List: The rules of combat

This is a combination of several of the rules of combat floating around on the net....

The easy way is always mined.
Try to look unimportant; they may be low on ammo.
The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming friendly
fire.
If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid.
Mines are equal opportunity weapons.
A Purple Heart just proves that you were smart enough to think of a plan,
stupid enough to try it, and lucky enough to survive.
Don't ever be the first; don't ever be the last; and don't ever volunteer to do
anything.
Five second fuses only last three seconds.
It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed.
Recoiless rifles aren't.
Suppressive fire won't.
Never draw fire, it irritates everyone around you.
When in doubt empty the magazine.
Never share a foxhole with someone braver then you are.
Your weapon was made by the lowest bidder.
If you can't remember, the claymore is pointed toward you.
If you are forward of your position, the artillery will be short.
The enemy diversion you are ignoring is the main attack.
The important things are always simple.
The simple things are always hard.
If you're short of everything except the enemy, you're in combat.
Incoming fire has the right of way.
No combat-ready unit was ever passed inspection.
No inspection-ready unit has ever passed combat.
Teamwork is essential. It gives them other people to shoot at.
If the enemy is in range, so are you.
Tracers work both ways.
The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming friendly fire.
Radios will fail as soon as you need fire support.
When both sides are convinced that they are about to lose ... they are both right.
The bursting radius of a grenade is always one foot greater than your jumping range.
The only terrain that is truely controlled is the terrain upon which you are standing.
The law of the bayonet says the man with the bullet wins.
REMF's (Rear Echelon Mother Fraggers) are everywhere.
The best tank killer is another tank. Therefore tanks are always fighting each other ...& have no time to help the infantry.
Precision bombing is normally accurate to within +/- one mile (...or so).
Don't look conspicuous, it draws fire.
Cluster bombing from B-52s and C130s is very very accurate. The bombs always hit the ground.
Perfect plans aren't.
The side with the fanciest uniforms loses.
Professionals are predictable--it's the amateurs that are dangerous.
Armored vehicles are bullet magnets; a moving foxhole that attracts attention.
No plan survives the first few seconds of combat.
Expending material in combat is easier than filling out Graves Registration forms -- Ammo is cheap; your life isn't.
Just because you can't see the enemy; don't for a minute believe they can't see you.
The enemy invariably attacks on two occasions: When you're ready for them. When you're not.
If your attack is going well, you've just walked into an ambush.
Anything you do can get you shot, including nothing.
Make it tough enough for the enemy to get in and you won't be able to get out.
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Witnesses tangle with lawyers, from "Disorder in the American Courts"

These quotes are from a book, "Disorder in the American Courts" -- actual transcripts of things people said in court.

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
_______________________________________

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
_______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
_______________________________________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He's twenty, much like your IQ.
_______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
_______________________________________

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid
_______________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORN EY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
_______________________________________

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.
_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
_______________________________________

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished ..
_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy ?
WIT NESS : No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.
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The Six Million Dollar Man and a Sasquatch fight it out...with an excellent dénouement

Thanks to Jeff Clinton for passing along this nugget



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drawing: 16 heads

click to enlarge

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Jerry Garcia/The Grateful Dead play Peggy O ( Fennario)

This is a touchingly fragile 1994 video clip of a long time staple. Jerry tune . .as it turned out, Jerry would barely live another year. Here he is, halting in his vocals, and tentative on the guitar--which actually turns out to be a rambling, and elusive, but great, solo. Maybe this video means more to people who watched the entire arc of his career, but I think it stands on its own, fandom and cultural baggage aside, as a great American musician playing a roots folk song...


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Lyrics to the traditional sea shanty "What do we do with a drunken sailor?"

What Shall we do with the Drunken Sailor
What shall we do with the drunken sailor
What shall we do with the drunken sailor
What shall we do with the drunken sailor
Early in the morning

(chorus)
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Early in the morning

Shake him take him try to wake him . .

Give him lashings with a rope end .
.
Bathe his wounds with salty water . .

Sling him in the long boat till he's sober . .

Pull out the plug and wet him all over . .

Put him below until he's sober . .

Get a hose and wet him all over . .

Shave his tummy with a rusty razor . .

Send him up the crow's nest until he falls down . .

That's what we'll do with the drunken sailor . .
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digital art: The Mask

click to enlarge

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It's moments like this when I love Twitter

This is a classic, and the Boston Police response is a gem.



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Digital art: Dean No. 11

click dean to enlarge

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The Pitbull by J.D. Smith -- a harrowing tale of dissolution, destruction, and redemption

This was first published in the Whole Earth Review in the summer of 1995. It is, in many ways, a sick story, but in the end, it is also a story of good luck and redemption. I have had this story cached on my hard drive for 10 years. It seems like a good time to whip it out!

(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_n86/ai_17002689/)

Pitbull

by J. D. Smith


"Before Jesus stepped in and jammed the gun, I considered myself an outlaw. I know now that I was an addict, a thief, an armed robber, liar, fornicator, and a dealer. I broke all the commandments but one. I never directly killed anyone, but I tried.

"Speed does kill. Everybody I know is dead, killed by meth and crosstops and booze and stupidity and greed. My little brother got me started on speed, on the streets of Seattle, when he was twelve and I was fourteen. We were walking down along Pike Street and he just walked up to this dude, gave him five bucks, and we went into the alley. My little brother was packing the works, man, at the age of twelve. First time meth hit my guts, I messed my pants.

"A year later I was popping myself in the side of the neck, getting the rush that much closer to my brain. I weighed a third of what you see before you. Look. I ground my molars smooth, just walking around. I was busy.

"Speed freaks need money. No mon no fun. In the early years I got mine out of adult movie theaters. You walk into the back room of a girly joint, you rip back one of those little curtains, you put a gun to the head of some guy who has his unit in his hand, take all his money, his watch, his eyeglasses, sometimes his shoes. Nobody who gets heisted in a porno shop is going to
complain to the cops. There's forty-seven of those places between Seattle and Portland. Couple of times I got chased when I came back into the same place too soon, but I never got caught. Plenty of money for drugs and candy bars. There wasn't anything else to life.

"My little brother, he always was smarter than me. By the time he was nineteen he knew how to manufacture the stuff, so we moved to Pasco and started the Bros in the Basement crystal meth factory. It would take us eleven days to build a batch, then we'd haul back to Seattle, down I-5 as far as Oakland. Two years later we were big-time wholesalers, rolling high. Everybody knew the Bros. My little brother was into late-sixties Cameros, big block, tuck and roll. I liked big motorcycles and bad dogs. I kept pitbulls.

"Our trouble was that we were addicts, didn't separate the buzz from the bucks. On the day we got busted we had been drinking and shooting up for six steady days, getting a delivery ready. We were lost and crazy. My little brother was driving his candy-apple-green fast ride, and I was in the backseat with my big pitbull, Breedin' Butch, and a sixteen-gauge Winchester pump shotgun, sucking a fifth of black Jack. Lost and crazy, man, cruising down I-5 through the armpit of Oregon and I am blowing away freeway signs with the shotgun, at seventy miles an hour, all along the busiest commercial route in the world.

"My little brother was even crazier than me. He wheels out an exit in Roseburg, Oregon, leaves me and the car idling in front of a Payless drugstore, then comes running out five minutes later, tosses a whole garbage sack of prescription drugs in my window, downers mainly, seconol, demerol, codeine, then peels back onto the freeway. I mean, you don't do that man. You don't stick up a chainstore pharmacy then make a getaway in the only candy-apple green automobile north of Pasadena. We never even thought about that. We were so far gone we were invisible.

"Then, south of Myrtle Creek, my little brother decides he has to pee, twists off into a Texaco station and runs for the head, leaving me and Butch and the trunkful of drugs, the garbage sack and the shotgun just sitting out in the open, like turds in a punchbowl. First thing I see in the mirror is a bubble gum machine on top of an Oregon State cruiser, pulling up right behind us. I get sober and cranky and scared real fast.

"The windows of the Camero are smoked, way smoked, so I know that the state cop doesn't see me. I pump a shell into the shotgun. When the cop steps out of the car, I level on him, through the back window, and fully intend to remodel his face with safety glass and number six shot, but when I jerk the trigger there's just a big hollow click. I'd fired a thousand rounds through that gun, and that was the first dud shotgun shell I'd run into. I believe that Jesus Christ came into that car and saved me from the gas chamber and the fiery furnace of Hell by seizing the gun and causing it to misfire.

"Meanwhile my little brother comes out of the toilet, spots the cop, and splashes, man, faints all over the sidewalk before Allard, the arresting officer, even knows my little brother belongs to the green car. I gotta hand it to Allard. He was careless and stupid and very lucky, but he took us alone.

"While Allard is leaning over my little brother, I decide to call it quits myself, so I open the car door real easy, sticking my hands out first, but, when the door comes open far enough, Butch blows through the hole and takes Allard by the hamstring, big time. Pitbulls earn the reputation. This one was stout and awful close to mean. Allard is screaming and pounding Butch with the butt of his revolver. Butch ain't letting go.

"There is only one sure way to get a pitbull to stop biting. You grab it by the tail and you put about this much of your finger straight up its butthole. That is what I did. Butch reached around to snap at whatever was buggering him, and Allard shot him through the head, then arrested us.
"Four counts of manufacturing a controlled substance, four of intent to deliver, one of armed robbery, one of illegal use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, one of interstate flight. I was looking at thirty years before Allard testified to the sentencing judge about Butch and how I had saved his leg. As it was I got five to fifteen, indeterminate, and spend six years and four days, working in the print shop, reading the Holy Word. Been on the streets three weeks. My little brother is still in there. Praise Jesus."
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How to shave your hooha or tallywhacker?

I get that this is a little weird. But, on the other hand, it appears to be information most everyone under the age of 45 needs. . .It's even safe for work. . .they've used shadow most effectively



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Braap Bra-a-a-a-ap brap brap--Mattel sells machine guns

click to en;arge
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