a gun?  After all, plenty of conflicts start and finish without a single weapon coming into play.  Hell, what about pants?  I'm not ALWAYS wearing pants.  Maybe I should just drop trow at the range next time and if someone calls me on it, I'll yell "SLICK LOL NOOB."

The worst of these slicksters tend to get huffy when you bring things like this up, often because they have no experience or training in unarmed fighting.  (That in itself could make another post, but I'll let you move along with your LOL KARATE snark...for now.)  If you want to go full slick, perhaps you should get naked and do some Krav Maga.  Otherwise, practice putting your shit on under pressure, carry the gear you need (no more or less) and remain adaptable.  "Slick" sounds cool, but it is doctrine, and remember that doctrine is always limiting.

Codex Kalachnikova Preview: Shadow of the Walking Demon

Chapter 4

The Order of the Knife did not pray, exactly, yet they revered St. Marx the Trinity-Karl, Groucho and Harpo, great physicians from before the Age of Rust who wandered the earth performing miracles.  Yet they were not worshipped, per se, merely studied and revered as paragons of the Codex Hippocratis, to which all the Priestesses and Acolytes of the temple strove to live by.  It cautioned temperance; the very first words of the Codex were “Do no more harm than you need.”

Marne did not feel particularly temperate as she rode ahead of the Scum Lord.  Her Mother Superior had cautioned her as she appointed her to First Knife, “Remember that the Knifeborn are our charge, from the days of TEOTWAWKI onward.  Whatever they are, it is because we made them so.  Do what they ask and be what they need.” 

She wanted to think that the Mother Superior had not known what this task would entail, that she was sending her newly appointed First Knife to a certainty of rape and deviant abuse from a pack of jaded little subterranean vermin from a degenerate age, likely followed by death at the hands of a trained killer she had known from boyhood.  But she found it unlikely.  What the Scum Lord did not know in the depths of his fury was this: the hook was in the Priestess as well, and she had no choice but to be strung along.  They were two flopping stingfish on the same rusted stringer in a pond choked with thick green corruption; each conspired to hate the other.

And the ugly truth is, even if Mother Superior does know what I have faced, and am facing, it would not change our need.  That was another tenet of the Codex Hippocratis-“Greatest good to the greatest number.”  Without the miraculous potions and needles and other sundries from the Knifeborn’s great storage vaults, the magic of the Knife Sisterhood would crumble to dust.  With that would go the goodwill of the holdfast lords, and with that, their power.  So they did what they must.  I did not mind so much when it was just keeping records and sending foreskins, though.

She stilled her mind without so much as a whimper; there was much to do.  The air was still cold, but the bitter howling winds had died, and it was in silence that the two doomed fools rode through the Necropolis, seeking the Way of the Belt.  The horses were nervous, and itched to bolt, so a steady hand was required to keep them in order.  Marne was grateful for this; it was something to focus on.  She thought, perhaps almost prayed let this ride be the last.  I can betray him if I can do it in silence.  I will armor my heart in stillness, and he will not hear falsehood in my voice.  For that was what terrified her; the man missed so little that she feared he would smell out her treachery immediately.  And the galling fact was that she did not know what value his life was to the Knifeborn when they already had his seed.

For his part, the Scum Lord seemed content to ride in silence, both hands on the reins with the kalach slung low across his lap.  He looked pleased with himself, even though his own Codex cautioned against such a sensation.  An ugly confrontation with the Knifeborn vaqueros at the end of the temple mouth had nearly gotten them killed, though he knew it not.  The god-blind morons had tried to tell him that his kalach had gone missing, whereupon he had seized the man’s balls and twisted.  After a surprisingly short amount of time, the kalach and the lord’s other gear had all re appeared, as if by magic.  And yet even that affront was not enough for the Scum Lord; in the course of manhandling the gunslinger he had taken the fool’s automatic pistol and tucked it away.  None of the sullen looking vaqueros had even troubled him for it as he walked away.  Perhaps he had a right to look pleased; it had been obvious even then that no man among them was his match.  Yet it would have spelled his death, had that conclusion not already been forgone.

The sun was rising higher in the sky as they reached an on ramp to the Way of the Belt.  Her staff, with its tiny surges of magnetism, had already cleared the decrepit hulks from their path on the way in, but she flicked the controls of the weapon to ready it anyway.  The gleaming steel staff, five feet long with solid metal at both ends, had even been returned to her with a full charge-a surprising courtesy.  But the package slung across her horses’ rump was far more important, a massive bag almost five feet long and marked with the cross of the torture victim god of the ancients.  It contained vials and pills and needles all marked with words of power-PENICILLIN AMBIEN V VANKOMYCIN ZYDRATE.  By your name I summon you, she thought bitterly.  These will save more lives than I take this day.  Greatest good, greatest number.  I must remember that.  They rode between the shattered wrecks in silence.

Then, putting a cruel end to her nascent hopes of survival, the Scum Lord spoke.  His voice, with that barbaric Tex Arcane accent that spoke of cunnilingus and home (the priestess did not know it, but the two were mixed in her head) was rough with the hard travel.  “That song, m’lady,” he said, uncharacteristic politeness in his tone.  For a moment he groped for words.  “The Rising of the Moon.  It is a traditional nursery song in my lands.  A relic of the Ancients, I am told.”  They reached the top of the elevated road, and began picking and weaving their way among the fire carriages while mummies stared out at them with gaping eye sockets.  “I have never heard it sung anywhere else.”

In her heart, she cursed and railed.  The song, why did he have to bring up the stinking song?  And why did you have to sing it?  To keep from screaming, she focused on the path before them, nudging her mare away from a twisted pile of jagged metal.  She did not turn to look at him; too much sincerity in a lie, she had found, was the same as not enough.  “I have spent many years serving your holdfast, my lord.  I hear many songs sung in the fields and stables by your get.”

“Aye,’ he said, and she heard a match being struck behind her.  There was the smell of sulphur and then tobacco.  “Yet it is unusual, to hear a song of one’s childhood so far from childhood joys.  And rarer still from a Priestess who can pick up the words so well.” 

Her back prickled in anticipation of a storm of bullets from the man’s chattering weapon.  She almost fancied she could taste the blood in the back of her throat already.  One misstep here, and this man will kill me.  They are all killers in the Tex Arcane, and he rose to his lordship by being the greatest of them.  I must never forget that.  Not even allowing herself a deep breath, she lied boldly.  “Music is one of the hidden blessings of the Sisterhood, my lord.  Not all of our records are of births and deaths and chopped foreskins.”  There was an edge of frost in her voice; hopefully it served to mask her terror.

Apparently he had no answer to that.  They rode in silence again, a blessed relief.  Occasionally she stopped to brush her charged staff against an obstacle, sending it squealing and grinding out of her path in a cloud of bitter rust.  But the dead city made little noise, and it appeared to her that…

“Something up ahead,” said the man behind her suddenly, and she reigned her horse in too sharply.  The well trained beast did not rear, though it shuddered, and she lowered her free hand to stroke the animal’s neck.  “Something cracking.  Sounds like rock, or…”  The lord fell silent.  Then she heard the cold snap-chunk of a kalach bolt being racked.  “Stay down, m’lady,” the lord said, and she thought this is it, he already hears his doom approaching.  She lowered her head on instinct-a holdfast instinct for survival that was ingrained even deeper than her training as an Acolyte of the Knife.  Peering out past the wrecks, she strained for a look at the horror she had unleashed, but saw nothing.

Ground Report: Bloomington Day of Resistance

So I took a couple of the tribe and my daughter to the Bloomington Indiana Day of Resistance pro gun rally today down at the courthouse.  It was surprisingly large-about 50 people overall.  It got cut short early, before I had a chance to give the speech I had prepared and, of course, plug my book.  Other than that, it turned out pretty well.  We showed up with some donuts for the war effort which I think everyone appreciated.  None of us were open carrying but there were a few people that were, mostly pistols although one guy had a bitchin' tac'ed out shotgun.

The speakers were OK; it was hard to hear some of it because the mic went dead early on and it was mostly just talking loud over the ambient noise.  I got to meet the libertarian candidate Andrew Horning, who is a pretty decent guy.  I think everybody speaking was passionate and most of them had some good messages, but nobody really wowed the crowd with their oration the way I would have...but that's to be expected.

The police did not show up until almost forty five minutes after the rally itself started and they remained discretely positioned about twenty yards away.  To me, this signifies that they didn't know about the event in advance or I feel there would have been both more police presence and they would have been there the whole time.  Still, they were polite and non confrontational, and the crowd was the same.  In general I have no complaints about the local police; if this had been the Indianapolis rally, God knows they would have been drinking, but Monroe County Sheriff's Dept and BPD both are pretty competent.

Gracie had a good time regardless; she kept wanting them to start up the chant and sing the national anthem again, she had a lot of fun with that.  She ate donuts and played in the mud and charmed everyone there to the point where they will probably remember "The Creepy Longhair with the Cute Kid" rather than "Chris By-The-Throat, author of the upcoming novel Codex Kalachnikova."  C'est la vie.

Anyway, I just wanted to drop some ground truths from my AO.  Did anyone else attend one of these events?

Making The Cut

So apparently they are going to cut wrestling from the summer olympics.  I'm more than a little offended, and not just because I am a wrestling afficianado.  It is humanity's oldest sport, part of the Olympics since the Golden Age of Greece, and is, in a tangible way, the purest form of competition.  My coach used to say "There's no hedging in wrestling.  No excuses.  The only person out there is you and the enemy.  You lose, it's on you.  You win, it's all on you too."

Anyway, I thought I'd compile a list of some of the stupid ass sports that should have been cut from the summer olympics before wrestling.  As a side note, none of this should give you the impression that I give a shit about the fucking olympics.

Synchronized Swimming - Seriously, fucking water ballet?
Beach Volleyball \ Indoor Volleyball - So the same game played on a different surface requires 2 events?
Handball - Stupid bullshit
Table Tennis - This one might offend me most of all.  Fucking ping pong deserves a slot, but not wrestling?  It boggles the mind.

Oh, and they are adding Golf.  Because wrestling wasn't getting the ratings, wasn't interesting enough to watch, but somehow people are going to sit through a perfectly good walk in the country spoiled by some jerkoff game for racists?

Kind of Femslash Friday: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Edition

Sometimes, you find a fan fiction that is either beautifully awful or brilliant troll.  This particular fic is an example of one or the other. It's called Rand Loves WEEEEEEEEEEEEED and it is exactly what it says on the tin, with bonus lesbian action.

 Here is the first chapter...and yes, there's more than one.

Rand loves weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed So I was like walking and talking to my voices when I saw it. The most beautiful bong EVER. I piked it up lit it and puffed on it till I couldn't fucking breathe.  Oh then I puffed some more the things going through my mind were insane so natrually I acted upon my emotions. My first genious idea was to puff a little more then I had another idea. I would conquer TEAR no wait I already did that.Then I thought oh I know I will go lead the aiel out of the waste. no done that. eventually I had no more thoughts so I puffed some more here were wy thoughts FUCK YEAH SMOKE SMOKE SMOKE SMOKE. then I thought of something I had never done before I would throw eggs at Moraine and get into a battle of the Power (we do those a lot) "Oh Moraine come out to play Moraine come out to play Moraine come out to play ." I shouted at her house. "What Rand "I"'m trying to fuck in here!!" she shouted back without a comeback I trew an egg at her.It pissed her off so she cast lightning on me then I cast a ball of fire. She hates it when I do that. But then a thought accured to me. "Moraine who are you fucking in there?" I asked. I was really disturbed when Ahvienda said "Hey sugar. Moraine come finish licking my pussy"I had no way to answer but "Holy shit Moraine and Ahvienda are fucking!" The factor that realy disturbed me is when Mat stood up and said "Is someone gonna finish sucking me off"Just then I realized that Moraine and Ahvienda are both BI. "One minute Matty and we can finish this fuck fest." Next thing I knew I was naked tied to a wooden bed next to Mat with both women carrying whips."AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"TO BE CONTINUED

I...really have no words. Just go here.

Take a Walk on the Practical Side

So I've been hounding my lovely wife about doing some guest columns on this blog.  I'm pestering her to do a full review of the Excalibur dehydrator we purchased for some time.  She keeps waffling because she thinks she isn't creative, but you don't have to be that effin' creative to do a product review and I'm pretty sure she'll cave eventually.  I think her reasonable, practical perspective will create a valuable counterpunch to my adderall-and-mushroom fueled rabies rants.

I'm also going to harass her to do a weekly feature where she finds and posts links to bug out gear deals.  She is, of course, a Master-class bargain hunter, with an ear to the ground for the sweet bulk deal.  That would be a valuable feature in and of itself, but it also means she doesn't have to try to be creative, just post links to sweet deals that she may find while rummaging around the interweb.

Finally, I think a female perspective would be valuable on this blog because it would make me seem less like a violent misogynist nutjob.  The whole blog is (and will continue to be) written in locker room language, so I think she would provide a good contrast.  Hopefully I won't embarrass her too much talking blatantly about our sex life, but then again, she has better blackmail material on me than I have on her, so I don't anticipate it being a problem.

What do you all think?

Because I'm seeing a lot of this lately...

Little straw man on his little straw knees

wasting my time with mediocrities.

Shot him in the middle of his little straw face, 

got his little straw brains all over the place.

Shoved him in a grave, just a little straw pit,

filled it with six feet of my fucking bullshit.