Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins… Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Page 107 of 292
Life In The Ward House
Last week, since we were off the diet for our birthdays, The Wife offered to make us grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. I was trying to finish something up when I got a the following text:
The Wife: Sharp or have dry cheese?
Me (After pondering for a moment): ‘ll have the havarti.
The Wife: Stupid autocorrect .
The Wife makes excellent grilled cheese.
In other news, The Wife used some of her Prime Day monies to buy me a Masterpiece Transformers Prowl. I wanted one because Prowl was my first transformer, and I’ve always had a soft spot for that toy. It showed up last weekend. I managed to get it from police car to robot. It doesn’t transform like my old Prowl, but it does look much cooler (and much bigger) than my old Prowl. Now, getting it back to police car.
In the helpful life hacks segment, we have found that Method Daily Shower Cleaner will slow down a wasp long enough to bring the hammer down. And by hammer, I mean fistful of paper towels. My fear of insects and similar creepy crawlies evokes a insecticidal rage. They must be killed!
Links, Links, and More Links
First, I heard about this on the Assorted Calibers podcast. Essentially, a gun Prohibitionist group tricked John Lott and another gun rights activist to speak to a field of three thousand empty chairs. Let’s see, you lied about (and made a fake website for) a commencement for a fake university. Yet, I’m supposed to believe that you’re telling the truth about your gun death statistics?
Next the President signed an executive order to “promote competition.” Reason has a response of yeah, not so much. Much like the original infrastructure bill, there’s a bunch of stuff in there that has no bearing and/or hurts our ability to compete.
Cuba is seeing mass protests. This could get interesting. Assuming that the Cuban government doesn’t go all Tiammenen Square on them.
And now for some lighter fare. Looks like someone is trying to reboot the Silverhawks. Considering the trend to take old cartoons and worsen the animation, I’m not hopeful. And yeah, I didn’t watch the show that much when I was a kid. That being said, I fucking loved the intro theme:
Monday Fiction – Zombie Strike – Part 8 – Chapter 79
Kirkwood, Missouri, 4 June 2011, 0030 hours local; Countdown: 6 months, 26 days
Evan Torrelli’s heart was in his throat as Jim sped through the streets. The teen didn’t even notice his surroundings. His mind kept replaying the last words his father said. Zombies were attacking his house. Instead of going to the police like his father told him to, Evan was going back to his house in the company of the world’s finest zombie hunters. That should have given Evan some hope, but all he could hear was the zombies crashing through the windows of his home.
"Boss, we’re starting to see the edge of the panic," Jim said to Mateo Cortez, the Zombie Strike field leader. Evan looked up and saw a wave of stampeding humanity coming down the road at them.
"Side street, now!" Mateo snapped. Evan was smashed against the window as Jim whipped the SUV through a quick turn and raced through a parking lot. The SUV bounced over landscaping as Jim dodged speeding cars fleeing the area. Jim drifted the truck onto a street and hammered the gas pedal. The truck jerked with the sudden acceleration.
"Oh good, I only have to play dodge-car now," Jim commented as he slalomed through cars driving down the wrong side of the road. "Chief, this is getting a bit insane, even for me."
"I am sticking right behind you," Chief Stahl said over the team radio net, "Try not to get us killed before we even get to the horde." Jim didn’t respond. He gripped the steering wheel tight and gritted back the pain from his earlier wound.
"With this much traffic, we should be seeing the horde soon," Mateo said, "As soon as we see the horde, we stop and evaluate."
"But we’re still a few miles from my home," Evan argued. Mateo looked back at the teen with a sorrowful expression.
"Evan, we will do everything we can to get to save your family, but we can’t do anything if we’re dead," Mateo said, "That means we have to fight smart, or we’ll find ourselves beyond crush without a way out." Evan wanted to scream at his hero to save his family. Wasn’t that what heroes were supposed to do? Evan slammed his fist against the seat. He knew Mateo was right. Evan spent too much time learning about how to fight the undead. After getting past the whole "shoot ’em in the head" basics, most of the posts were on how to push back the point of crush. The theory was simple. At crush, the sheer mass of a zombie horde would overcome the speed at which the defenders could put them down. The idea was to push back the point of crush through the use of modern weapons, prepared defenses, trained persons, and tactics.
"Chief, we’ve found the horde," Jim said an instant before slamming on the brakes and sliding the SUV. Evan was sure the truck was going to roll, but it just teetered at the edge through Jim’s slide. The second SUV slid next to them, forming a defense line against the horde of zombies. Quentin half-shoved, half-carried Evan out of the SUV. The teen barely kept a hold of his double-barrel against the rushing wall of human. Evan’s feet barely hit the asphalt before the meaty hand guiding him out shoved Evan against the side of the SUV.
Quentin’s expression clearly told Evan to stay put and not get into trouble. Evan nodded and the obsidian face broke into a comforting smile. Evan smiled back weakly. The smiles were wiped away by the cacophony of moans from the horde. Evan turned around and peered through the SUV’s windows. The entire six-lane street was filled with hundreds of zombies. Evan couldn’t make out much in the dim light from the streetlights, but the shambling walk was distinctive. Was his family in that horde? Could he fight them if they were? The questions and fear raced through him as he stared at the solid mass of undead.
"Matt, we got a mix of old corpses and fresh kills in that group," Jess reported. The girl sniper was perched on top of the second SUV. "I don’t see any minions or gollums."
"You have a count?" Mateo asked.
"A lot," Jess answered, "They’re hard packed in there, and that horde has to be at least a hundred yards deep."
"Boss, there are at least a thousand head out there," Chief Stahl said, "If we’re going to engage them, we need to break out the MG’s quick."
"Do it," Mateo ordered, "Jess, Slim, and Jim, engage at max range. Everyone else will engage as soon as the Chief and Quentin have the heavies up. Sport, I want a wall of frags about midway. See if we can break this up into some smaller hordes."
"We’re not going to make it home, are we?" Evan asked Mateo as evenly as he could. Mateo looked Evan in the eye with a neutral expression.
"I can’t let a horde this size keep moving. It’ll keep growing until it wipes out Saint Louis," Mateo answered. Evan looked back as Chief Stahl and The Steve hauled out two large machine guns from the back of the second SUV.
"Then I’ll go home on my own," Evan said defiantly. Jim’s hand grabbed the boy’s shoulder and spun Evan around. The normal cheerful expression on the cowboy’s face was replaced by a stone cold look of authority.
"No, you won’t," Jim said, "Even if you get past that horde, there’s probably more zombies. Past that will be the survivors, most of who will shoot first and ask questions later. You want to get home, then you got to help us fight." The cowboy shoved a box of shotgun shells into Evan’s hands.
"But my dad," Evan said before Jim cut him off.
"Your dad’s a good man. Would he want you to save his life at the expense of everyone else?" Jim asked. Evan shook his head, barely holding back the tears.
"Evan, I need you in the line," Mateo said, "Get over by The Steve and make sure nothing gets near him." The sudden order was a life line for Evan as he nearly drowned in a sea of emotion. Evan focused on Mateo’s order and trotted over to The Steve. The medic rested the machine gun’s bipod on the hood of the SUV. Evan set the box of slugs on the hood. He broke open his shotgun and loaded the first two slugs.
Three rifles cracked almost simultaneously as the team’s sharpshooters went to work. Evan’s mouth went dry. This was different then the fight at the school. Things seemed to happen so quickly. This time, Evan could only wait as the zombies inched into range. His mind raced through all the worst possibilities. Evan was terrified. Not about fighting the zombies. He knew he could do that. Evan was terrified that Zombie Strike couldn’t finish this fight in time to get to his home.
The thoughts stopped as the two machine guns opened up.
Friday Quote – John Stuart Mills
But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth. If wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
Tropical Storm, No Hurricane, No Tropical Storm
I will admit to being a little concerned when the projected track for Elsa took it up the west coast of Florida. After all, The Wife and I have been in the new house for a little more than three months. And although Florida building codes are strong, I had this tickle in the back of my mind. The one that was screaming about how fast they’re churning out homes. How we keep finding little issues, like the dryer vent I talked about yesterday. So, we did a little bit of storm prep. I pulled in the grill from the back and The Wife’s decor from the front porch. We were a little perturbed with our neighbors who still had their garbage cans out due to a SNAFU with collections.
The rain came down and the wind blew. Not as bad as we feared. The Wife has anxiety around storms, so she didn’t get much sleep. Overall, we suffered one major casualty. The sapling tree in the front yard was blown down. The lawn guy’s coming out to take a look to see if he can get it back up. Failing that, he’ll get us in contact with someone who can.
Overall, not a bad first tropical.
Joys Of New House
Don’t get me wrong. I love our new house. I love that it’s a new house. Particularly with a tropical bearing down. However, because their cranking these houses out as fast as they can, sometimes we run into little issues.
Shortly after we moved in, the dryer’s performance degraded. Rapidly. Frustratingly. I blamed it on the fact that we got, as my nephew in the business calls them, “renters specials”. These were base model washer and dryers that came with the house. Okay, they were part of an upgrade package – which we mainly got because they put blinds on all the windows. I used the dryer’s poor performance to lobby for a sooner-than-planned upgrade for the washer and dryer.
New washer and dryer came in last week. LG’s recommended by one of the consumer sites I frequent. All the options I could want. (I am the family laundry person, so I want all of the fabric, temp, and spin options). Dryer still isn’t working right. However, because this is a nice, new, higher-end dryer, it tells me that the issue is it’s having issues with the dryer vent. Check the hose? Some there, but not a significant blockage.
We call the dryer vent cleaners we used at the old place. They tell us since we’re in a new-build house, the construction folks probably forgot to take the screen off the vent. We could call the builder office and put in a warranty issue. Last time we did that, it took better than a month. I’ll pay the damn service charge and get it fixed faster. In the meantime, we put a pantyhose on the dryer hose and at least get the week’s laundry finished. Okay, the laundry room was a little bit of a sauna, but at least it worked.
Vent tech came. Yep, they didn’t take off the vent screen. You could see the striations of lint from all of the loads of laundry. It was like the walls of a canyon. Except, you know, made of lint. Now to go fight with the warranty folks to see if they’ll refund us the service charge.
I feel like we’re in the shakedown cruise for this house sometimes.
Monday Fiction – Zombie Strike – Part 8 – Chapter 78
Kirkwood, Missouri, 3 June 2011, 2330 hours local; Countdown: 6 months, 27 days
Evan Torrelli was deafened by the twin roars as he blasted the jumping humanoid creature with both barrels of his shotgun. He could barely hear its screech over the echoes of the shotgun’s report. Instinct took over as Evan snapped the shotgun’s breech open and yanked out the spent shells. As his hands dug around his pants for a pair of new shells, Evans finally got a look at what attacked him. In the odd combination of moonlight and orange-colored light from the streetlights, the creature looked like a withered human with slate black skin decorated with bright blue symbols. Its face was twisted into an inhuman snarl as it shook a crude black-bladed axe at him. The creature reminded Evan of a model of a caveman he’d seen on some field trip.
"Down kid!" shouted Jim. Evan barely hit the soft grass before Jim’s rifle boomed behind him. Evan heard the snap of the bullet over his head. The bullet lanced through the thin creature. The creature staggered back a step before sprinting at the cowboy. Jim shifted his grip on his rifle, holding the weapon more like a staff. The creature’s axe whistled through the air as it lashed at Jim. The cowboy caught the axe on his barrel before twisting and slamming the butt of his rifle into the creature’s chest. The blow drove the creature to the ground, but it sprang back and buried its axe into Jim’s chest.
"Stupid gollum," Jim grunted, dropping his rifle. As the creature struggled to free its axe, Jim drew a monstrous revolver. The creature realized its mistake an instant before Jim fired. The creature flew off of Jim, letting out the most horrendous scream Evan could have ever imagined. Jim straightened, took aim with his revolver, and placed a single round into the creature’s head. Evan stared wide-eyed as the creature’s head exploded like a pumpkin. Then the creature withered away to dust before Evan’s eyes. His mind was grappling with what his eyes were seeing.
"Jim, are you okay?" Mateo called out. Evan shook his head as he suddenly realized he had lost track of Zombie Strike’s leader. Mateo was crouched behind the school’s electrical box taking down the zombies now staggering towards the trio. The four men that with the zombies were now sprinting away from them.
"Chest plate’s cracked. I think I’m bleeding," Jim reported.
"Evan, how’re you doing?" Mateo asked casually as he placed a burst into a zombie’s head.
"I’m a little freaked out right now," Evan blurted out. He finally managed to fish out a couple of shotgun shells. With slow and steady movements, he managed to reload his shotgun.
"That’s fine," Mateo reassured the boy, "Would you please go check on Jim?" Evan nodded, and then cursed at himself. Mateo was busy killing zombies. He couldn’t see Evan nodding.
"Yes sir," Evan said, hoping Mateo didn’t notice his screw-up. Evan rushed over to the cowboy’s side. The man had stripped off his web gear and shirt. Evan could see axe buried in what looked like plastic armor. Evan started to grab the axe handle, but Jim’s hand clamped down him.
"Just help me get this piece off," Jim said. Evan could see the trickle of blood coming from the break in the armor. Jim showed Evan the quick release points. The plate clomped to the ground. There was a bloody gash in the undergarment.
"We need to get you to a doctor," Evan said, staring at the wound.
"Doc’ll be here in a moment," Jim said, standing up. Holding the big revolver in a loose Weaver stance, Jim took aim. With measured movements, Jim brought down four zombies with four shots from the revolver. Unconcerned about the approaching undead, Jim tucked the spent brass into a pocket and fed five fresh cartridges into the cylinder.
"Get into the fight, kid," Jim said, snapping the cylinder back into the frame. Evan swallowed hard and looked at the zombies. There was now only about a dozen of the walking dead. The closest were maybe fifty yards away. A bit long for buckshot. Evan’s mind slid back to his hunting days. Okay, so maybe zombies were a little different from hunting deer. Zombies made things easier by coming to you. Evan popped out the two shells in his shotgun. He loaded two of the four slugs he kept in his back pocket. Even in the moonlight, Evan could see the golden bead of his front sight. He chose one of the closer zombies. A little Kentucky windage, and Evan squeezed the trigger. The heavy slug easily shattered the zombie’s decaying head before nearly tearing off the arm of the walker behind it.
"Not bad," Jim commented, but Evan didn’t hear the words. He was too busy lining up his next shot. He felt as if he was taking forever to get a good bead on the zombie’s head. They were much smaller targets in real-life then they seemed on television. He jerked the trigger just a bit hard. Evan cursed under his breath as the slug tore out the zombie’s neck. It fell to the ground and started to crawl without pause. Then there was more gunfire. Suppressed bursts of automatic fire cut down zombie after zombie with an almost contemptuous ease. It took less than a minute before the last zombie dropped to the ground. Evan turned around to see the rest of Zombie Strike spread out in a traditional fire line.
"Clear!" shouted Chief Stahl as the last echoes of gunfire died away. "Sport, Slim, get down to that graveyard and make sure nothing else is coming up our way. Jess, cover them." Two of the men nodded and dashed across the corpse-strewn field. Jess crouched down and brought her rifle up. Her big dog sat obediently next to him. Evan closed his eyes and forced himself to look away from her. She was too pretty for his teenage mind to handle properly, and he knew it. Maybe later he could work up enough courage to talk to her.
"Dude, you look like you just got sliced by a samurai sword," The Steve commented as he started working on Jim’s wound.
"Gollum," Jim grunted out as The Steve slathered the wound in a thick, gray paste.
"A gollum? We haven’t seen one of those in months," Quentin McLintock said. The former linebacker’s face scrunched in thought.
"Which means your theory was incorrect," the last member of the team said. He didn’t look like the others. He reminded Evan of his dad’s accountant.
"Thank you for that contribution Tredegar," Mateo said, slinging his M4.
"Maybe not," Quentin said, "What if they were looking for medallions here?" Evan was completely lost. He hoped it didn’t show on his face.
"Possible," Mateo agreed cautiously, "That could explain their low numbers. Get down there and start searching." Quentin nodded before sprinting off to the graveyard. Evan couldn’t believe anyone that big could move that fast. Mateo, Tredegar, and Chief Stahl walked away, talking amongst themselves. Evan stood there, not sure where he was supposed to go or what he was supposed to do. Jim motioned for the boy to sit down next to him.
"Relax Evan, it’s just time for the head honchoes of this outfit to start figuring out what to do next," Jim explained. The Steve was finishing up with a patch of white gauze that stretched over Jim’s entire chest.
"Yeah dude, don’t worry," the medic chimed in, "We’ll probably be dropping you home pretty soon." Evan looked down. Part of him wanted to go home, curl up in bed, and pretend this never happened. Another part of him was heart-broken he wouldn’t get to stay with Zombie Strike. The two men didn’t say anything, but Evan could see their sympathy on their faces. His phone started singing Toby Keith’s latest hit. It took a moment for Evan to remember that was his new ringtone. Pulling the phone out of his pocket, he saw the number and froze. It was home. His parents were going to skin him alive. Evan slowly opened the phone, flinching as his father’s voice filled his ear.
"Evan, where are you?" he demanded. Evan shot upright. His father’s voice wasn’t the expected anger. His father sounded terrified.
"At the school," Evan said his voice cracking as he spoke.
"Thank God," his father breathed. Evan could hear his mother screaming in the background. The sound drove a spike of fear into the teen’s heart.
"Evan, listen to me, you need to go to the police station and stay there," Evan’s father said. It was the same tone his father always used to lay down the law. "I don’t care what you hear or see on TV, you are not to come home." There was the sound of shattering glass and then the unmistakable sound of gunfire.
"Dad!" Evan screamed into the phone, "What’s going on?"
"Zombies are attacking the house." Evan’s father said, "Remember, we love you." With that, Evan’s father hung up the phone.