A Mafia Murder And An Armed Teen

This is the story of "The Teenage Bodyguard." Who? Well, if you haven't already heard about this, in 1974 a teenager protected a murder witness, a woman and cocktail waitress for a week, from the mob, the mafia, from their "Enterprise". And he kept her alive. But did she survive?

Graphic by Kelly Hughes

Welcome to the Pacific Northwest podcast, "Scene of the Crime", who recently did a podcast titled, "Enterprise" (Also, here - podcast currently seems unavailable), in June of 2020. It told of the story of the Tacoma, Washington Carbone crime family who abused local Pierce County law enforcement and government all through the 1970s.

Years later, in 1978 during their San Francisco federal trial of their "Enterprise", they again murdered one of their bouncers who had been subpoenaed. But he was not the first bouncer they had murdered. The first was in 1974, and his name was Danny McCormack.

In the spring of 1974, there is a particular story that is of interest to us here. And that is the story of Gordie. After receiving a phone call from a "friend", he gave a woman who had been staying with the friend, a short ride.

When she got into his car, a 1967 Camaro RS/SS red convertible (two years later this model would be renamed as the Z28 model), she refused to give him an address to where he was taking here.

The first red light, and sign there was something wrong. Instead shea just told him where to turn until they got to her new living space. Her new home was with four people she had just met recently. With no ties at all to her past, or Gordie's friend, or Gordie for that matter.

At this point one might ask, "Why isn't this in theaters yet?" And if you're someone who could see this film produced, surely, say, "Hi!"

Exactly. Even the podcast pointed that out. The Blacklist, indicated that on an evaluation of this film. The Bluecat Screenplay Contest asked that exact question.

The Blacklist: "Since 2005, each December, the Black List releases its annual list, a survey of the most liked unproduced screenplays of that year. The annual lists are aggregated using votes from film executives working in the film industry." From The Blacklist

Bluecat Screenplay Contest: "Founded in 1998 by award-winning writer Gordy Hoffman, BlueCat has remained committed in discovering unknown, gifted screenwriters and showcases their work to a global audience year after year. Through written analysis provided to all entrants, BlueCat has supported thousands of screenwriters with many who have gone on to successful careers in the film and television industry."

Actually, I've been working with Gordie, the protagonist of this story, along with Voyage Media's head of their Originals Department, Robert Mitas. Robert has had screenplays produced himself, and worked producing films with actor and producer, Michael Douglas.
We are currently working to see this screenplay and story produced and into theaters or via another of many viewer platforms. I'd be happy with Netflix or Amazon Prime or others.

Text from Thursday, January 24th, 1974 Tacoma News Tribune article:

Patron kills bouncer at Tiki

The bouncer in a Lakewood night spot was slain early Sunday as he argued with a disgruntled customer in the parking lot.

Danny Derrick McCormick, 25, 3102 S. 47th St., was pronounced dead at Lakewood General Hospital at 2:30a.m.

He was employed by The Tiki, at Villa Plaza.

Sheriff's deputies were told McCormick was shot in the chest by a young white man who earlier had been harrassing a waitress in The Tiki.

After closing at 2AM, the suspect returned to pound on the cabaret door, unsuccessfully demanding to be let in. When McCormick and a friend went to their car, the suspect and a companion drove over and began angrily discussing the Tiki operation.

The suspect pulled a revolver, deputies were told. McCormick's friend grabbed him and told the bouncer to "get the gun."

McCormick was shot as he approached the suspect, who broke away and fled with his companion in their car.

An off-duty school security officer who had left with McCormick but gone to his own car fired a shot at the fleeing car as it sped away.

Mccormick was rushed to the hospital but did not respond to treatment.

It was this murder of a coworker that sparked this whole story. A story that led to a cocktail waitress to go on the run because, as she contended, she was IN that parking lot when Danny was murdered. A murder she said was NOT performed by an anonymous disgruntled patron, but rather by one of the capos of the head of the "Enterprise", John "Handsome Johnny" Carbone himself.

Why isn't this on screen yet somewhere?

Getting a film made is a magical thing. But we continue to work toward seeing this produced so you can see this story for yourself. And maybe, make up your own mind.

Editing and History of "Gumdrop, a short horror"

First, some housekeeping and promotions...Last year I shot my first short-short eight-minute narrative film, The Rapping. It was a festival selection at the New York Midnight Film Festival, actually, showing in New York and won the Weekly Online Once A Week Film Festival for January 2, 2019. I shot this with a single actor, Nikolas Hayes. We had worked together previously on Kelly Hughes' horror films.

I have worked on several projects with Kelly and lately, we've been working on the ongoing annual GUFF, the Gorst Underground Film Festival. We began it and held it for two years at Blue Collar Art but are moving it to The Historic Charleston Theater in Bremerton. Both venues are perfect for it.

Our most recent event series is "Slash Night" at the Historic Roxy Theater here in Bremerton which I recently wrote about here. Gorst is a small community right next to Bremerton, Washington. Kelly started both events and both are now becoming standard annual and monthly events, respectively.

This past summer I shot my short horror film, "Gumdrop, a short horror" with multiple actors. I wrote the screenplay and directed and shot it myself. It is a prequel to my short horror story based on a true crime, "Gumdrop City" (2012) on Amazon as an ebook and included in the collection of my first short horror tales in "Anthology of Evil" (2012). I have a manuscript ready for a sequel as, "Anthology of Evil II", but haven't had the time to deal with it.

On Gumdrop, a short horror and Gumdrop City, the new piece is a prequel. The story is about Sampson, an odd character who in the short story is older and more decrepit but just as dastardly and deadly, but even more despicable a personality. In the current film, In using the short story as a roadmap, I drew a character who had been abused as a child and had grown up traveling to escape his birth country of Czechoslovakia and his horror of a childhood.

In those restrictions of his accent and so on, I gave him a background of having traveled to South Africa and to various locations that affected his accent. His father was Irish, his mother Czech. So he has an accent that is an odd juxtaposition of a Slovak accent with a South African slant to it and words of an Irish orientation. He knew his father but didn't know him long enough for it to affect his accent that much, but enough and in odd ways. This makes him confusing for those he interfaces with. His mental status and his orientation led him into criminal enterprises and to avoid traditional forms of employment and sustenance.

Actor Stan W with lead actor Tom Remick as "Sampson"

Sampson is one odd character and not to be trifled with. As the character, Manz (played by actor Stan Wankowsky) discovers int he film.

Okay now...editing.

First, apologies. I'm more concerned with working on this project than blogging. And I'm adding to this as I'm editing, and think of things to mention.

Like treats. I get up in the mornings around 6-7AM and have breakfast, sometimes just toast and peanut butter, or oatmeal, and two cups of coffee. Years ago I limited myself to two cups a day, maybe tea mid-morning if needed. I watch something on TV, usually news of some sort, or a late-night talk show. Then I get to work. If things go on too long, watching a show, and it's really interesting, I'll stop, and save it to watch at lunch as a kind of reward. Understand I'm retired from IT and work on film production and writing from a home office which at this point happens to be half my living room.

I've found tricking and treating myself works wonders for my motivation and stress levels. Have something to look forward to. And use any way you can think of to make yourself do what you woin't or don't want to do. Whatever works. Just find a way to be productive, and try not to (have to) kills yourself over it. IF there is any way possible to make it entertaining/ Do that. But save the wasteful time spending for after you have worked for a day's amount of work, or more.

I have no formal training in film production. Just theory and doing. Self-taught you might say. I've read a lot of books on film production but should have spent more time ready about editing. Well, I've spent some time learning about it, but this project is in part that education. My next project will look a lot better edited, I'm sure. I'll also be reviewing some videos on editing now. I'd meant to do that already before starting this but the flu had messed up my timing. And other things...

 Sony Movie Studio Suite 16 - Gumdrop
Shown, actors: Luke Remick (Jinks), Tom Remick (Sampson)

I am using Sony Movie Studio Suite 16. For that matter, I write screenplays using Final Draft 11. One of these days when I can afford it I may switch to Final Cut. My first edit of a film was at Western Washington University. I used a half-inch black and white reel to reel rig and had to edit in the camera. At some point, I was soldering wires to add music. And it was a nightmare. But I produced a phenomenology film for my department advisor, Dr. Rod Rees in part toward my degree in psychology. I also got a minor in creative writing and team script and screenwriting.

My next production came years later as a Viacom public access cable TV producer where I shot and directed and edited with a few friends a documentary for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the old Lost in Space TV show. I shot on VHS using my own camera as I'd had a bad experience in college where the battery in every camera rig was dead or almost dead in my case, which was the problem.

I didn't know it was "dead" as it worked some and so I shot a bunch of film to near-disastrous results. Still, some of those shots made it into the film. I used a Panasonic VHS editor deck at the studio and it did cablecast twice in the associated region.

For both The Rapping and now with Gumdrop, I'm using my own equipment and software entirely under the auspices of the production company started in 1993 for the LIS doc, LgN Productions (Last good Nerve Productions). I'm using a Canon DSLR 80D, a Roland R-26 digital recording, an HP video editor system from 2016 and the aforementioned software.

Shooting the film I am using the 80D and a Rode mic on top of the camera as a backup, with the Roland R-26 and a boom mic and tripod for main audio. I highly recommend a backup mic, it can be a lifesaver. But that means you have to marry the proper audio with the proper video and that can be a real job. Especially if you are not documenting your shots as you go. Which, I haven't, sadly. But which I hope to in the future.

Beginning the editing I pull out the screenplay and follow that roadmap. I start to insert the video media and begin to edit. Once I have a sequence of shots or a scene edited, I start to locate and insert the digital audio media. Then I begin matching it up. Part of my problem in not matching up the video and audio first and then ordering up and cutting is I could end up doing a lot of work for naught.

IF I had annotations taken during the shooting, this would go much smoother. But in having actors, especially amateur or nonactors in a production, considering timing as they are working people, not working actors paid to have their time on a schedule to act in my production, it makes life and shooting problematic.

I don't have the time to take the time myself to document and clapper my shots. I have to shoot quickly as on any production, without the safety net of documentation and in shot annotations (clapper and onboard notes).

Another issue was the processing of the audio clips. I really didn't know if I could edit this film, then go back and select only the audio I need, process it (I'm using Reaper for that) and then replace the clips I've used. That is, replace the base media in the editor and have it replace all those snippets all throughout the project. Finally, I took the time yesterday to first do a test and it worked out great.

Another issue I had was I built the opening titles sequence first. In this project the opening titles are the end credits to an extent, only reversed. So in building the opening, I figured as it was fresh in my mind, I might as well build the end. And so I did.

However, that put the end at the actual end of the screen, the project, the file. While editing the other day, and this can happen, I deleted a file and didn't realize I had deleted the end sequence. I realized what I did and could feel a nervous breakdown coming on. So I just sat there absorbing it, thinking if there were ways out of that. Putting off the breakdown until necessary. As it turned out, I found it and from then on every day I save a new version of my work that day and begin a newly named file for the next day. I also saved the end titles in a separate file. THAT won't be happening again. I had also created a couple more unneeded tracks and put it alone at the top out of the way. Which was where it was. Not lost. So my habits aren't too bad after all.

Aside: This happened once after college when I had a dul 5.25" floppy disk PC. One disk had the OS on it, the other was data. I had just written a short story. Sometimes I get in the zone and a story just dumped out onto paper. And it's usually pretty good. I did that once while working on a paper on synesthesia in college. I was exhausted, it was midnight and a short story, one page, single typed, come out. I dumped it onto paper (typed it out) and handed it in to my psych prof, my department advisor in class that next day. The following day we all got a handout. I loved his handouts. I was stunned to realize it was my short story (Perception, which grew along with my short story, later novella, Andrew, into my first full book, Death of heaven). Anyway, I was writing this short story on the dual floppy system and suddenly (and it had done this before), it locked up. Because the data disk got full. At that point, there is nothing to do but reboot. But I hesitated an hour before buying into that need. Finally, I rebooted and immediately rewrote the story. Now when I was almost done with the story I was thinking at the time that it was the most perfect short story I'd ever written. Obviously, I didn't rewrite it word for word but close, but it was not the same as I had written. That was lost.

My point? When you think all is lost, don't accept the breakdown. Breathe. Then think. And do what is productive. And move on.

So I have what I have.

This has been so much easier than editing physically with film or VHS as I had in the past. I was the film editor in my family when I was a kid. I had my grandfather's physical film editor (I still have it) and I did cut and tape film. VHS editing was easier. Digital editing is a dream. As in writing is in using a computer over longhand, or that's how I find it anyway. So much faster to cut and paste than as I did in college, literally cutting and pasting and then typing it all up (back then after being in a queue at the library to use a typewriter).

Yes, I did edit The Rapping last year. But that was a shorter film, a much less complicated film. A film I shot and edited just to prove I could do it. And since it got shown in New York and won one festival, even a micro-festival online, I did prove I could do it.

After a week of editing, the nightmare effort began to get easier as I got into the swing of things. Yesterda I was about six minutes into the diting (six-minute of edited video under my belt) and I hit potentially the toughest scene in the film.

It is the scene with hitwoman Wanda (actress Amy M) and Sampson (Tom Remick). The difficulty came in an interaction that required a lot of insert shots and bouncing back and forth from mid shots to close-ups and some ECUs (extreme close-ups) of a tool. That scene, that sequence of shots took me a couple of days. When I started again yesterday, I felt pretty hopeless, like I'll never work it out.

I thought I was done with that scene but today found I had a mirror sequence (gotta have a cool/bizarre mirror sequence in a film like this). I just finished it and I'm now done with that scene and moving on to the Rowan scene with Tacoma actor Jason Lockhart.

But I'm dumping my media I'd inserted into the project at the end where I clean it up and inject it into the timeline with the other assembled pieces of shots. It's important to remember to clean up. I overuse files/copies in my pre-editing end area of the file to avoid having to reapply a clip. Though I end up with a lot of extra pieces  (also in clipping, and expanding), and just need clean up between sequences, which isn't much of a problem.

I'm also thinking now it might be easier and faster to just video edit and then focus on the audio. As you get used to one thing, video or audio, you get in the swing of it. But when I'm jumping between, I seem to cause myself too much confusion. A few days of this will prove the point one way or another.

But, you take a deep breath and begin again, or continue on as it were. by midday, I was feeling much better. Do not accept the breakdown. Or, accept it, but don't have it. Be productive. Always moving forward.

Professionals produce. Be a professional.

As it is this project needs to be done by the second of November so it can premier at the Slash Night event here in Bremerton, at the Historic Roxy Theater. If I'm not ready, then I can show it in December, and then I'll have more flyers sharing its premiere. And so I may show it twice in a row. We shall see.

At the end of each day's edit, I am rendering a movie of what I have done. Essentially finished rushes. Sort of "finished". As this is all going to take a rough cut, and then a run-through for other issues and another rough cut, over and over as any editor knows.

I have also created a Facebook group, a private group just for the crew and actors on Gumdrop under the LGN banner. There I/we can share issues about the production.. Actors can speak up and hopefully, everyone can learn something, or at least, be made away of progress. I found as an actor you know so little about progression on a production and it can be frustrating.

In making this private group I was hoping to have the actors be more involved, aware of progress (and delays) and hopefully as I said, learn something.

Yesterday I found a few useful links about film production/editing I'd like to share and I shared in our private group.

IFH 113: Post Production Process – Understand It or Suffer the Consequences

Understanding the 5 Stages of Indie Film Production

The 6 Stages Of Editing As A Film Director

I'm into filmmaking, I retired from a very well paying job and a career in IT of 20 years, to make films. To write. To turn my past writings into screenplays and sell or shoot them myself. I couldn't get a film made if I were dying. Like so many others. So I finally just thought, "To hell with it, I'll make my own damn films!"

And so I am.

I made The Rapping up and shot it. I am now finally, for the first time shooting a film based on my own past writings. I first heard about the story behind Gumdrop City in 1983 in an abnormal psychology class. A story so affecting of the entire class, I felt I needed to share it with the world. So I made it entertaining and slipped it into a story about a damaged guy and a serial murderer across the street from him.

I worked for a while with a Hollywood producer on a feature film-length version screenplay of Gumdrop City (I just finished working on a screenplay rewrite of my true crime biopic The Teenage Bodyguard with producer Robert Mitas who has worked with Michael Douglas a lot). I thought that story would be the easiest thing to shoot on my own as my first film of a story I wrote years ago. But to shoot the original itself would be problematic in many ways. So I wrote a prequel and added in some interesting characters and elements. Still, it is a difficult story. But doable. And that's all I needed.

What are those interesting characters and elements? In time you will see.
Hopefully, in very little time.

Research My Life - The Teenage Bodyguard Screenplay

This is odd.

I have searched for over five years now for a real person from my true crime screenplay, The Teenage Bodyguard. A pivotal character. I've searched over the years through my stuff for his last name. I was unsure of the spelling of his first name as he has one of those where the first letter can be one or the other letter.

The Teenage Bodyguard is a true crime biopic from my past about a time when I was 18 when a woman asked me to arm myself and protect her for a week until she could escape the local mafia in Tacoma, WA.

It's an interesting story I am not turning from a drama with thriller elements in it, into a full out thriller with the help of a producer in Hollywood. Today we are having a phone call to begin that process of rewriting and shortening the story into a very sellable and producible project.

This actually leaves me with the current form of my screenplay where one day I may be able to see it produced as the original drama and biopic that it is. Still, it got me to this point to be producing a film I wrote and I certainly have no complaints.

I had wanted to write it as a thriller originally, but I found too many issues from my wanting it to be as 100% accurate as possible. Knowing full well that pursuing a sale of it as a drama would cripple, or at least hamper my ability to sell it.

In the end right now, I would prefer to sell and see produced a film I wrote. I'm still building my name as a screenwriter and film producer. And we all have to start somewhere. As it is now I have just begun production on a film I am directing from my own screenplay titled, "Gumdrop". It is a short horror film based on a short story of my own ("Gumdrop City") published years ago, which was based on a highly disturbing true crime.

Then yesterday, after all this time, I found the correct spelling of his first name in an old HS yearbook. I then found his last name after searching on Classmates.com by putting in his first name and the name of every high school in Tacoma Washington, where I was born.

For all I knew he may even have attended school outside of Tacoma. He had been my best female friend's boyfriend through high school. In my sophomore yearbook, I found my friend's comments which took up half a page. I cannot now remember when we met, or how.

This boyfriend had already graduated. Not unusual at our high school. Many of my male friends were frustrated that most of the girls we wanted to date were already seeing guys out of high school, in college, or in the service. Mostly the Air Force as McChord AFB (and Ft. Lewis Military Training Base are both) is just outside of Tacoma. Both together now known as Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM).

This affected my friends and I to the point that we all swore when we graduated high school we would never date a girl in high school as it was so unfair to guys still IN high school. And we didn't want to be, "those guys" who dated girls still in school. It was something that later affected me in another relationship that lasted through my college years and slightly beyond. But that, is another story.

He, let's call him, Tom (his name in the screenplay, as names have been changed to protect the guilty) was a drug dealer. He was my drug dealer, for a time. A big guy, older than us as I said. We had graduated in 1973. He, in 1970 as I have now discovered. But I wasn't even sure of that for a while.

And then, I hit on a name that was familiar. I've come to believe completely not, that it is him. I've been trying to remember his name for decades really, just for the heck of it. But as he has a pivotal role in my screenplay, it became more important to me for purposes of background for the story. And the curiosity to see what he's up to today.

I know it is him now because of the name of the author of a sci fi book I had read in high school. They had similar last names and this new name I've found fits that. Also, I found ONE photo of him on Facebook and I can see him from back then in his face now. Even though he is much older and a lot heavier now.

My point in bringing this up is this. When I found him on Facebook I reviewed his mostly secured page. But his posts are open. Friends aren't, most photos aren't. Is he paranoid? A holdover perhaps from his drug dealing days in the 70s?

Fears (still?) of the mafia who had been dismantled in the late 70s as detailed in my screenplay? I've heard recent rumors they are still active through the younger generation of those original members. Those original OG types being all dead now.

What I found so interesting is that he is a conservative now (is that where drug dealers go?). And apparently for a long time now. He is also a die-hard Trump supporter. Delusional as they do tend to be. I'm not surprised as I had discovered in researching my screenplay story, that he had used me to block the Tacoma mafia seeking a murder witness he was familiar with, by using me as a cut-out.

He may have rationalized I would be safe. Maybe.

I only realized what he had done once I women I took from where she was staying at his house, to a new location he knew nothing about. There she opened up to me. He hadn't wanted to know where she was going. That seemed very important to them both. And they made that weirdly clear to me.

In these recent times, I became upset with him when I realized it what he had done. I deluded myself into thinking we were friends as we had known one another for years. But it appears it was very one-sided. I was just, a customer. Knowing now that he is a full blown conservative nut, it makes sense.

The next time, a while later, after the week with that women, I looked him up. Probably, I was looking for some weed. But he and his roommate had both moved. Gone. I never saw them again. Well once. I did see him one more time. A year later at the Tacoma Mall. I was walking along and there he was, plain as day. I went up to him and said hi. He reacted oddly, almost a frightened look in his face. He was with a very beautiful, tiny woman holding a baby. His baby. It was his new wife.

We talked briefly, I caught his consternation. I assumed he didn't want me to blow his cover as a previous drug dealer. I assumed he had never told her about it. Now that I reflect back on it, I have to wonder if he was worried not that I might blow his cover, but that I might be pissed off, and blow him away entirely, with a gun. But I was happy to see him in my utter and sheer ignorance. Perhaps that too confused him.

But I'm a gentleman. I was gracious. I let him go and he hurried her away. I thought it odd she didn't get what was going on. But when we are fully ignorant of something like that, why should we notice anything odd? I watched them walk away that day in 1975, and never saw them again. Until Isaw his photo on Facebook.

Overall The Teenage Bodyguard is an interesting story, as is the screenplay I have written. It's not a documentary. It's a fictionalized account of a piece of my life.

One I hope and believe, we will be bringing to the screen in the next year or two. And that I have and will continue to make great strides to achieve.

Just as a caveat, beware researching your past. You never know what you might dredge up.

On the other hand, you may just find that you have a very good motion picture on your hands.

Victim? DPCR - Defensive Passenger Car Riding

This isn't just about being a passenger. More broadly it is about being put in the position of being a victim and then, how you handle that. What do you do when you are trapped in a car with someone attempting to take control away from you?

When you are with someone who is driving and they won't let you out, how do you handle it?

Ask, please? If you're going slow, leap from the car?

The best way may be to distract them so you can grab the keys in the ignition, turn the engine off, extract the keys, possibly throw them out the window or toss them when you exit the car. If you can blind them, perhaps with the extracted keys, you can get the car to stop pretty quickly.

It may be better if possible, to crash the car. At times death is preferable to living through what may be coming. But that takes reading the situation correctly, during a very difficult situation.

The website, crime-safety-security.com suggests:

• Wait and see what happens – then decide what to do.
• Reason with him, if at all possible. [Because odds are it will be a "him".]
• Outsmart him – using Outsmarting strategies. Some of their suggested options are a bit out there, but you do need to think "outside the box". [This is basic martial arts. It is not unlike Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do style of scientific martial arts. Use what works, be smart. Use your capabilities, your environment, your options. SEE your options. Maintain a clear head. Act. But act wisely.]
• Invite him to “a more comfortable place” – one that provides an escape. [decades ago my fiancee found herself in a situation with a guy she thought she could trust. Who I thought we could trust as he was my best friend at the time. A time when I was in basic training 2,200 miles away. Once she realized what was going on, and that she was trapped, in a car by the way, she suggested a motel room, for him to take her to her car, which was at her house so they could both drive there and leave from there. When he got her home, she got out, said thank you, good night, and moved quickly into her parent's house where she was staying until I got out of basic training in the Air Force. She outsmarted him. She was smart, but she was also lucky. [This actually worked for my fiancee years ago by someone we thought to be a friend. She suggested taking her home to get her car and they could go to a motel. Then said goodnight when she got out and went quickly into her parent's home. But it takes being believable to perhaps an unrealistic degree and selling something they want.]
• Initiate violent action – preemptive self-defense – before she’s taken to a secluded place.

Slamming the car in park is good or reverse is good, if the car will allow it or if you can get it to work. Even getting it into neutral may be useful, or downshift can be lit hitting the brakes... but you'd have to hang on to the shifter for dear life. Not the safest option by they way. Should they realize others in the area may notice who can see the car, and they will take serious efforts to stop you.

That is something you want to avoid. Keying them up to be hypervigilant and defensive. You want to take action that permanently stops them and lets them know that hurting you will not help them but will indeed hurt them in some way (be it physically, socially, legally, whatever works that stops them). It's all about believability and excessive reward or punishment. However many times the only thing that will stop them, is disabling them.

Consider that they may not be fully rational in some way or another. You may just have that single moment or specific situation and you need to exploit it.

Mostly physically taking control away from them is always best (e.g., throwing the keys out of the car on a busy highway). Be aware however that some cars, mostly older vehicles, may have a capability of the keys being removed while remaining fully in operation. But those cars today are few and far between anymore.

It may be better to force a crash, than to allow them to remain healthy and intact. You would have the element of surprise if done correctly, giving you the opportunity to brace yourself which they hopefully may not have.

If you have a seat belt on, pulling the steering wheel hard toward you and not letting go, or some degree of that. Faking turning hard one direction and when they apply steering to the other direction, go fully and hard with that, can be a very effective technique.

Basically, it's whatever works, just do it. But be prepared to reverse it in order to surprise them and take control. But once you grab the wheel, don't let go... literally to save your life. You may have to ask yourself which is better, going with them, or taking a chance on dying. Once you apply something to change the direction of the situation to your direction, hang on and even if they beat you, don't let go.

Carrying pepper spray? Not a bad idea either. On that matter, whatever you do carry, and I've said this for years about the foolish who practice "open carry" of firearms...if you show it they know you have it and you lose one element of surprise, power or control. If I know you have it. I can take it from you. Yes, at times the directed display of a gun can end the potential for a situation. But showing it to all. Is just stupid.

Guns are about security (as are other protective devices). Security has several levels.

Security by obscurity. Security by obfuscation. If say, you have a safe, if no one knows you have it, how can they rob it? Or if you have a safe, and they know you have it, but can't find it, or you slow them down until police can arrive, you again have them at odds. Security is frequently about those two things. As well it is about time.

Nothing is 100% secure and mostly security is about slowing down access until it is too costly in some way making it untenable. Either because of time or their own issues of security in committing a crime. You have to make the object of their desire too expensive for them to go all the way to the end of their attempts against you.

And so it is much in the same for weapons and defensive tools. Their surprise at your suddenly using some device (pepper spray, gun, martial arts, etc.) on them, gives you one more level of control. The element of surprise and their inability to not be prepared to protect themselves from something they didn't even know they were about to get presented with.

If you are put in the trunk, if you have your cell, well, call someone. If you can, pull the tail or brake lights, wave through the tail light lens or if possible, break it out (quietly). If you can stick your hand out the tail light, that is a pretty good indication that someone has been kidnapped. newer cars have anti trapped in trunk release devices. If they are smart and prepared they will have disabled it, but it's worth it to verify that first.

But that is getting pretty deep into this situation. The best defenses are to be aware before it happens. As far as when it is happening, visualizing it far before the situation helps you be able to think clearly when it is happening and then to be better able to act on your best possible exit or end to the situation.

Once you get to a certain point, however, in waiting too long, you have given up one potential opportunity after another until finally, it may simple be too late. That is a situation you want desperately to avoid. Tough at times there may be no choice.

It depends on if this was carefully planned or a chance event, a crime of opportunity without aforethought. Not something you run into with serial killers or offenders. But you don't know that in the beginning. And that is part of the problem. Part of the reason criminals have an edge over citizens. YOU don't know you are being involved in a crime until it's too late. At least that is their desire in how they present things to you and set it up.

But even then you have the potential for survival.


One clear and painful example is Alison Botha, who was a twenty-seven year old from South Africa. She made a documentary film about it titled, Alison.

She had been abducted, raped and left for dead by two men.

Alison Botha, right, with Christia Visser, who plays Botha in the film version of her ordeal 

One of the men stabbed her in the throat so badly her head later flopped back when she tried to rise and she literally had to hold it up to be able to seek help from the location where they had left her for dead.

Alison was stabbed more thirty times in the abdomen. Had she just lied there, she would surely have died. But she first tried to move, to find help. She really had no other course to follow if she wanted to live. Through her own massive efforts in moving to a better location, she was found.

In the end, she survived. It is a lesson for us all.

Never. Give. Up.

Orlando's Pulse Massacre - Just Whose Thoughts Led to the Killings? Slabbies?

CNN news headline June 12, 2016: "A gay nightclub here was the scene early Sunday of the worst terror attack in U.S. history since 9/11." Omar Mateen of Ft. Pierce, Florida in a hate crime, murdered many people he didn't even know, all out of stupidity, of foolish beliefs, of disgust at what was unfamiliar to him and undesirable. As if he had any right to act on another's life. Washington Post reported on what the killer's wife had to say about him and her experiences with him.

My heart goes out to those killed or damaged in the massacre this morning at the Orlando night club, Pulse. However my mind and an intense sense of justice reaches out to all those who would wish to, or to do harm to others all because of their own delusional belief system. Be they themselves delusional or insane, or a miscreant jihadi following their misguided path. A path never laid down by their belief in their sense of a small, destructive prophet (little "p"), rather than a great Prophet professing a sense of positive worth and community among all people of the world.

Or be they one of our own nationalist bigots or their leaders, including their semi knowledgeable fool led by his jesters and running for office as yet another, albeit even worse example of a Republican president, all while we are seeing what that can lead to if allowed to propagate unchecked.

These death throes of stupid belief systems are always painful for those foolishly continuing to believe well beyond their usefulness. As well as for all those others of us who have to suffer their extended continuance and eventual demise along with them and theirs until they have once and for all been cauterized and sloughed off from the flesh of all humanity.

If all the weapons used in the Pulse killings were illegal, would this still have happened? Surely it could still happen at times and in places but far fewer I'm sure. Which really proves that case. But it's beside the point.

We might see more bombs being used then (and more bombers blowing themselves up accidentally at home). Or as in recent Asian cases in past years, knives or hatchets could be used instead. Some people originally thought seat belts were a government plot, but they saved lives. Maybe we shouldn't have more than bolt action rifles if we have to have guns. Whatever the solution, it is not in doing nothing. It is in doing something. Many somethings.

This is not about just Islam. This is not about just religion. This is not about bigotry. This is not just about mental health issues. It is about us, in general, people in general. It is about our culpability in allowing people to continue to think deffectively, to follow old, outdated beliefs, to act on ancient rights when they affect others especially in a negative fashion.

We have not taken up the call to see that everyone has healthcare as a right and mental healthcare even more so. Rather than demand these as our most important rights, we have allowed the issue to be subverted to where the concern about our most important right, the right of freedom, has become concern over the right to own and bear arms.

We have continued to give a wink and a nod to religion in general for far too long. We have allowed people questioning science over religion and people in power or in wont of power to lie in public and get away with it. We have allowed too many to push negative agendas on our country and others. We, have allowed.

All any of this means is that this is more about an attitude we need to change. Attitudes about people, about weapons, about fellow citizens, about fellow humans. Attitudes about the real, and not the unreal, or the unreal that appears as real to some.

There is no reason women cannot wear what they like or even walk around naked for that matter and not have to fear rape or abuse. There is no reason we cannot all have guns and yet not experience mass shootings. Though some common sense controls are reasonable and conscionable.

It is our national as well as overall international attitudes about certain things that needs to be changed. Not just possession or potential possession of implements of destruction. We need to grow up, we need to force those others to grow up, to stop acting like their ancients all now long dead along with their beliefs, which should in many cases have died along with them. Some of us need to stop thinking that destruction is good, that nihilism is God, that self is all important.

Any belief system that is found to be anti human needs to be dealt with. Bringing in beliefs from otherworldly issues into the physical realm that lead to negative actions against others, needs to be dealt with. I don't really have a problem with religion, other than I find it sad people cannot find a more up to date way to see the universe and live their lives. However we need to monitor and address religion or any belief system that starts to skew in a way that is against humanity.

If we cannot eradicate religious type belief from the world, we can at least try to control them. It could itself at least try to control itself enough to allow it to be a productive and beneficial force in the world, rather than ever have the opposite effects, ever again. If it were a true and proper thing.

We need to cry out openly against idiocies such as how we don't need to worry about the human or even non human elements of climate change merely because some believe that God will fix it all. Or how we should kill now for belief in issues of an afterlife later. We need to stop giving an open card to those who believe in nonsense.

Believe in your religion, just keep it to yourself, or at very least, do not use it to affect other's who do not see life as you do. Give them the good grace they give you in allowing you the freedom to practice your religion, as long as you keep it in your own garden. Just keep it out of ours, unless we invite you in.

But as I said, this isn't so much about religion as someone who was mentally unbalanced. Did religion lead him there so he could step out of its bounds into what it doesn't teach. Or does? It doesn't matter, really.

When conservatism or fundamentalism becomes reductionistic to a point that it goes backwards, it leads only and ever to the negative and destructive. If we are to have prejudice, it should be against those thoughts that lead people to their negative prejudices and destructive actions. We need to act over all in a way more productive than those who do so against us. Those on the sidelines too need to see and act.

Until that happens, we will continue to see life exemplified in this fashion, with guns, with bombs, with knives and with killings for the stupidest of reasons, with bigotry, ignorance and disgust, with the salaciousness of one's mind seen as a positive thing, rather than with a spirit of humanity and community, as it should be.

Freedom.

I keep hearing this from conservatives. It's all about freedom. Cuz we're 'Merikans! Obviously they do not understand freedom and how government is involved with protecting that and us.

What is freedom and how do we judge when to pull back from it? Total security is no freedom, total freedom is no security. It's a balance.

It is when human lives are too valuable to throw away on the pile of lives given to "freedom".

Did we lose the "right" to freedom in having no seat belts in our cars in order to save our lives? Anyone who has been in even a minor accident and whose life or limbs were saved by a seat belt has no qualms about the seat belt laws.

When we finally find that a "freedom" is too costly for us, that is when we pull back and therein find our level of freedom and balance with protection by our government. Government who really is in the end, us.

It is time we pull back here and now, too. Yes we also need to pay better attention and funding to mental health and inter agency communication to catch people like the Orlando shooter, but also have the laws to keep guns out of the hands of people like him. This evisceration of funding by so called conservatives for our mental health facilities is criminal, too.

The argument that we have a need for firearms to protect citizens from our government is really past. And quite foolish. Childish even in it's understanding of reality.

It's time for the adults we have put in place to govern and protect us to do their job and not just be shills of the NRA and corporations in their pursuits of the filthy lucre over that of human lives.

This is where all lives matter. Black, white, or all others; be they Gay, straight, Muslim or Christian, or all others. Here and in the final justification...Americans, and Human Beings.

Americans, over that of failed conservative ideologies toward money and killing machines.

Addendum, June 15, 2016:

I got up this morning considering the word, "Terrorist" and wondering, is this what we're seeing today? Now that I think about it, I've mentioned this before, in fact I think I've written entire blogs about this. I just looked and since I started this blog in 2010 I have, out of over 1,200+ blog articles, 83 on terrorism with more than a few mentioning this.

Should we use the word terrorist?
I mean, are YOU terrorized? I'm not.
i'm pissed off at how every cowardly little reprobate nobody loser can achieve fame and go out in their own perceived blaze of glory rushing toward their 72 grapes in a kind of Twilight Zone Muslim heaven (small "h" like in my book, Death of heaven, which frankly, fits their stupid childish beliefs in all this and is kind of the point of my book in the first place).

"Pissorist" maybe would be a more appropriate term as I'm only pissed off at cowards who indiscriminately kill people who have no bearing on anything related to any cause that might be claims as a reason for murder, and other than hatred.

But these aren't really Haterists. They conflate themselves and their cause and so want us to use terrorist.

That was when, in looking up the etymology of the word terrorist today, I found this article from after Charlie Hebdo...the author doesn't give us a proper alternative but nearly anything would be better than what we are in my view, incorrectly using now and to the murderer's benefit, to our detriment and to the benefit of the media in drawing our attention and making a buck on it (as always).

They are learning too, but all too slowly. Like the dumb person in the room. slowly coming to realize there are better ways to interact in social situations (like these cowardly murderers), Better ways to be a servant of the people, as they are and need to recognize they should be, rather than merely a subject of their masters in the board room and their own unrecognized ignoble lust for notoriety.

How about just, Snarky Little Bitches with Weapons?
SLBwWs,
SLaBwuhs.
Or just for short, SLaBs, for where they belong, dead, on a slab.
Of course I'd prefer to get them the mental health help they need before they decide to join that bitchy little Daesh organization. (and no offense meant to actual bitches here, sorry ya'll).
But I think I'm onto something. Stop labeling them as what they are going to or are doing and start labeling them for where they'll end up.
On a slab, so, slabbies. Something really uncool sounding, yes?

"Terrorist" as someone pointed out to me, is a term from the government. I'll be needing to talk to President Obama about this. Still, the media can call them whatever they want and they have even mentioned this before themselves. But they use what affects us the most and that is, terrorism.
Still, I say we call them "slabbies" from here on....

I am...a Murderer

I am a murderer. It dawned on me the other day. Murderer.

It's my fault and that makes it thus: I murdered. Kind of by definition.

First let me say when I was younger, I used to blame other people, other things for my difficulties in life. Mostly my parents. And rightly so, as they really screwed things up, and me. But they also gave me things, like genetics and an orientation in life to survive, to succeed. Mostly though I owe my Grandmother, my mother's mother. But still, I moved out of my parent's house (mother and not very well liked step-father from since I was five, in either direction) at seventeen with a chip on my shoulder. Eventually I joined the USAF at twenty. Life was going no where for me and I thought this might turn things around. It did in a way, it didn't, in another way.

Eventually though after the military, during my University years toward getting a degree in Psychology and while working things out with my primary Psych Professor and Adviser, I came to realize that I needed to take responsibility for myself. Actually it was that Prof. who shoved that one down my throat until I finally understood and began to get it. Finally I realized that after I moved out of my parent's house, whatever was wrong or right with me became fully my own responsibility, to blame or to praise. And that was perhaps the biggest revelation in my life. It turned my life around. Failures started to turn into successes. Though I'll have to admit a nod to my mother and her mother for my persistence is surviving nearly anything. A troubled childhood, a difficult adolescence, a difficult decade in my twenties that didn't really stop there. Why? Because the paradigm I had grown up with, was faulty. But that is another story for another time.

So what's this about murder?

My first wife and I ended it on good terms. I was in the end, probably just too young to get married at twenty years of age. But that was only the beginning.

See, I have married three and a half times so far, in my life.

My second (non-wife as we were together long enough at around six years, but we never married) went through our college years with me, before and for a little while after. But that was just never to be in the end. I seem to find relationships end at seminal moments. Like when I got out of the USAF. And when my University years were over. Then things changed.

Divorcing the first time had traumatized me and I never wanted to do that to another. Regardless of whose fault it was. That first time had been my desire to marry and later my desire to divorce since it had just stopped working. It wasn't my fault, it wasn't her fault, it was our fault. But my second long term relationship was doomed to failure.

My (legally) second wife said she had really wanted me from the start, no matter what, from the time she first saw me, she later said she was going to have me. I on the other hand, wasn't interested. Not so much because of her, but because I had recently been run through the wringer after my University years and the preceding military years and by this time I had really had it with romantic relationships.

From the TV show, "Elementary", words spoken by the modern times, Sherlock Holmes character:

"I've lived most of my life with the firm conviction that romantic love is a delusion. It's a futile hedge against the existential terror that is our own singularity."

He then goes on to say that he then went on to meet a woman he fell in love with, who turned out to be, a criminal, the modern day, Moriarty. To which he said he now feels, liberated on the topic.

So I was taking a break when my second wife found me. Still, she put her mind to getting me in any way she could. And testament to perseverance and desire, she got me.

My third wife, loved me a lot. I loved her a lot. But in the end, she loves herself more than anyone. Still, in her universe, I had murdered...us.

See I didn't live up to her expectations of me. I didn't fulfill the concept, of who she thought I was. I broke her view of who I seemed to be and so in the end, I killed that view she held of me. It wasn't very long after, that the marriage ended, and well, I had murdered it.

I murdered it for my last wife, my next to the last wife, my unwife (the point five wife, as we had lived together a long enough for common law though we don't have that in Washington state, but I figured she earned, deserved, at least a half listing as a wife).

But still, I am a murderer.

I murdered my marriages. I murdered another's self delusions and misinterpretations of who I was. Who I was supposed to be, to them. Who they needed me to be. Was that their fault? Was it mine? Was it my responsibility to live up to who they expected me to be, even if I didn't fully know, or realize who that person was? Maybe.

Because when you take on another person as your responsibility, and when you marry, you are, isn't it at least somewhat your responsibility too? Isn't that the reason to be really damn sure of what you are getting into when you marry? Maybe that is why so many are choosing now a days not to marry but to simply live together.

So in a way I had murdered. I had murdered multiple times, multiple relationships.

Perhaps if I had known more fully who I was but more importantly almost, who others perceived me to be, and specifically who I was perceived to be by the women in my life, perhaps then I could say that I was responsible and had lived up to those expectations.

Because mostly, and this is the weird part, I was who those women thought I was. But not in the way they thought I was. Mostly from what I could later deduce, they saw things, saw me, in black and white. And I see things in various shades of grey.

My last wife actually stated it in those words, saying: "Life IS black and white." to which I responded, "No, no it isn't. Life is various shades of grey. Life is complicated. It's easier to live life as if it were black and white, but that is missing so much of what is going on. It is missing making the best decisions possible. It is setting yourself up for failure in the future. It is a temporary fix seeing things as black and white, an easy effort to come to a quick conclusion for something that may work for now, but in the future will turn on you and ruin your plans."

Okay, I didn't say all that. I just said I disagreed and that I saw things as various shades of grey.

My point?

I have been taking time off from relationships for a while. Trying to see who I was, what I was doing. So that next time, if there is a next time, I will chose more correctly. I will have more to bring to the relationship rather than needing someone to "complete me". One of the stupidest things to think a relationship will do for you. First, you need to bring a whole person to the relationship, to add to it, not take away from it to "complete you". That, is just a drain on the relationship doomed to failure.

Next time I decide to enter into a relationship, I will take my time on who I choose to spend my time with and who I allow to spend their time with me so as not to waste their valuable life time. Because their decision is in part my decision too. I will use a different set of criteria for making these decisions. I will give more weight to what they need and if they are looking for me to "complete them". Because if they are, I'm running the other way.

Actually, I will politely beg off and walk away with my (and their) dignity still attached.

And because, I don't want to be a murderer anymore.

Life is not TV, not even Reality TV. One shot one kill? Good luck with that.On the other hand....

Here is an interesting article: Enter the ‘Stopping Power’ Debate: 5x ‘one shot’ did not ‘stop’. It links to an FBI report: "EPIC - Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) Project FOIA Request". I collect these things from a writer's perspective because I want my fiction to be accurate. But what you learn in knowing these kinds of things, translates quite directly to your personal life.

I've always kept in my mind when writing fiction or in life for that matter, that when you expect someone to die they don't, just won't. And when you don't want them to die, they generally do. Even if it's not true, it's an effective way to think. And it always makes for a more interesting story.

If ever you shoot someone in trying to kill them, in realty you may very well find that they just won't die. You have to be very focused to make that happen and have even a little luck sometimes. Now if you spray someone with machine gun fire, you'll probably kill them. But that's not quite what we're talking about here.

On the other hand, if you get, let's say, in a bar fight, one blow and the sucker could drop dead either from the strike, the fall, or any number of things. He could have had a brain aneurysm and was going to die in a day or so anyway, but now you could be up on charges for murder.

Stop me if I've told you this one before.

I once was visiting a new bar in Kent, Washington with my (now ex) wife and one of her her girlfriends. We lived in a nice little community east of Kent called, Covington. But this one night we were checking out a bar that had darts in Kent, which had always been known for it's troubled communities. As with most places, it has good areas and bad. This wasn't a bad area.

Let me just say, I don't see myself as a "tough guy". Though people have moved out of my way walking down the street before, maybe because being 6'2" and 200 pounds gives you some perspective in walking through a crowd. Whatever it is, I'd call myself a coward simply repressed by notions of Ethical behavior and just Good Manners.

Anyway, after about half an hour at this bar I got up to go to the rest room. Then when I closed to rest room door I noticed two drunk jailbirds had walked over to our table and were talking to my wife and her friend. Not wanting to be rude, or jealous, I walked up and stood there for a minute, listening to the girls cut these guys up verbally pretty and wondered why they were taking it. It didn't take long to realize the ladies didn't want these guys bugging them. But the two of them were having so much fun chewing these guys up with cuts and slams to their egos, I wasn't quite sure what to do. Rule number one is acquire enough information to react appropriately. Too many jerks react first then get the info, but by then it's too late if they're wrong and possibly they could wind up being the bad guy.

On the one hand, if I jumped in and started telling these guys to get lost, I might provoke them, and also provoke the girls. "Hey, we were having fun tearing those two idiots apart and they asked for it." Okay, then. So on the other hand, if I just stood there, well, so I just stood there. I wanted to see where this was headed anyway. Till I got tired standing around and wanted to sit down.

So, I tried to sit down. But I couldn't sit down because one of the guy's was in the way. I moved my chair and oh God, I bumped him. He bristled and looked hard at me. I looked back at him, then at my chair, then back at him and said, like I was a little confused, "This, is my chair, I just want to sit down." He stared at me, then realization hit his eyes and he suddenly was almost nice and said, "Sorry". I sat down and they continued.

Pretty quickly though it turned into harassment and it was obvious this wasn't going to end well. I worked at the University of Washington back then and I regularly played racquetball and worked out at the same UW gym that the Husky football team used. They had great weight sets there. But I can handle my own pretty well. Not that I want to, I just wanted a beer and to play darts. With two very attractive ladies. One who was mine to get all romantic over, and these two guys were basically "damaging my calm".

So I started to get more involved. Now all five of us were saying things, one at a time, it wasn't like it had degenerated yet into a full out melee. Through the course of our interaction it became clear that they were blue collar jailbird types when one guy said, "I know all the guards at King County Jail really well", from having been incarcerated there multiple times, which he then made clear. It became apparent they were pushing for a fight because I had two very attractive women with me (my wife and her friend) and they had none. And understandably so.

Through our "talk" I tried to diffuse the situation. I've always been very good at that Though I wasn't too worried, nor was my wife. Who, even with her knee in a cast from a horse training accident, she would have joined in being the cowgirl she was at twenty-two. But she knew I'd started martial arts in grade school and was carrying a handgun that night (which I've never used, only shown a few times in my lifetime and never had to pull out.

I've always been a believer that if you pull it you have to be ready to use it, in fact, only pull if it you will use it. Intent is telegraphed to the assailant and maybe then, you won't have to shoot. It's honestly been useful in just knowing that there was a backup available just in case I needed it and, if I thought I was being abused to the point of dying, I had an equalizer.

But I also always believed that I should never pull it out unless it was to equalize the situation, or take control if need be. I've found many times in my lifetime that it is better for me to be in control than other's around me. That being said, a few times I've just kept my mouth shut because I thought someone else was actually handling the situation as well or better than I would. It's not about ego, it's about achieving the mission, peace, in the end.

Getting back to the bar, at one point one guy looks at me and says, "What do you have against a friendly bar fight?" Really. "Friendly"-- bar fight. So I asked him.

"Do you realize how easy it is to kill someone? One misplaced punch, one slip on the floor, accidentally hitting your head on something hard, the bar, the floor, a chair, and it's very easy to just accidentally kill someone in a "friendly" bar fight. So I simply choose to not be involved in bar fights if at all possible. I came out here tonight to have some fun, relax. Ending the night with someone possibly severely damaged is not my idea of a good time."

Obviously, I didn't tell him the other half of that way of thinking. That being that it can also be very hard to kill someone. That flashed through my mind at the time, but I had more imminent matters at hand. I also didn't give him my usual spiel as I wasn't trying to humiliate him or make things worse. That was, if someone can push me into a fight, I'm going to try to kill them as quickly as possible. If that's what they are into, let's do it. It's really hard to make me angry and if someone can achieve that, maybe the deserve whatever comes next.

Believe it or not, I've had that statement end a few bar and street fights before they got started. Look, I'm not into fighting for fun so I figure if you're dumb enough to push me into it, we're going to make the papers.

So anyway, oddly enough he actually thought about what I told them, for a moment. Then he nodded and said, "Yeah, you're right, I see your point." Which both surprised and confused me.

Then the two of them just-- walked away.

Amazing. I had actually convinced them that a "friendly" bar fight as they had put it, could be a very dangerous thing and rather than having a good punch out, you could end up in jail for life for murder, or at least charged with manslaughter.  I really had thought this fight was going to happen no matter what. It had just had that feeling at first.

Either way, it wasn't my idea of how to end a pleasant evening. But I had somehow diffused the situation. I'll admit, I'm pretty sure about half of this kind of thing is in the delivery and timing. I mean, if ten people were in my place and all said the same exact words, I'm pretty sure a fight would have happened anyway for some.

On a side note, two months later we returned. Hey, as it was a really nice bar and had lots of good electronic dart boards, a game which I'm pretty good at. This time my wife and I were there with different girlfriend of hers (also quite attractive) and of course the same two drunks were there and lucky us, they recognized us almost as soon as we sat down.

Once we noticed them, we almost turned around and left. But we thought, "Naw, it couldn't happen twice in a row. What are the odds we'd run into them, and what then are the odds they'd be drunk and in the same frame of mind, again." Well, as it turned out (and perhaps yes, we should have known), the odds were pretty good.

Needless to say sadly, that was the last night we went there. But first we had to deal with it all over again. More interesting end this time though. Once they finally got tired of harassing us (yes, I can't believe I talked my way out of a fight with the same guys twice), they wandered over to the bar to pick a fight with some poor cute girl at the bar. Not happy about it I was about to wander over there when suddenly, a rather staunch lesbian stepped in who had just entered with her own girlfriend. She was bigger than the girl, barely smaller than the guys.

She got right in their faces and barked out, "Pick on someone your own size. You want a fight, go for it! Here I am." The poor girl in question was shrinking and the female bartender was just stunned like a dear in headlights. At that point though I was ready to help her out if needed since I had already been unwillingly enlisted in this stupid "fight club". Though I suspected she really might not need my help and might even resent it. I've been in that situation before. Where a woman was going to fight some guys and I stopped it and to this day, twenty five years later, she still resents my stepping in at her house party.

But the guys just backed down and walked off. So yes, I have to assume now that they might have been harmless. But you don't know that at first (or second?). And a bar fight can very easily go very wrong though many people just don't realize it. It's not that hard to break a jaw, or worse.

Had I taken him out back and set out to kill him, yes it's quite possible I could have beaten and shot him and yet he may have survived. After all, Destiny doesn't always grace us with our desires and it's part and parcel of what makes life so... interesting. Don't you think? I'm no Rambo. I mind my own business and I try not to hurt anyone, but if pushed I'll walk that path to where ever it takes me.

People just don't always die as expected. Consider the film, Blood Simple. Or Blue Velvet as interesting examples of characters who didn't die as expected and added so much to the color of those films or in the former example, structured the entire storyline. Those kinds of deaths really happen. Life isn't what you see on TV. One blow doesn't usually knock someone out. One shot does not usually kill someone. Sometimes in a "friendly bar fight" someone does die, and not usually people can have lifelong issues stemming from that fight.

In Blue Velvet a bad cop is shot in the head and killed, yet continued to just stand there alive but brain dead. Sure, brain dead is good enough but the point is still valid. What you expect isn't always what happens. It's much, much easier simply not to try to kill someone, but if you do want to kill them, you have to try very hard and be very accurate in your attempt. When you're in war, there is a lot of spraying bullets and blowing things up. But one on one, it's an entirely different matter.

The concept of one shot one kill is mostly for snipers and professionals who also have this problem but are more skilled at raising the odds in their favor. Still, when a typical individual tries to kill, or perhaps even means not to, it's just not unusual for the object of their intentions to escape them. Life is real and it's good to know the real from the fiction.

And like I said, it always makes for a more interesting story.

Dead men walking

I've been conflicted about this for a while. But I think I found a way that works for me.

Should we have the death penalty or not? Sure, why not. Why? Because some people should be destroyed off the face of the earth. But, I bet within the United States, there may only be one or two of those, if that, every year. 

I've confused people most of my life. I don't believe in killing people for much of any reason. I do think you have the right to kill someone trying to kill you, however. I mean, it's one for one, right? And they are trying to kill you, you have the right to stop them. You should try not to kill them but stop them, but hey, sometimes                 passion just gets the better of you. But then if they started it they asked for it. 

Okay, but for the most part we shouldn't be killing people. (War is bad says Subliminal Man). 

If several people are trying to kill you, really you shouldn't be trying to kill a bunch of people to save yourself. Yet then again, if they are choosing to try to kill you and you are better at it than they are, who's to say that you shouldn't, as some would say, use your God given talents at their utmost to save your skin? 

Right?

So fine. What about State sponsored killing, like Capital Punishment, the Death Penalty? When I was first in college in my first Philosophy class, our Prof. brought this up one day as a learning experience. I said I thought it was okay for the State to have the death penalty. But he pointed out (many things I won't go into here) that it is basically State sponsored murdered and a Government should never kill it's people to whom it serves. It's just ethically wrong.

Okay then, maybe he had a point. And so I passed that class, I graduated, years passed and here we are.

Now we have Florida who has been letting go like one in three prisoners on death row because they have found that in all the time since their trial and verdict, they were actually innocent as proven by various things like DNA and confessions. Or Texas who are about to celebrate their 500th execution as of mid June 2013, next week. 

The Colorado Governor just interceded to keep the death penalty live in their state, while signing an order so as not to be responsible for any executions during the rest of his term as Governor. He upholds the death penalty but doesn't want anything to do with it, himself.

So, where does that leave us? Well, I know where it leaves me, because I have an idea. 

Go ahead, keep the death penalty. But let's do this, make it possible only if and when the Governor him (or her) self actually goes to the room execution chamber, and personally executes the prisoner. 

Why? Because what we seem to have here is too many people not caring or thinking deeply enough about the situation and so they just let it continue on. Much like with Right Wing Conservatives who are staunchly against the LGBT community or Gay marriage, they are all against it until it turns out to be their son, or daughter, or someone close to them. Then it is fully and finally brought home to them, it becomes personal and so they tend to turn away from their beliefs and change their mind, altering their original position to one of agreeing with say, Gay marriage. 

The death penalty is a very similar and strange animal. The problem is that people seem to be too divorced from it to make a fully qualified decision. So let's make it personal. If someone is really so bad that they have to be executed by the state, then let the highest authority in that state carry out the execution, personally. I think it might only take one execution for one to come to realize that this is a bad thing. It is cruel and unusual punishment to hold someone for years, and then on a day set very much previously, to take that individual knowingly and murder them.

But what about their victims, you say? So we should become like them, and kill them? Besides, isn't life in jail far worse than death? 

Here's the thing. If you have someone that is a seriously deranged serial murderer, someone truly and wholly evil, then I do think that they should be destroyed. But even they could possibly be saved, make a turn around at some point. Still, I'll grant you it's very possible or even likely, that there are people like that who do need to be not only removed from society and imprisoned, but removed from life itself. I'm also willing to recognize that these types of people are very few and far between. 

Even so, we really need to stop killing people as a nation, both internally and more so yet, externally. War is bad, necessary on occasion, but far too many times we have been illegitimately pulled into it. And too many times we have killed too many innocents in the strife and fog of war. But so too have we killed innocent people through the death penalty. If Florida is accurate in releasing people who are innocent at so high a rate as reported, a third, then how many other states have killed how many innocent people over the years? 

I would argue that if we kill even one innocent person it is one too many and we need to stop. One innocent life is more important than all of the guilty lives we could execute. After all, one thing that Time does really well is release information, it loosen lips, allows knowledge to rise to the surface of the social conscience. 

For those who are truly dangerous and evil, I really wouldn't have trouble executing them. And I don't think many who hold a position of power would. But if it were someone who had a moment of anger, who had grown up with a chip on their shoulder and just need to be locked up, then they might just have a problem. If for no other reason than that, we have to consider that old adage, "There but for the grace of God, go I."

Yes some of those on death row are real bastards I'm sure, and have caused a lot of people a lot of grief. But when you also take into consideration those who have to handle these people on a daily basis, those who have to deal with them leading up to their death and those who have to actually execute them on their day of atonement, we have to consider, why would we want to do THAT to our own citizens, either?

I once heard that considering how expensive it is through trials and appeals and so on it is really cheaper to keep a prisoner for life in prison, than execute him. Which surprised me because I would think, you flip a switch, inject to fluid, bingo, money saved. But not really and certainly not assured. And so too there are non-monetary costs we should take into account. 

I'll say it clearly, if someone is trying to kill me (especially if I don't deserve it, which is another matter entirely), I will have no problem killing them instead. Once I know there is nothing left for me to do but kill them, I'm 100% behind the idea. Of course, getting to that realization is what typically gets good people killed and gives the bad guys the edge in being able to more easily kill some unsuspecting victim. They don't have to consider, they just act. They kill. They have the element of surprise. They are murderers and cowards.

However, once you start talking about my Government killing American citizens, I have a serious issue with  it. I have a problem with them killing non-Americans too, but on a list, Americans are definitely on top for who NOT to kill. Consider for a moment that ultimate rule of empathy, "what if one day I'M in that situation, and worse, what if I'm INNOCENT?"

This country needs to start advancing again. We need to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps (we've done it before) and get our act together. We need to get smarter, deeper, funnier, happier, more benevolent and stronger. And Strong, does not mean you kill people. It is after all, harder not to.

I've always said that I always try never to lie, because it makes you smarter as you have to think your way around things. Any idiot can lie, just say the opposite of truth. But try finding a way, any way but lying and it's not so easy. Is it. Probably why so many people lie so much. Telling the truth also sets up a kind of Karma for you as people start to realize you are an honest and loyal type, dependable at least in your word.

America needs to find the high ground again and live it. Inflate our mind, body and spirits and not just inflate our egos and pride as we have done for far too long and far too much in recent decades. We are a great nation and a great people. And we can be more so. If we just have a mind to.

We just need to start looking more closely at the things we do, to be more honest with ourselves, more open, more rational. 

Killing our own citizens, just isn't one of those things that will put us on that road upward and into the future with grand prospects. Because if we don't make some changes like these, we can only have more to look forward to of the same. More and more right wing nutzo propaganda, more ridiculous religious fervor, more partisan patronizing, more stopping intellectual progress, more, more, more...but not of the things we need more of. 

For one, we don't need more dead men walking....

Mass killings: Prayer fixes all? Probably not.

Mass killings are horrible. Especially when children are involved.

But let's look at another thing briefly, so is war. This has been happening to those parents in war zones. It's currently going on. Children are dying around the world, not just in America. We are not that special; children are. So if you don't like your kids being killed, or American kids being killed, think about those parents around the world whose children are dead and dying because of war; because of Syrian's bombs, Palestinian's, Israeli's, and American's bombs.

Now about American mass murderers....

We NEED GUN CONTROL! Right? That will fix everything. It will keep guns out of the hands of  murderers and criminals! Right?

Well, not exactly.

We have guns. That's just how it is. We should look at gun control some, but it's not a solution. The guns aren't killing people. You've heard this before: People, are killing people. Did you know that in Switzerland every other citizen owns a gun and their murder rates with guns are extremely low. In 2002 Swiss murders by firearms, 67, in America that year, 9369. So, it's not just about firearms existing. Something about the people, their attitude, is different.

I've helped teach hunter's safety courses before. I own guns. But I've always wondered, how come you need training and testing to get a drivers license, but not to get a gun? How is it you can study and pass a driver's test and then you get to drive around a 2,000 lb killing machine, but you can buy a gun and in zero to three days or a week, put a comparable concept of a 2,000 lbs killing machine in your pocket and carry it around.

Then if and whenever you choose, you can expose it and spew out death repeatedly and quickly. And according to the New York Times, the average weight of an American car now is 4,000 pounds. Likewise, the assault rifle is becoming more common around America, yet the handgun kills more than anything else, and daily on the streets of cities like New York and Chicago and others. So in a way, assault rifles have gotten a bad rep through a few horrific incidences.

Yet acquiring a gun requires absolutely no accountability, no training, no conscientious building of skill or respect to own one?

Consider in this latest mass murder in Connecticut, how could gun control have stopped this? The killer didn't even own a gun but had three which he took from his mother, after first killing her. That went right around gun control, effectively, making it useless; in fact, a moot point.

Gun control and politics are not the answer. The issue is much bigger than that. But no one wants to face it. But I'm going to face it here and now, for you.

From Masculinity and Mass Violence The ‘Intimate Enemy’ We Refuse to Name, By ELIZABETH DRESCHER:

"Race and religion are certainly root similarities among Timothy McVeigh, Jared Loughner, Anders Breivik, James Holmes, Wade Michael Page, and Thomas Caffall—all white, all Christian."

Someone on my FB page the other day said that the whole problem is not enough prayer. Really? How many times has prayer kept a murderer from killing? Very, VERY seldom. Frequently, I would suspect, it gets you laughed at, just before they kill you.

From What’s the common denominator for mass murderers? White, Male, Christian, or Crazy: answer may surprise you:

"Prayer has nothing to do with fixing this. After all, many killers have religious, even more so, strict religious roots. From an article, Drescher’s [see quote/URL at top] conclusion is: “by and large the common denominator in mass killing is gender; the intimate enemy [the killer] is almost always a man. Drescher rightly points out that a major player in the hegemony of the masculine is religion, which in the case of American Society means ”

And this:

“We cannot begin to address the culture of violence that is literally exploding all around us without acknowledging that “manning up” in American culture too often involves actions aimed at the subordination of others—women, children, nature—to the will of a man who, it is assumed, embodies the will of God. These often religiously informed, institutionalized, and naturalized versions of masculinity play no small part in the continuum of violence that moves from the domestic sphere to the public arena.

"As gender scholar Raewyn Connell has noted: “There are many causes of violence, including dispossession, poverty, greed, nationalism, racism, and other forms of inequality, bigotry and desire. Gender dynamics are by no means the whole story. Yet given the concentration of weapons and the practices of violence among men, gender patterns appear to be strategic. Masculinities are the forms in which many dynamics of violence take shape.”

Interesting, right?

So what is needed? Less strict religious upbringings, perhaps less prayer, not more, is needed. More attention to raising children to grow up as adults with reasonable self control and reasonable self discipline, positive masculine attitudes for boys and positive self image for both boys and girls.

I would like to say one thing about the President's comments this weekend in using the power of his office to "do something". Pres. Bush, after 9/11, wanted to "do something". So we went to warn with Iraq, an inappropriate reaction to an action by terrorists whom he was actually at odds with. I don't know what the President has in mind at this time, I doubt even he does at this time, but I do hope whatever action he takes, it is appropriate to the situation. Because the office of the President these past ten years or so, and our government in general, hasn't so much been appropriate, in their actions.

Like with "cutting" and "self abuse" behaviors, we have been raising our kids not to have outlets, so they internalize, self abuse. Then when they get tired of abusing themselves, they may lash out. When they lash out, be careful. You may be next.

We have learned not to raise our kids as our parents raised us. How to cut off certain behaviors  that today's parents had done as children. We have effectively frustrated our children and taken away their ability in some cases, maybe in many cases, to simply be children. To get into trouble, to learn by experience, to make mistakes and grow from them. They need to "act out" to release, to be heard. We need to pay attention to them, to give them appropriate releases in order to grow emotionally healthy.

In the end, gun control will not solve this problem. Having healthy Americans however, will. There will always be the individual who walks into a place and kills randomly. Sometimes, people are just crazy. But we're seeing too much of this for that to explain this. We need to reevaluate our own behaviors. We need more good mental health, positive role models. Consider how screwed up our Congress is? Kids see and hear about this. People need to stop being nuts, selfish, greedy, and start acting like mature and most importantly, intelligent, responsible adults, to give our kids a way to see how they should act.

We need to strengthen our population, our mental health, our societal health. Then we will stop seeing all this insanity. It goes into our culture, our corporations, our government. This issue is so big, no one is seeing it, and so no one thinks it can be fixed. But it can. Just not over night. And we need to start, now.

Look at your child(ren). Consider how you are raising them. Look to yourself. Because in the end, it's not just the other parents who raised a crazy kid, it's not just gun control that will fix this situation, it's not just someone else who is responsible. In the end, we are all responsible.

Also, there is another side to this we really need to consider. Watch this video of Dr. Michael Welner talks to the ladies of The View about mental illness as it relates to the Newtown, Connecticut shooting.