Kung Flu Miscellany

Ever see John Mosby of Mountain Guerrilla casually turn and pop off 10 or 15 rounds and put them all into not just the black, but the X-ring? Me either. (Because I've never taken one of his courses.) Wanna see him turn and put 10 or 15 bullet-points in the X-ring of the Kung Flu discussion? Flip over to his latest blogpost. It's on Patreon. And you should throw him a bone and subscribe, if you can. It's that good. He didn't just nail this one, he hammers it home again and again and again, like an artillery regimental time-on-target. I'm not saying this because I agree with him, or he agrees with me, or any such nonsense. I'm telling you because he literally walks around 27 compass points of this discussion, like Tiger Woods analyzing a putt, and then he sinks a 30-footer with one sharp tap - nothing but plunk. Shut your mouth, open your eyes and ears, engage your brain, and go learn. Go.
---------

Atlanta is shutting down all its schools, because one teacher, who's been in a number of local schools, has tested positive for Kung Flu. Meaning he exposed dozens to hundreds of kids (and by extension, their families...and their friends, and their kids, and so on) to Kung Flu too. For one infected teacher. That's common sense breaking out.

----------

Word is UC Berzerkely is doing the same thing, and UCIrvine may follow, which will domino the entire UC/CSU systems into closing, which will bring unbearable pressure on the public K-12 schools, which will drag along the parochial and private schools too, so I guesstimate in a matter of a week or three, all schools in Califrutopia will be closed.

Which will mean a lot of parents, including all single ones, will need to stay home, which will snowball into any non-essential business closing soon.
Gasoline, food, drugstores, probably stay open.
Police, fire, EMS, hospitals, garbage collection; same-same.
Everybody else: you're pretty much optional.

Banks will go to drive-up tellers only, or ATM and online banking, and lock their doors to walk-ins, or limit it to one person at a time, or something similar, consistent with requirements of federal banking laws.

And all this is without anyone issuing a single official order.

----------

So, how are your stocks of canned goods and staple foods looking?

-----------

I suggested if there are mandatory quarantines, TPTB might look into suspending all rent/lease/mortgage payments for the duration, to be caught up at a later date, while people are out of work because of said quarantine. (I also said that was too sensible, so that our political would-be overlords would probably fall over themselves not to be that smart right off.) Well, look what Italy has done right after their PM shut the entire country down. And BTW, I'd like to thank Prime Minister Conte for reading this blog.

----------

In light of these developments, I spoke with a few co-workers about them, to gauge their reactions.

This is the average look I received in response:

Hand to God on this.

 

"I want to travel."

"It's just like the flu."

"I hear flights are cheap now."

"I heard it's just like the flu."

"I doubt we'll ever see a quarantine like in Italy."

"Isn't it just like the flu?"

 

No, really. Direct quotes, verbatim, every one.

 

They know about coronavirus. Like, that it exists. And we had two non-cases, that turned into a clown show when they hit the front door. But the idea that it's probably already walking in the door, and that patients (or even staff member) could already be asymptomatic carriers in the hospital or ER was roughly akin to suggesting that they should fly home on a rainbow-colored unicorn powered by magical pixie dust.

 

I swear, some people's kids...

 

Disney-ana

For some goodly amount of years, I've lived a very short trip's distance from the original D-land. Close enough to hear the fireworks nightly, esp. in colder seasons, when they boom and echo quite nicely some miles distant.

Having attended the park regularly since a few years after it opened, once I moved this close to the park, I got an annual passport. I enjoy the park as precisely that, a park: a place to people watch, get a meal, go on a couple of rides or watch the fireworks up close, and then split. An average year would see me there twenty to forty times, briefly, rather than doing the family-typical Annual Bataan Death March visit, and trying to do it all in a day.

Lately, however, the minions of Mauschwitz Corporate HQ have seen fit to make the park experience into one that has reached both peak expense, and maximum guest annoyance, and there seems to be no end in sight to that policy. I've never been to the larger version in Orlando, so I leave it to those east of Big Muddy to speak to that experience. I suspect, like the parks, it's just as bad as it is here, just on a bigger scale.

And as the nominal cherry on the whole poop sandwich, this year they're opening StarWarsLand, AKA "Galaxy's Edge", to help milk the last dollars from pay off the $6B they paid to George Lucas to loot and pillage the franchise lock, stock, and barrel. The movies of late should give you a great idea of how that's gone for long-time Star Wars fans.

But no matter what, some people will always strain out the crap to get to the parts of the whole thing that still appeal to them, and the impending opening of a new land will be no exception.

Having blown their one chance at a proper opening (May the Fourth, obviously; Disney imagineers, you had one job, and a two-year head start to get it right on cue, and you choked massively...) they will be debuting it on May 31st hereabouts, with an August 29th opening for the not-quite-identical version in Orlando at Hollywood Studios.

To (partially) stem the inevitable human avalanche this will create, they figured out a way to piss off just about everyone, by time-limiting the initial opening visits - only if you have a reservation - to four hours through June 23rd. Eventually, they hope things will stabilize, and it will be just another part of the park. Sh'yeah, probably around 2025. Or, you can stay at their hotels, and visit early during special hours (literally, 6AM-9AM, before the park's general public opening) to help assuage the room rates.

At any rate, the experience of late with the main park having gotten beyond annoying as hell (and believe me, I'm understating it), I haven't renewed this year's passport, nor will for another year or two, to give the stupidity attending this opening a good long chance to mellow out.

I should mention that they were originally going to hire cast members to help populate the Cantina Bar, but with the inundation of Orange County with people not from anywhere around here over the last 20 years, just letting the usual local People Of Walmart hereabouts into the park will more than approximate the crowd from Tatooine without any additional assistance from casting.

But if you were wondering what to expect there, in case you ever manage to get inside (or if you're prudently planning to skip the whole thing for some time like I am), I give you a couple of their insider sneak-peaks at what to expect. If they hadn't already soured a lifelong enjoyment of Walt's genius with their shenanigans of late, I might be more enthusiastic. Instead, this vicarious tour is probably all I need to see of it for some months, before I ever experience it in person.

Polling Update

Went midday, to avoid the opening and evening rush. In a precinct where normally I'm number 200-something out of a little more than a thousand voters, my number was over 600. I got the only open station (no line ahead of me), but there were five people behind me by the time I'd signed in, and all stations filled. In the afternoon after-lunch bunch.

Whatever else happens, low turnout is not going to be a problem this election, at least in my precinct.

Synergy

h/t "Sam Culper"

Militia Lesson:
Anyone who thinks the guys in the top couldn't become the guys on the bottom doesn't know Cajuns and Texans.
Anyone who thinks they won't HAVE to become the guys on the bottom, doesn't know history.

So, FO put up a post. We replied. Then WRSA picked it up.
And FO followed up with this gift-wrapped present: What Role Will Militias Play In The Coming Unpleasantness?
Go RTWT.

And then follow the follow-ups as they come.

Because Knowledge is Power.
And if things get sporty at some point, as some of us suspect to one degree or another, high-quality local intelligence about any number of things may well mean the difference between you living or dying.

And you can't run down to Costco or Walmart and buy of case of that.
You have to plant that garden now, and harvest the fruit regularly and constantly, otherwise when you need it, you ain't got it.

Go.
Learn.

Best takeaway: If your team isn't planning on becoming part of the return of rightful ROL in a WROL scenario, you will quickly become the bug, not the windshield.

If you have some anarcho-libertarian self-masturbatory fantasy mental world you plan on living in, contrary to every lesson of 6000 years of recorded human history, spare the electrons of a reply, and go elsewhere.
Man is a social animal. Playing Batman In The Boondocks is a Hobbesian State of Nature:
solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

The freest form of individual existence is to be a libertarian. You mind your business, and let everyone else mind theirs, as much as humanly possible. But the freest form of community is a republic. Not a commune, and not a democracy. If you've got something better, because you're the philosophical superior of Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison combined, and the world has cruelly ignored your unacknowledged expertise in the matter, by all means lay it out, convince the neighborhood, and they'll subscribe to your newsletter and march in your parade. Give them anything less than what a republic delivers, and you'll be out.

Ponder: If the current nominal republic was delivering on its advertising to any great degree, the likelihood of ANY future Unpleasantness would be precisely nil. Crime and terrorism would still happen, because human nature, certainly, but in a functioning republic, we'd do as a former LAPD police chief suggested, and string those sumbitches up at the airport between the runways, and that would be the end of that.

So you'll possibly be strung up. (Depends rather much on the mood of the crowd, and what you do, did do, or tried to do.) Try to dictate your policies out of the barrel of a gun? You're nearly certain to end up strapped athwart the muzzle of a loaded cannon, while they cast lots for the honor of touching it off. Which, in all likelihood, is exactly what you'll deserve.

Learn to work and play well with others now, and be ready to do the right things for the right reasons then, or you won't be around afterwards long enough to matter.

You get a vote.
The enemy gets a vote.
The neighborhood gets a vote.
And this ain't the movies, and you ain't John Wayne.

You sure as f**k better not think you're going to be Negan.

Your lifespan would be measured in the flight speed of bullets at muzzle velocity.
And that'd just be from your own cohort. (Hollywood ignores reality for ratings in that respect.) Consult Khruschev's memoirs or the biography of Mussolini for how things work out in the real world.
The rest of the world won't even be that friendly or sympathetic to your fate.

Wrap your head around that fundamental human reality, or else prepare to learn that particular lesson the hard way.

Please Stand By

 

Not from my neighborhood, but the reason why it was dark and cold and internet free this AM.

It's An Orangey Sky

Anywhere Back East (of here) this time of year, the trees change colors. Here, it's the sky. In this case, a particularly shade of orangey sky, though probably not one Cleveland native Ric Ocasek had in mind when he penned that lyric. In this case, in SoCal, the harbingers of fall are brisk Santa Ana winds, of which todays were 40-50MPH gusts,

which combine with the vast populations of insaniac tweaker homeless people (who infest both the suburbs and the local foothills) cooking roadkill (and meth) in the nearby canyons, and when one of these things meets the other, oxygen, heat, and fuel - in this case, a thick once-verdant and now dehydrated overgrowth from more than double the normal annual rainfall since January - decisively breaking Califrutopia's six-year drought, no matter what Moonbeam says - combine in what fire scientists refer to as the fire triangle, and what the county brushfire crews and state prison trustee crews refer to as one helluva big mess.

In this case, it's somewhere not terribly far off. The wind's been blowing like a sonogfagun since last night, the sun is behind a veil of brown smoke being pushed out to sea at a good clip, leaving a wide swath of ash and smoke that illustrates that chaparral hillside is being converted to charcoal-colored desert tundra at the speed of heat. In case I wasn't sure this was it, the county fire department's trusty Bell 412 is whop-whopping back and forth, clawing for altitude and heavily laden with a full belly tank of water or fire retardant,

doing so today with enough frequency to suggest the fire is not far off, and to give anyone of a certain age some decent 'Nam flashbacks. And as an added bonus, all my electronics, dutifully big-brothered into a daisy chain of efficiency by the minions of the digital universe, now squeal and hum insistently to me and everyone in the same area code that in the hills east of here, the perennial dumbasses who chose a view over common sense need to pack their crap, and Get The Hell Outta Dodge, because the mountainsides are on fire. Again.

Ah, Fall, in Califrutopia.

It's nowhere dangerously close to me, nor will or would be short of Kim Dum Nut dropping one of his garage-band nukes on the suburbia hereabouts, but I get the haze, the ash, the dry throat and burning crud in my eyes, and the olfactory splendor of knowing what it would smell like to live inside a campfire, a burning hay barn, or to wake up in hell.

God help the folks in the hot zones, and keep the firefighters safe in their appointed tasks. Happily, it's only about 80 here today, not 110, but I daresay it's a wee bit sultrier up on certain hillsides today, and with these winds, likely to remain so throughout the week.

That smell, that tumbleweed and scrub oak smell...nothing else smells like that.
It smells like...no, not victory. It smells like it's going to be a long, hot, windy, smoky week, and some people are going to lose everything they have in return for soul-crushing record-breaking property taxes and killer Pacific Ocean views across the L.A. Basin the rest of the year. It's the West Coast version of building your vacation home on Hurricane Beach.

Me? I just get the smell, a small taste of the apocalypse, and having to hose the car off every morning for the next few days.

Northridge Earthquake, Pt. IV

After several days of bouncing around, a shelter was opened literally across the street from my apartment. We were both immediately assigned to coordinate medical care there.

At the beginning, the Red Cross had opened all the shelters, but by 3 days in, it was clear they were over their heads, and the Salvation Army was in the on-deck circle.

For reference, in SoCal, unless it's a major brush fire (or a once-in-a-century 7.0 earthquake), the Red Cross mainly only ever has to deal with a few dozen people displaced by an apartment fire, or their house burning down, and a voucher for Motel 6 , along with toothbrushes and shampoo, is usually all that's required.

With tens of thousands of people in unstable buildings, without power or running water, including those motels, that approach wasn't going to cut it.

And BTW, national HQ, FEMA, and anyone else was utterly MIA for more than the first 72 hours. If this had been a noontime quake, and there were 50,000 dead all over town, panic, chaos, and disorder would have reigned unhindered, because no one is ready to be anywhere for that kind of catastrophe, and they never will be.

Lesson Fifteen:
Disasters are come-as-you-are. Being ready to handle things COMPLETELY on your own for the first 72 hours is a minimum. Start thinking in term of "first 30 days", not "first 3 days."

OTOH, the Salvation Army houses millions of people, around the world, 24/7/365, since about 1870.

Consequently, ARC would find an intact HS gym, and set up 200 cots.
In our case, the Salvation Army whistled up 5 circus-sized tents, holding 500 people each, and they were still putting up more every day right up to the day they started to close.

But (and it's an important "but"), they had no more idea of first aid, health, and sanitation, than they did of quantum physics. Which was where I and Co. came in kind of handy.

The shelter mgr.'s first question was "Hey, there's a kid here with active chicken pox. Is that a problem?"

Well, except for the fact that you have 500 adults, kids, and pregnant women living in close proximity every day, no, not at all. Because there's nothing like adding "epidemic" on top of "disaster" to really make things fun, right?

But unlike the ARC, who would most likely simply have thrown the offending family out on the street, the Salvation Army instead whistled them up a small private tent, in a quarantine compound, with their own portajohn, and delivered meals to the family. Crisis averted.

My wife and I weren't the only help we had, and thank heavens for that. We had two RNs who, separately, decided to simply jump in their cars, drive down to us from Portland and Seattle, book their own motel rooms nearby, but outside the affected area, and just pitch in. God bless them. Their motel bills were instantly covered by the powers that were in charge. And two local docs, one retired, one just underutilized, became our on-site clinic docs.

So suddenly I, an EMT and nursing student, had two MDs and two RNs working for me. Which, they happily admitted, made the most sense. I knew the resupply and admin systems, and they concentrated on doing the care. So we set up morning, afternoon, and evening sick call clinics, each doc assisted by a nurse and either my wife or I. The two of us got to walk 1 minute to work daily, sleep in our own beds, and start cleaning up the flotsam and jetsam of our lives while still helping other a lot worse off.

Lesson Sixteen:
Walk-in angels are literally a godsend. I understood why one old school missionary famously said "Don't just pray for miracles, RELY on them." It's impossible to overstate how much they were worth in this and many other instances.

And what a clinic it turned into. We had a cafeteria for our location, so we had tile floors and a clean indoor space with lots of window light. And we had the same parade of folks who'd run barefoot across floors strewn with debris, and the same daily regimen of picking out the fragments, cleaning and dressing the wounds, then repeating things the next day.

Kaiser Hospital, in their quest to get everyone able out of the hospital (which was protocol, for both room for the expected more serious cases, and because they didn't have running water either, or power after Day 3), discharged one woman who'd given birth an hour beforehand, with her newborn. Into darkened streets at 5:30 AM the day of the quake, they handed her husband a bag of diapers, a carton of formula, and fond wishes of best of luck, and rolled her and their newborn out the door in a wheelchair. So we had a 2-day old and post-partum mother to deal with from the get go, among our other 2000 patients.

My wife and I became the 9-1-1 service for our mini-city, making walkie talkie dispatched housecalls to every skinned knee or other mishap, and transporting via wheelchair back to the clinic, the doc, and the nurse, for anything that needed that.

We also had, by this time, the only effective government response I saw during the entire quake: a Marine and Navy reserve unit had set up a GP tent, and begun doing water purification for the whole shelter, for washing and bathing, rigged to drain into the city's giant open rainstorm drains (the executive decision was that Santa Monica Bay could just suck it up and take the hit). They were awesome, squared away, and a great thing to have. One day, a Marine Corps brigadier general came through inspecting how things were working, and being only a couple years' post discharge from active duty, I somehow ended up at attention (I remembered not to salute, but I could feel my arm trying to go there) as he came into view entering our aid station.

We had our own police force too. In this case, the LAPD Metro unit that normally busted druggies at LAX (the airport being shut down by the quake for those first days) was in tactical jumpsuits, and assigned to watch over our little flock. That immediately solved all law enforcement problems, period. They were quietly patrolling everywhere, and what was normally a sketchy HS campus became instead one of the safest communities in the city for a couple of weeks.

We also had the local "bottle drop". Once the news put out the shelter locations, local residents would come by to either get bottled water, or drop it off. You can talk all the smack you want about CA people, or those in L.A., but I'm here to tell you you're talking out your back end. On my first day there, we had water bottles by the ton free for the taking, by the case if necessary, 5' across, 3' high, and stretching along our aid station/cafeteria outside wall for 15'. By three days later, with constant pickups, and drop offs, we had the same thing, except it then extended for 50'. People brought more than we could give away.

People also brought their kids there to help out, and they'd also pull up, ask us or the shelter manager what else we needed, they'd go find or buy it somewhere, god knows how, and bring it back to us within an hour or two. At the time it was unbelievable, and in retrospect it was phenomenal.

Lesson Seventeen:
Local, Local, LOCAL! What you have, right there, is what you WILL have. Learn it, live it, love it, and improve hell out of it before you need it. Because one day, sooner or later, you WILL need it. And probably very badly.

Other than the whole earthquake and people dying thing, the rest of the first week at that shelter was nigh-on idyllic.

The following week, work and schools resumed city-wide. A few days after that, they cold-started the entire LA DWP grid (unsure whether that would work, as it had never been tried) and we had power back on Day 12. Boil Water orders remained in effect for a month, and the tap water smelled like pool water from the chlorination, but it was on, and you could wash and bathe once power came back on.

I had another semester of nursing school to attend, reminded of that fateful morning five times a day, as every clock in every hospital was stopped at 4:31. One hospital rotation found me in a building with three concentric rings around a central tower, five floors tall. A sample of the quake's power was that all the wings had separated from the central core by about 4 inches, and there were sheets of 3/4' plywood over the gaps on every floor, while you could look out sideways through the gaps and see the mountains miles away, and a reinforced tarp kept the rain out overhead at the top floor. They eventually just cast in place some extra wall to seal it up again, months afterwards.

Local malls were closed, the one in Northridge itself for months, because massive amounts of it had given way. Some weeks after the earthquake, the local Red Cross staff supervisor, the same one who regularly gave us a dose of the ass by her incessant undercutting of our activities and whining that First Aid services were optional, and not part of Red Cross' government-mandated missions (which was stupid and short-sighted, but true), fell all over herself to thank us for literally saving hers and the city's bacon on the day, because their disaster planning and preparedness was total horsecrap. That honeymoon lasted about 6 months, and then they promptly forgot all those lessons.

She also had the wit to ask several of us for ideas on where to pre-stage supplies and whatnot in advance for the next time, which we all thought was a sterling idea, since they'd only had 23 years since the Sylmar earthquake to totally ignore such an obvious bit of commonsense planning. Apparently, you can pull people's heads out of their asses, but it's tough to get them to open their eyes even then.

My suggestion, then as now, was to make deals to secure a small fenced compound at some remote corner of every local mall, inclusive, for 2-4 conex boxes minimum of "shelter/supplies in a box", because after the disaster, the malls were all closed, they had acres of hardtop parking for making an instant shelter/disaster HQ/or even heliport if necessary, they all had easy road access built in, were patrolled 24/7 by security, and no mall would miss a small corner for the purpose, esp. since they could call it a charitable donation and write it off. Given the things you can do and put inside a 40' conex box, you could even pre-rig them as hospital/clinics, radio centers, and disaster offices in advance.

Apparently, it was such a genius idea that they have failed to do that, or anything like it, from that day to this, and come the next earthquake, about a month later, they'll once again be looking for new ideas to ignore. As it is, within a few years afterwards, First Aid Services as I had known it, ceased to exist in the entire city. Best of luck next time, because I don't live there now.

Lesson Eighteen:
If there's a disaster, besides having made your own personal/family preparations to survive or evacuate, I highly recommend you know at least EMT-level first aid.
And that you take that expertise over to the Salvation Army, who can run rings around anyone else at sheltering and caring for victims in a disaster, 6 days a week and twice on Sunday.

Northridge Earthquake, Pt. II

As evening wore on, it was time for some decisions. Wife was safe with her parents, and back in her happy place. No one was going to work or school anytime soon, as power and potable water supply were out of commission for the foreseeable future, indefinitely.

Having been, at that point, a Red Cross instructor and volunteer, routinely working events with hundreds to thousands of people, the best use of my time was going to be heading in, to see where they needed me most, which I did. I loaded my normal event jump bags, along with a Colt .45, under the heading of "just in case".

I would do so again, but you need to understand it was - in hindsight - the most worthless addition I could have selected. I know this will upset the curmudgeon legions of Jeff Cooper and Bert Gummer acolytes out there, but rather than being a theoretical understanding, mine has the quaint virtue of having seen trial amidst millions of victims, in multiple disasters besides this one. So pay attention.

Lesson Five:
In small, intermediate, and large disasters, where the rule of law prevails, most crooks/gangbangers/etc. are just as pants-wettingly scared $#!^less as you are, and just as worried about taking care of themselves, their families, and grandma as you are, and haven't yet organized to going shooting and looting.

Argue that as you will, I've been there and done that, so your "But what abouts...?" will not avail. Nota bene the key words "where rule of law prevails", and "yet", for the star pupils.

So I set out for HQ.
Which, predictably, was total chaos. You'd think the Red Cross, proudly tasked by Uncle Sam and Congress (just ask them) with being Large And In Charge in disasters, would have had the foresight to have, perhaps, a generator and store of fuel, for any HQ placed within the geographic limits of Earthquake Central Chapters. Sadly, but predictably, you'd be hopelessly disappointed to expect even the garden-variety level of forethought there. Fortunately, I and a number of cohorts had some contacts in the entertainment field, a group of circus performers who take generators with them on location everyfrickinwhere. Also heating and A/C, etc. So having made those contacts work, and with some homeowner and contractor-grade additions, there was power, light, and climate control. Ma Bell's POTS phones worked as advertised, whereas cell phones were largely a fantasy, so that was that. And the one part of ARC Disaster Services that hummed like a Swiss watch was the radio geeks office, with any number of comm links on radio up and running, and coordination with civil authorities. Geeks 1, Chaos 0.

It was determined that the best place for me was to handle medical response at the shelter set up in the main park in nearby San Fernando, so just at dusk, off I went.

As previously noted, every intersection with dead lights was an instant 4-way stop, without so instructing a soul. As I proceeded up the main drag of Sepulveda Blvd., I was witness to a peculiar phenomenon. Pulled up herringbone-style onto the grassy central median, for 15 miles in both directions, were cars from the surrounding apartment complexes, and entire families establishing tent cities in the middle of an 8-lane boulevard.

But why?
a) Most of the families were hispanic generally, and of Mexican heritage specifically.
b) Thus most had relatives (or been there themselves) who experienced, suffered, and perhaps were casualties in the then-recent Mexico City earthquake.
c) Mexico has some of the most modern earthquake building codes on the planet. Which, for a small mordida, the local building inspector will happily sign off on after overlooking the lack of certain annoyingly expensive items, such as rebar, in concrete structures.
d) Thus, the Mexican experience in earthquakes is, everything falls down on your head.
Hence their haste to establish digs out in the middle of the street, away from those deathtrap buildings. QED.

And oh, BTW, San Fernando was a small satellite independent city, surrounding the original Mission San Fernando of the late 1700s, and was about 90+% hispanic, IIRC. (I defer to actual census data.)

So after travelling the Homeless Highway, I arrived at the rec center in the midst of a large park. My personal cluelessness was brief, but notable as demonstrated by the following exchange. The only place to park was in a handicapped spot. I was dressed in uniform white shirt, black dress pants, and with foot-square ARC Xs in about three places, and carrying a stethoscope and aid bags. In front of the spot was a uniformed motorcycle officer of the San Fernando PD. As I pulled in and got out, I asked if there would be any problem parking in the handicapped spot, because I didn't want to get towed. Whereupon Officer Areyoukiddingme motioned to the surrounding park grounds. Upon which I saw some hundreds of cars and trucks parked all over the grassy fields, as far as the eye could penetrate in the gathering darkness. "Relax. I don't think anyone's getting any parking tickets tonight, doc." Well, duh, dorkbrains, I realized a bit belatedly.

I made my way into the shelter, and found the shelter manager. ARC manages shelters adequately, but generally in the greater L.A. area was used to accommodating perhaps an entire building's worth of people after a fire, usually in local motels with vouchers. Dealing with several millions was a bit more than they were up for. So he happily handed me the setting up of medical care for his minions, and use of the only alcove that would remain lighted 24/7 to place it in.

"We've got almost 1000 people inside the gym on cots, and the surrounding park estimate is 5 or more times that much. There's fast food wagons around back giving out hot food as long as you like McDonalds, and we've got plenty of bottled water to hand out around front. The gym goes dark at 10PM. But we have to turn the lights on every time there's an aftershock, because everyone bolts for the exits. We've had some injuries from that when they trample each other trying to get out. Let me know if you need anything, I've got to get back and call in to the main office for tomorrow's plans and needs."

And that was it. I, EMT and student nurse, was now Chief Medical Officer for upwards of 6000 people. I had one converted LAFD ambulance that had about half the medical supplies our group had begged, borrowed, or cajoled, and used for every normal event for some years. I also had two other medics, guys I'd worked with for the previous 3 years, and I'm not bragging to say they were shit-hot medics, easily the equal of anyone the city fire department could have sent, and better in many way, because we dealt with all the everyday stuff, not just the trauma. I also had the local CNN crew, because when the lights went out, we were in the only place they could run lights without waking up 1000 sleeping shelterees.

Once word got out that we had first aid services, it was on. The three of us triaged, sorted through, treated, bandaged, and released dozens upon dozens of people. And also saw hundreds looking for all sorts of everyday things we did (and didn't) have. Some of our stuff was getting critical, including something as pedestrian but vital, in terms of public health, as baby diapers.

And then, a miracle happens. Little hispanic guy in shirtsleeves comes in. With 5 guys in suits, and 15 uniformed cops behind him. Turns out, he's the mayor of San Fernando, God bless him.

"How are you guys doing?" he asks. Fine, say I. "Do you need anything? Anything at all?" he asks.

I let him know about the baby diapers, and a couple of other things.

He turns, literally snaps a finger, and says, "Dave, take care of these guys. Get them whatever they need." One suit, a police lieutenant, and two uniformed officers peel off, as the rest of the entourage continue into the shelter.

Suit and lieutenant confab after our requests. They tell us they have a drugstore up the street where we can probably get what we need, and now we have three police escorts. One of the other medics volunteers to go with them to the nearby drugstore immediately; problem handled.

He returns an hour later with the ambulance packed to the roof with medical and comfort items. The local drugstore mgr. was at the store when our lieutenant, two officers, and ARC van roll up. When they tell him what we need, and offer Red Cross vouchers, he says "Take everything. The store is a total loss, and I'll be pushing it all into trash dumpsters by the end of the week. You can have all you want, and come back for more." So my guy and two policemen push and load three shopping carts overflowing full, fill the rig, and make a second trip, before leaving the manager with that much less stuff to dispose of, or guard.

That, boys and girls, is how to run city hall. Thank you, Mayor Awesome, and SFPD.

While they're gone, I and the other medic have been spending our time doing, frankly, minor surgery. Because as soon as the shaking stopped that morning, every mom and dad ran across floors strewn with china, glass, etc., to find out if the kids were alright. And consequently had half the kitchen floor debris embedded in their bare feet. Usually finding the kids sound asleep in their beds.

Lesson Six:
When SHTF, put your boots on FIRST. Half dressed is half-assed.

And the local hospitals, obviously, are power and waterless for the most part, and what few have survived and have power (though no water but bottled) have closed to all but critical cases, which glass in the feet is not. So we spend the night painstakingly plucking and prying bits of glass, china, bric-a-brac, metal, wood furniture, toy car wheels, and the like, out of hundreds of moms' and dads' feet, cleaning them with betadine and BZK, bandaging them, and repeating the process until everything we can see is removed. And changing bandages daily until things heal. Also splinting broken fingers, feet, arms, etc., from people running through the house and playing dodgeball with dressers, refrigerators, bookshelves, TVs, and so on, and coming in second place. Along with a hundred other complaints, some that would have been in the local ER, and some fresh because of the disaster. And if I do say so, we did a damn fine job of it.

Lesson Seven:
There won't be an ER in a disaster. Build a serious kit, and get actual training, and real hands-on practice, long before you need it. Because need it you will.

Then, there were the hourly media reports. I spent the better part of the night chatting with one of the L.A. local CNN on-camera guys. He was outside the most affected area, but he and his guys were just as shaken up as everyone, including me, was. But every hour, they'd be ready to go live in front of our little aid station, and update the families far, far away that we all weren't dead.

I give a lot of well-deserved $#!^ to The Media. But that doesn't, for the most part, go to the men and women on-scene, or the (mostly) guys who're pointing the camera, and running the assorted geekery in the broadcast van. They're working for a living, doing a sometimes dangerous, generally necessary, and rarely heart-rending job, rather than spending their nights safe and sound with their families, and not for vast sums of money nor glory. Some of them are jackasses, but most of them are just doing their jobs, and usually doing them well. This crew was.

Some friends afterwards let me know they had seen me on TV while they were far away and trying to get back to SoCal, which to them signified just how terrible things were if I was anywhere near being in front of a camera. Thanks, guys, love ya.

Lesson Eight:
If the opportunity arises, work with the media. If you give them good information, they can put out good information. Don't shoot yourself in the foot, as long as they're not trying to load the gun for you.

Lastly, as the night wore on, there were multiple, even dozens, of aftershocks. Which sent everyone, or half of them, running and screaming to the exits. The main function of the shelter management crew was to immediately turn on the lights, and corral the impending stampedes, over and over again. Which they did, and avoided almost all the injuries of the panic-stricken idjits doing the stampeding.

And BTW, my takeaway to my instructor/AKA Fearless Leader of our happy little band of community first-aiders at the time was
a) thanks for preparing us really really well to cope with catastrophes like this, and
b) you forgot to mention that, being in the middle of Ground Zero, WE will be just as crap-your-pants panicked, stressed, and worried as everyone else. Even if we don't show it.

Lesson Nine:
You WILL be just as crap-your-pants panicked, stressed, and worried as everyone else. Keep it to yourself, deal with it, and carry on. Don't show it. Panic is contagious; so is competence and calmness.

Because, as expected, I found the best way to deal with all that, was to focus on solving other people's problems, rather than dwelling on my own.

To be continued...

Northridge Earthquake, Pt. I

I offer the following to illuminate your preparations for disasters generally, and earthquakes specifically, having some wee experience with both.

The San Fernando Earthquake of 1971 was comparatively minor: a 6.6 monster that made it possible to surf the land waves in the back yard. Yes, really.  And then spend the day at school playing in a nearby park, because my school was downstream of the cracked earthen dam nearest the epicenter, and the authorities didn't want us swimming around if it failed. Once that was drained, no big deal, except for the occupants of a couple of substandard hospitals now about 5 feet tall, or the two guys tragically 6 feet too far under an overpass that landed on the cab of their now 3-inch tall F150 pickup cab. It also had the good grace to hit in the early morning, after 6AM.

Northridge was a tad more troublesome. First of all, it was a 7.0 (later, nota bene, politically downgraded on the rather elastic scale to a 6.9, thus magically avoiding a host of insurance company provisions for private and federal disaster insurers for earthquakes of 7.0 or larger).

But the quake was actually in Reseda, or rather, several miles under Reseda, the next closest suburb to the south of Northridge, located just about smack in the middle of the heavily populated San Fernando Valley. And, as it happened, about 3 miles from where I was sleeping.

The popular saying at the time was, any day that starts at 4:31AM, probably isn't going to get any better. So now, recollections, by the numbers.

I lived on the third of 4 floors, in a modest 2-bedroom apartment, about a block from where I'd lived from 0-21 years of age. The ground floor was under-building parking, and then three floors of apartments around a central courtyard. So my residence was the architectural equivalent of the middle square on the Hollywood Squares.

First came a gentle shove, like someone shoving the bed to wake you up. Which it did. Followed immediately afterward by the shaking.

Again, having lived lifelong in L.A. and SoCal, like most of my California native peers, and any number of long-term transplants, we're aficionados about earthquakes. We've all been through the back and forth rocking that feels like the sway of a train car you're riding on, and we can tell with pretty good guesstimates whether it's a 3, a 4, a 5, or something bigger but far away. Things jiggle, rattle, sway, and such, it lasts 5-20 seconds, and it stops. The longer it lasts, the bigger it was, and the further away it probably was, or you wouldn't be feeling it. These shakes only scare the newbs. Boo frickin' hoo for them.

That wasn't the experience of this one, very nearby, and much larger than anything similar for a century or more. Bearing in mind my location in the central square of the tic-tac-toe board of my side of the apartment complex, this shaking wasn't the standing on a skateboard sway I'd grown used to over 3 decades of experience.

To properly visualize this, imagine the Jolly Green Giant had grabbed opposing corners (like NW and SE, etc.) of the entire building, and was alternately slamming one after the other into the ground, as hard as he could. While simultaneously, something grabbed ahold of your private parts, and was slamming your @$$ down into the floor like they were churning butter, WHAM!WHAM!WHAM!WHAM!-style. That's what sitting on top of this felt like.

As if this change in experiences wasn't enough to get one's attention, this particular part of the exercise didn't settle down. It got worse. And continued. And continued. And continued. For at least a full 45 seconds. Bounce on a trampoline for 45 seconds sometime, as you time it. Now try it without the net and springs. That's the actual earthquake.

You have time to notice things. The fact that you're butt-naked sitting in a bed, and the mattress still isn't enough padding. The fact that your then-spouse is clinging ahold of you hard enough to leave marks on your neck and shoulders for days afterward. The fact that all the power is out, but the brilliant blue explosions outside as thousands of pole-mounted transformers explode from the short-circuiting going on.

The curiosity about whether you're going to die when the entire building pancakes and crushes you under tons of debris, or if the outside wall falls away, and you get bounced out to the street 50 feet below. Not whether, just which one. You notice the sounds of everything you own in the kitchen shattering as they get shaken off of shelves like a terrier snapping a rat around. And the same sounds as this is happening in apartments beside, above, below, and cattycorner to yours. The smells as each bottle of food item splatters on the tile floor. "There goes the sesame oil. That smells like the teriyaki. Now I'm smelling Worcestershire sauce." and so on.

So Lesson One is simple, and rather Zen/Bushido:
Accept that you're going to die, get over it, and concentrate on what to do between now and that finality.

Because eventually, either you will, or, in this instance, after a lifetime of getting rocked, it stops.

Followed by what would be merciful silence, except for one damned inescapable urban cacophony: the sound of every last car alarm for 50 miles going off at the same time.
First thought: "Hey, @$$holes, turn your g**d***** car alarms off, because we've got some serious $#!^ to deal with here."

My first plan was to find the flashlight, which I do. Spouse elects to spend a few moments totally losing her $#!^, apparently because to her way of thinking, that's the most productive thing to spend time on. Corporate MBA executive bigdeal thinking apparently can't process the very ground you walk on trying to kill you with as much emotion as stepping on an ant.

I find a flashlight, survey the room, decide it looks like hell, but there's no massive cracks. Find another flashlight and hand it to her.

"Honey? Get. Dressed. Now. Got it?"

She sobs out an "okay" and starts fumbling around. I am too, but mainly because I know where I put my stuff, only where it was and where it is now have had an intermission of 45 seconds in a large spin dryer of fate. I manage to get a full set of clothes on, and find both sets of car keys. A quick look outside the bedroom shows the kitchen looks like Baghdad after a bombing run. I tell the missus I'm going out to go move the cars out from under the building, and that she should start finding anything important she needs to take, in case we have to evacuate. I notice the living room seems to be an inch lower than the kitchen and dining room, and the spare room where my computer and bookshelves live is now an Impressionist piece entitled "Handgrenade In A Library". I head out the front door, and around the walkway to the stairs, all, fortunately still attached to the building.

As I descend the stairs, just as I'm between the 1st floor and the parking level, the first aftershock hits. It's a 6.0. Emotionally and physiologically wrung out of anything left, as I'm caroming back and forth between the walls mid-flight on the last run of stairs, I offer a prayer out loud:
"Look God, either kill me, or quit screwing around, because I've got things to do."

Apparently God either has a sense of humor, or it's nothing personal, because being far less ferocious than the main quake, the aftershock ends, and I continue into the darkened structure. The first good sign is that I've not only not been crushed in the stairwell, but that three floors of apartment plumbing aren't leaking all over the parking area. With no power, I wonder how the metal gate is going to get opened, but as I get there, someone has gotten there ahead of me, and pushed it open by hand. Yay, Random Neighbor. So I move first one car, then the other, to the street outside, across from my building, because there's nothing on that side to fall on the cars besides leaves from maple trees, and poop from terrified squirrels. Then I head back in and upstairs.

Wife is somewhat better off now, and dressed. We (okay, I) had previously loaded up 4 moving boxes, each with a week's canned food items, and a couple more with lights and propane for cooking and seeing in case of emergency. I decide this might be an emergency, and organize the 6V camp lamps and turn them on, and set them up around the shambles we now call home.

Wife loads up her work essentials, and clothes, and important papers, and her scrapbook of photos, and starts making trips to the car. I collate the arsenal and medical stuff, and leave it inside the door. Then I notice folks around the complex running around like headless chickens getting organized. I take my medical bag, and start knocking on doors to see if anyone needs help, first on my floor, then the one above, and finally the one below. Everyone is shaken up, but no one is jacked up. I let them know the garage is open, and they might want to move their cars out while they can, in case of further quakes or building problems.

Getting back to my place, wife has about finished loading stuff in her car. I go outside and look around, at the marvel of an entire valley of several million people, all in the dark, and relatively quiet. Being January in SoCal, it's crisp but not freezing, and the forecast is for a sunny, bright day. Thank God. And I look down, and see the landlady, she and her husband very recent arrivals from Back East, in her robe and slippers, checking out the building with a candle on a candlestick holder, like some Dickensian character.

I immediately yell down to her that if there are any gas leaks around, she's now a human leak detector, and might want to put out the damned candle. She nods at me with Bambi-In-The-Headlights catatonia, and continues on, candle blazing away.

Lesson Two:
In a disaster, stupid people will get you killed.

I also know that most problems in earthquakes are caused by fires afterwards, and the building manager is clearly too shellshocked, or stupid, to live. And highly likely to burn my house down along with hers due to her lack of common sense. So I dig out a helpful universal emergency wrench, and head down to the gas meters at the street level.

I find a row of 30 or so meters, locate mine, and shut off the gas. Without electricity, the spiffy high-tech range with no pilot light can't start anyways, and opening the gas line later on is simple enough.

The  building manager/husband of Landlady Bambi appears, and asks me what I'm doing. After explaining the facts of life to him, he decides we should shut all the meters off. With his official approval, I now spin all the meters off. If our building does burn down, it won't be because some idjit blew the place up with leaking gas. Using candles for illumination is another kettle of fish, so it's time to beat feet for the moment.

Wife and I spend the next hour until daylight wrangling a picnic cooler, transferring the perishable food into it, gathering both our earthquake stash and as much undamaged canned goods as we can, and transferring that, stored water, clean clothes, my arsenal, and the medical stuff into our cars.

Lesson Three:
Providing yourself the means to make other life plans beats hell out of trying to do it on the fly, on the day.

Landlines are dead, and this is pre-cell phone, unless you're rich, so calling anyone is a wasted effort. At daylight, we lock the place up, and convoy the 3 miles over to her parents' house.

Lesson Four:
Despite driving like jackasses most days, when the power goes out, everyone realizes in about 0.1 seconds that every intersection is now a full 4-way stop, without anyone telling them, or any police presence whatsoever, and people get all kinds of polite, because they now know that their car is life, and can't afford to risk losing it in stupid fender-benders.

The in-laws are in similar shape, scooping up shattered bric-a-brac, except in a neighborhood of houses. Her dad has a TV set up running out of their camper, and the neighborhood has already got a couple of BBQs fired up for a community breakfast, which will be followed by a community lunch and dinner, to use up all the meat, eggs, dairy, etc. before it spoils.

So now, listening to radio and TV news coverage, we learn the location and magnitude of the disaster amidst which we just embarked upon living.

To be continued...

Technology Fail

As my last posts demonstrates, all this technology $#!^* can be double-edged sword.
Because just as the internet can deliver to me faraway places and persons at the speed of electrons, it can also take people who, 50 years ago, could have died after being eaten by wild pigs without affecting my life one whit, whereas now, the jackass in your neighborhood 10 time zones away can now also be a PITA in my electronic one now.

Take one aspect of my employment. As one might ascertain, I work occasionally in that section of the organized circus of human freaks called the movie and television production biz. (Don't tell my mom, she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.) Once upon a time, such work made the ultra high tech of a pager a necessity, so that one was reachable to arrange employment. But one might be driving, or in an area with no phones, or even working on a show out of range of the page itself, so people in the biz understood, paged you, and waited until you might have had a chance to reach a phone to call in and take the job before concluding you weren't the guy.

Then, some asshole genius invented cellphones. So now there's not a public phone anywhere, for the first time since about 1900, but everyone's connected, 24/7/365 (void in huge swaths of flyover country, deep canyons, and toney restaurants with illegal Israeli cellphone jammers). Which has occasioned what I refer to as The Assbag Page.

Instead of calling a person for a job, getting a no, or waiting a decent interval, someone trying to fill a call pages 5, 10, or 30 people simultaneously for the same job. In an industry where folks may be in a dead zone, or on a stage where they can't turn their cell phones on, answer them, or have to wait until they have a break to walk 50 yards away to return the call. So when you get up, go to where you won't disrupt the $100,000/day production actually paying you right now, to return a call about prospective work, 90 seconds after the original page, and are told "Sorry, I already filled the call", you have just been paged by an Assbag.

There might be 1 in 100 times where you needed someone right this second, or it was midnight and you needed to arrange something last minute for 5 AM or something, but by and large, that's never the case. So there's no reason to send 50 people sprinting for their phones, and dashing for the exit, knowing you're just jerking 98% of them around, for a job that's 1, 2, or more days in the future. Unless you're an unmitigated dick who deserves to be kicked in the crotch with steel-toed boots until the explosion of colors in your head fades under a haze of unconsciousness. Just saying.

So maybe the best technology is one less than cutting edge.

Once upon a time, I had a problem, in that a number of vendors of recreational pharmaceutical products decided that the corner leading to my cul-de-sac was their new retail location brainstorm.

I tried calling the local constabulary, who were attentive and understanding, until I persisted in calling with no results, and a kindly detective informed me that they'd added my corner to their List Of Things To Do, but as they were currently swarming 2 such sites a day, and mine was now number 179 on their list, it would be approximately 3 months before they could swing by. (Which, in fairness, they did do, just about exactly 3 months later.)

Enter Captain Technology to the rescue.

The main problem wasn't the street corner vendors, it was the house across the street wherein resided their supplier. I ascertained this with a brief foray of neighborhood reconnaissance over a couple of nights, after observing the one house where the corner guys and the local girlfriends for hourly rental seemed to keep visiting with an unmistakable frequency and repetition, at all hours.

A friendly visit to the local building permit office and a polite request about the owner of a certain property got me a printout with the name and phone number of that owner. Suitably pissed, but savvy, I phoned the number the city had.

I never identified myself as a federal agent, being a college student at the time, because that's not only bad, it's also generally understood to be illegal. But by the well-placed use of the royal "we", and inclusion of words like "reports", "drug activity", and "asset forfeiture", it can be understood how someone might have honestly but mistakenly assumed that they were receiving official interest from a multi-lettered federal agency. You know what happens when people assume.

All the better that I had reached not the actual owner, but instead his rather royally still-pissed-at-him ex-wife. (Guys, if you're not getting the moral here, scroll back and start over.)
Who happily told me the actual owner's current address, phone number, the name of his multi-million dollar inventory antique business which might also need to be seized, and volunteered the identity of the probable renter as the ne'er-do-well no-goodnik nephew of the former Mister @$$hole. Why thanks ma'am, thanks for your support.

A second phonecall, this time to actual owner, at actual business, with the same keywords, but now armed with the probable culprit's name and identity, a couple of pointedly interested questions about where actual owner got the money for such a lucrative business, and the reports and suspicions about drug activity, once again without ever misstating or misrepresenting my identity or occupation, brought a flood of information, including culprit's telephone number, and earnest expressions that this disturbing development would be reveiwed ASAP by the property owner, first thing next Monday.

Which, under the circumstances, still seemed like three extra days of drug dealing too many to suit me.

But at this point in civilization, modems were like NASA satellites. High tech, but not very bright.

So now knowing the actual phone number of a guy clearly dealing drugs 24/7 at the house in question, I programmed my low-tech modem to auto-dial Drug Dealer's phone. For 2 seconds. Then hang up. Then auto-dial. Then hang up. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Being before pagers OR cellphones, or even reverse dial, or caller ID, this could be seen as something that could understandably put quite a wrench in this particular monkey's business.

I can only assume it did. I started it running at 9 PM on a Friday evening. Dial, RING, click. Dial, RING, click. Dial, RING, click.

At 2:42 PM Saturday afternoon, more than 17 hours of non-stop speed-dialling later, I turned it off for 15 minutes.

Then called the number.

>Woman's voice<"HELLO!?!"

"Hi. You know, drug dealing is baaaaaaad. You should probably move out, and stop doing that. Right away."

"Why you! If we ever catch you, you miserable motherf***"- click.

Dial, RING, click. Dial, RING, click. Dial, RING, click.

At 1 AM Sunday, I stopped it again. For 20 minutes. Then called to see how business was going. (Although there had been a notable drop-off in foot traffic already.)

>Same woman< "HELLO!?!

"You mean you haven't moved out yet?"

"Hey, Dave, it's HIM again!! It's the sonofa"-click.

Dial, RING, click. Dial, RING, click. Dial, RING, click.

I turned it off again Monday at 8 AM.

When I got home from classes after lunch, a moving van was in their driveway, loading up their belongings.

No gunshots, no firebombings, no court costs. Sometimes, a little less technology is better than a little more.

So I'm thinking that makes me a Cyber-Luddite. I'm definitely in favor of making fire. But instead of sharks with frickin' laser beams, or orbital satellites focusing sunlight through diamond arrays, I'm perfectly satisfied with using napalm to do it.

Caterwauling

From my prior post, please don't think I'm biased. I like cats too. Especially with mustard and relish. (Just a little humor to torque off any PETA freaks.)

Seriously, I do like cats, and have owned a number of them. They're neater, more self-sufficient, and generally quieter and less bother than dogs.

But there are two types of cats: Your own cats. And those other blasted furry terrorists.

I was studying for finals one night. Long enough ago that the statute of limitations applies. It was about 3 AM, with me earnestly reviewing vital material, when one of the local feline lotharios decided he was in the mood, and a serenade was in order.

I'm not some puritanical prude, and feel perfectly alright about Mr. Tom finding an amenable partner where and as he may do so. I even support his right to free speech to advertise his availability.

But after an hour's enlightened outlook upon his incessant offers from a thoroughly uninterested neighborhood, and much studying yet to be done, it was time to explain the facts of life to this particular tomcat.

Unfortunately for him, he was on my street. A block north, east, or west, and he could have paraded indefinitely without incurring any of my ire. But my south windows and balcony all faced his chosen cruising territory.

Also, it was his bad luck to be white. Not caucasian, but rather, that particular shade of dirty white-furred beast that shows up handily under moonlight and streetlamps.

Strike three was my possession of a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun (without a compass on the stock or a thing which tells time, for any fans of A Christmas Story out there).

For the unitiated, the Daisy BB gun is a work of civilized art at its pinnacle. It's quiet, it's simple to operate, fairly accurate, and rather benign. By which, I mean to explain that there was no danger of killing Mr. Tom in using it to dissuade him from his amorous prowlings, due to its low power and poor penetration.

To be fair, it stings like a son-of-a-. You certainly wouldn't want to get shot in the eye or anything equally foolish. But a smack in the gluteus makes a bee sting feel like a lover's kiss.

At any rate, three strikes and Mr. Tom's out. It was time to regain the solitude of my studies.
I crept out onto the patio, and searched for my quarry. More bad juju for Tom: he was just across the street, coming right up to a conveniently lit streetlamp, and well within my weapon's range and estimable personal marksmanship skills.

One flick of the lever, then carefully sighting in like a Force Recon sniper on my little dirty white prey, and I was poised to let fly.

Ping!...............Thwapp!
REEOOOWWWWRRRRR!

If you've seen the "Bring Out Your Dead" scene in Monty Python and the Quest For The Holy Grail, I observe firsthand that a thwacked tomcat, when hit in the rear haunch, makes exactly the same noise as the cat in the movie. EXACTLY.

This one also ran back about 10 feet, then stopped, turned, and licked furiously at the mysterious affliction to his hindquarter.

Then resumed his quest for a girlfriend. Ah, the power of biology.

(Sigh.)

I re-cocked, and re-laid the front sight on the same eastern end of the westbound tomcat.

Ping!....................Thwap!
REEOOOWWWWRRRRR!!!!!

Exuent Tom Cat, stopping occasionally to lick the same pained haunch, who then continues at a high rate of speed down the street, around the corner, and off to a happier singles' scene than under my window.

And, for the "Awwwwwwww!" crowd, he left in full possession and use of all limbs, little the worse for wear. And in all honesty, he was out of water balloon range anyway.

I got an A on the final.

And if it makes anyone feel better, in my anatomy class we had to dissect a cat. I was not only a vegetarian by choice for the duration of that semester, but my assigned victim was a black and white tuxedo tomcat, the penance for which dissection moved me to find and adopt not one but two such tuxedo cats as kittens for some 12 years until their deaths as suitably aged and happy housepets. Fred and Ginger were definitely the best cats that ever were.

(Not least of which because they didn't howl all night long.)

Barking Mad

I don't dislike dogs, but I've never owned one, and was not raised with one as a family pet.

Frankly, I see this as no fault, much as I admire such loyal and faithful companions.

Why can best be explained by a lesson in my formative years. It was a balmy Southern California evening, with nothing much on TV, and little constructive I felt like doing.

What follows may help to explain the ancient Greek adage: "Beat your child once a week. Even if you don't know why you're doing it, he will."

I went and found my baby brother (who stopped being my little brother long about 4th grade, when he began to outgrow me) and we headed out to the back yard. Then we climbed up the barred window of my father's workshop, and onto the garage roof. It was the one place where we knew no adult would ever be, and our parents had long since stopped trying to keep us off of it, usually warning us only to avoid falling off and killing ourselves.

This night, it was a stage. Because we had cats, whereas nearly every other neighbor had dogs. I'd never been to their houses or yards, but I knew this was so.

I demonstrated this contention to my baby brother thusly:
"Watch this."

Whereupon I began, rather convincingly, to bark, yap, and woof. Like some scrappy mutt, I kept at it, growling, barking, and generally annoying the bejeezus out of the neighbor's two hounds. So they started barking back at me.

BB thought this was cool, but I was just getting started.

Walking to the opposite corner of the roof, I barked some more. In no time, I had the other neighbor's faithful yard patrol barking back at me.

I barked more. Louder. More frequently. Soon the dogs beyond each neighbors' house began barking back, which only intensified the dogs nearest us. I continued.

In a matter of 2-3 minutes, I'd succeeded in getting every dog in a 20-house radius to bark their fool heads off, each in turn aggravating their fellows all the more.

Then, I stopped, sat down, and basked in the cacophony of canine commotion I had ignited.
It was raucous, terrible, horrible, and glorious. It completely drowned out my laughter and that of my brother.

In another eternal 2 minutes of howling madness, porch lights began snapping on, spreading down the block like ripples on a pond, and owners' voices could be heard shushing, yelling, and berating their pets roundly and scathingly.

The din ebbed, and I immediately began egging them on, quickly rousing one and all to full voice once again.

Porch lights snapped back on, and now owners could be seen and heard going out and corraling their animals.

At this point, exuent myself and my padawan brother, having successfully killed almost 15 minutes at no cost to ourselves, with a form of entertainment whose price was above rubies, as we returned inside the only house in the neighborhood shrouded in a cocoon of blissful peace.

Community Policing

It was a Saturday afternoon in spring, late but still daylight outside, and the usual sports fare on the tube.

EEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeee!

From just outside the street-level living room window. Probably one of the two college-age romeos who lives upstairs, playing slap and tickle with one of their parade of girlfriends.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Hmmm. This sounds more serious. I suppose I'd better go and have a look.

And what to my wondering eyes should appear, but Troglodyte, First Class. Not 20 feet from my doorstep, sitting on something (someone) in the adjoining thick ivy. I can tell it's a someone because her legs and shoes are sticking out behind him.

Troggy, in fact, has his left hand pressed down about where her mouth would be, and his right is fiddling with his zipper and undercarriage. I stare in open-mouthed astonishment as he momentarily lifts his left hand to get a better grip on his trousers.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

A bloody rapist! In broad daylight! On my freakin' doorstep!
Enough of this nonsense, time to step in.

I reach behind the door. Because I usually kept there a M1903A3 Springfield rifle, loaded with 5 rounds of .30-06, with 16 inches of well-honed bayonet attached. (Marines do stuff like this.)

Except, drat, dang, coal-burning tarnation, it isn't there. The then wife-unit has decided the closet is a better place for it. 30 feet and two rooms away. Lightspeed, to the bedroom I go.

Still can't find the thing. But right handy, God bless my baby brother, is his recent birthday gift unto me:
An old-timey, double-barreled 12 ga. shotgun, complete with external hammers and twin triggers. I grab it, and a handful of shells, and load it, double-timing back to the front door in the process.

I yell to wife in the kitchen that calling 911 would probably be a great idea, snap the loaded weapon shut, and step out to face the hopefully still-present miscreant.

Oh yeah, still there, in all his glory. Legs underneath still kicking. Observing him to be of hispanic lineage, I yell both "Stop!" and "Alto!" in my best parade-ground voice. In the background, I can hear wife giving particulars to the LAPD dispatcher.

Mr. Troglodyte doesn't appear to be paying any attention to me, so I repeat myself, and hear my voice echo clear down the street. And so help me, it is basso, not scaredy-cat falsetto. I would have obeyed me, by thunder. But my voice is curiously muffled and far-away.

I see Trog's left hand come up, middle finger extended, and he's about halfmast to flipping me the bird. When he swivels his beady little would-be-rapist eyes towards the sound of my voice.
And sees me standing there in the offhand position. Looking over both 12 ga. barrels, steady as a rock. Pointed at his head.

I should note that at this time, I am viewing the world through the equivalent of a loooong, dark tunnel. Imagine poking the bottom out of two sno-cones and strapping them over your face. I am told this is common in life-or-death situations. In this case, his death, come the moment.

Realization dawns on him. I can tell this, because his eyes get as big as dinner plates. His jaw drops. He stands as if on marionette strings. His prey wriggles free and runs further down the street.

I can't shoot the SOB because she's behind him. So are the apartments and houses on the street.
&@*^! He closes his piehole, and zippers his fly in one move. And begins walking towards me, towards the open end of the cul-de-sac. Which means he has to pass right under my step. Except as he gets closer, he siddles off to the side of the parkway.
I'm the only thing between this jerk and my wife. Please, give me a reason, dirtbag.
But he doesn't. Won't even look at me as he passes 4' from the muzzles aimed at him. And continues off up the street, and at a much accelerated pace.

Son of a turd's going to get away?!?
Then I notice that this whole time, I'm barefoot.
I decide to pursue, but I need shoes. I grab them and shuffle into them in a flash, and get outside just in time to see Troglodyte turn the corner and head southward. In a flash, I run outside, 12 ga. in hand, start my waiting curbside Jeep SUV, and haul after him. I get to the corner in time to see him duck into the neighboring apartment megaplex. He's gone in 60 seconds; probably lives there. Hundreds of units. I've been in there before.

Tragically thwarted, I return to the scene. Dusk is settling. It turns out the victim was the sister of a neighbor, she fresh up from Mexico. She speaks no English, but through her brother, my heretofore unknown neighbor two doors down, she tells us that she noticed Trog follow her out of the laundromat 2 blocks away. She walked fast, he walked faster. She ran, he ran. I note that they had to pass dozens of layabouts on the cross street who watched the entire tableau, and did nothing, not even follow to watch. Dropping the laundry, she'd almost made it home when he'd tackled her in the ivy in front of my bedroom window.

He hadn't done anything but scare her, and try to hush her, when I happened along. I lived in a 40-unit apartment building, most of which faced the street in question. Across the street were 10 houses, all facing the incident. On a Saturday afternoon, with everyone home.

No one else came out to help, at any time.

Relieved and thankful that his sister was safe, my neighbor thanked me profusely as they returned home. After I helped them retrieve the dropped laundry.

Ten minutes later, a lone LAPD cruiser approached the intersection a block from the scene.
True to LAPD form, they didn't even get out of the car.
I practically had to threaten bodily harm to get them to take and put out a mere suspect description on the radio.

{Thanks for nothing, you worthless wankers. You thoroughly deserve all the thanks you don't get in that town, and twice the derision you do get.}

After LAPD's sterling service, I took it upon myself to take flashlight and suitable small arms, and survey my apartment's laundry rooms, and outside areas, before retiring to TV land.

I lived in that neighborhood for 5 years, in a building equal parts black, white, oriental, and hispanic, and never had so much as a hubcap molested after that incident.

I thought nothing of it, until some years later, one night I and a couple of neighborhood kids from the houses across the street were heading towards the sounds of fire engines around the corner to see the commotion. One of them asked me "Aren't you the guy who went after that rapist with a shotgun?"

"Uhh, yeah, that was me. You must have been in grade school then. How do you know about it?"

"Oh, my dad told me all about it."

His dad, for the record, was a stranger to me from that day to this.
But you never know what your neighbors will notice.

And to this day I regret the lack of the Springfield, which would have enabled me to drill him on the scene without any worry of damage to victim or bystanders, or even better, to be able to pin Mr. Troglodyte Rapist to a convenient tree via the pig-sticker bayonet, in order to have him on hand to turn over to the proper authorities, screaming and whining.

And had he given me cause, I'd have ventilated him with the 12 ga. with the flick of a finger. But I'm glad - really, truly glad - it never came to that. His underwear cleaning bill was hopefully punishment enough. The incident doubtless convinced him to seek greener pastures. And perhaps, just perhaps, he adopted a more suitable, and hopefully law-abiding, occupation.

Bring up the subject of gun control with me. I dare you.