Fifth single from 1984's Sports from Huey Lewis and the News.
Forty years and three wars later, and the song remains the same. Just the background images have changed.
Tomorrow isn't for veterans, per se.
It's for the ones who joined, left, and never came home. Except in a box, with little more than a folded flag, and loved ones' memories left of them afterwards.
Have your barbecues. Drink your beer. Watch your sportsball. Enjoy a swim. For, and because of, those who can do none of those things, and figured securing it for you was worth the risk.
B thinks his situation is the exception to the rule, because time/distance.
Sorry, B. But almost certainly, no.
Ditto for the rest of you. I don't care where you live (unless it's Alaska, 200 miles from town, and you and your float/ski Super Cub are 9-1-1).
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Suture Self approach: You elected to self-identify as an Ambulance/Driver.
Points To Ponder:
So, if things go to total shit while you're driving someone to the ER, do you stop, pull over, and hope the ambulance - which you'll now have to call anyways - can try to find you somewhere between home and the hospital? What have you got in the car that you didn't have at home for that eventuality? Starting with space, and a well-lit area?
Or do you step on it, trusting to your cat-like reflexes and total lack of red lights and sirens to get them to the ER yourself, and hope that 14 minutes without a heartbeat or oxygen, or sufficient blood flow, can be overcome by medical arts and luck? And that you won't crash on the way, and injure or kill more people in a vehicle neither designed nor intended to transport critical patients at high speeds, with a totally untrained and emotionally compromised driver at the wheel?
What if there's a Big Accident halfway there that you can't get around or through, lacking flashing red lights and a siren?
What if the person you're bringing crumps in the parking lot of the ER, at night, and now you have to go get the ER staff to play Hide-and-Seek, in the dark, with your unconscious (or dead) relative?
What if you went to the wrong ER, because they're not the place equipped to handle the problem? What if they're closed to certain patients, because their CT scanner is down, or they have no cath lab team for a heart attack, or they're so overcrowded there's literally nowhere to treat the patient but the parking lot?
The ambulance would have known that before they got to your house; you don't.
The reason you call an ambulance is that the ambulance brings the ER to you. Paramedics were literally invented 50 years ago to prevent the exact scenario you're describing.
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I had some poor (well-meaning) jackass once decide to bring his elderly wife, with a history of cardiac problems, to the ER for chest pain, from only five minutes from the hospital. In town. With the FD's paramedics two minutes away from his house.
She went into full arrest two minutes out, and arrived DOA, and a lovely shade of gray.
And received no treatment for another couple of minutes on top of that for the time it took us to get a gurney and a team, pull her dead ass out of the car and onto the gurney as a sack of jello with sticks, start CPR in the driveway outside the waiting room, and get her inside to a treatment area.
We managed to restore a pulse after several minutes. I don't know her long-term outcome, or if she had any resultant brain damage.
I do know if he'd called 911, she would have received vastly better care, from beginning to arrival. And he wouldn't have been kicking himself for risking killing his wife because of panic.
All of the care she needed would have happened before she got to us in the back of an ambulance, i.e. instantaneously.
Every minute you go without CPR decreases your survival chances by about 7%.
And that's best-case.
(i.e., except for cold-water immersion drownings, after 15 minutes with no heartbeat, we're probably just saving the body for organ donation, and making the family feel better. Hard truth. Do CPR as long as you want. Reality is still a bitch.)
And you can't do CPR and drive a car.
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Serious bleeding?
Traumatic Full Arrest, because the victim bled out, which you can't monitor, nor do anything about while driving a car, can be managed and headed off en route by paramedics just by starting an IV and administering fluids (which you can't do either of from behind the wheel), as well as by applying the tourniquet you probably don't have, and positioning the patient better in a vehicle designed for a stretcher with a critical patient on it.
OTOH, the survival rate for TFA runs into single digits.
And that's if you're smart enough to go to a trauma hospital (which - NewsFlash! - isn't every ER).
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Anaphylactic shock, with closure of the airway?
What, you have no meds for treating that on hand? You can't intubate en route? Bummer.
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And on and on.
There are rare exceptions to the rule, and there's always sheer dumb luck, but as a general rule, the impulse to scoop-and-go on your own with no medical capability en route is a foolish one, with statistics to match, and you're throwing dice with Death with someone near and dear to you as the chip pile, every time you do it.
Anybody that survived riding with you could have waited for paramedics at home, where you don't have your hands full of steering wheel, and can do things that can actually help if they get worse.
You fly planes, B.
In your terms, you're the guy telling the CFI/CATP with 20,000 hours you know better, and hoping you get back to the field before you run out of altitude, airspeed, and ideas.
Some few times, it might work.
Mostly, not.
The quote about bold pilots comes to mind.
If arrival time of medical aid is an issue, you're far better off getting medical training yourself and having a basic kit, than you are trying to be Mario Andretti.
Even if you live in BFEgypt.
The only transport that should ever be contemplated is to move them to a more advantageous location for either a handoff (say, at the dirt road where a maze of unmarked country roads meets paved highway), or getting them out of a forest or canyon to someplace where emergency vehicles or a helicopter can make a rendezvous/find an LZ.
Even then, all the drawbacks I noted still apply.
You should probably have at minimum two people to transport, so somebody is monitoring the patient at all times, with enough kit to intervene, within your training and abilities. If you haven't got that, the odds of making things worse rather than better just multiply.
And the time to play what-if, just like with flying, isn't after all the yellow and red lights on your panel start coming on.
You grok flight plans to the max, amirite?
So make a Medical Action Plan.
Talk with somebody local with serious medical training, and work out now what to do ahead of time for your exact area/situation, instead of trying it on-the-fly after your adrenaline has pegged at 11.
Billy Joel hid out in L.A. playing piano at the Executive Lounge on Wilshire in the early '70s, which gave him his signature hit "Piano Man". When he'd sorted out his problems with the record company that totally screwed up mastering his initial album (on which he sounded like a chipmunk, with the instruments sounding normal), he wrote this tune to commemorate returning home to NY, and first released it on Turnstiles in '76.
Be it known herewith that we do award Elias Armstrong, aged 12 (forever!), with the FAFO Medal. Being deceased in his enterprise, and owing entirely to it, Subject-Named @$$hole also merits the attachment of the gold star device, denoting a posthumous ultimate award.
The car's owner tracked the vehicle using an app and found it stopped in the area of West 12th Avenue and North Decatur Street.
"When the vehicle’s owner approached the car, he was involved in an exchange of gunfire with occupant(s) in the stolen vehicle," according to investigators. "A juvenile male then drove the stolen vehicle to the 2900 block of W. 10th Ave. where he was found by officers to be suffering from a gunshot wound."
To be blisteringly precise, when the vehicle's owner approached his stolen property, the vehicle's occupants, being the culpable thieves of such property, opened fire on him, which prompted him to return same with both elán and a smile, giving much better accuracy in return than he received initially.
The DAIQ was not found "suffering from a gunshot wound", so much as he was found to be expired from one. Huzzah! Suffering, at that point, was a metaphysical impossibility.
"Armstrong was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
It appears other occupants of the stolen vehicle "fled on foot from the 2900 block of W. 10th Ave. prior to officers’ arrival."
This being the textbook definition of Fucked Around, Found Out (with meritorious expiration in the process!), DAIQ more than qualifies as the latest recipient of the Trayvon Memorial Award, and automatic nomination to the Darwin Awards for further recognition, having thoughtfully and happily departed the gene pool without depositing within its confines any subsequent generation of even more wastes of skin and oxygen as himself and his ilk.
In recognition of which thoughtfulness, we offer a hearty
O frabjous day! Callou! Callay!
DAIQ's family members, having come to our attention for meritless, gratuitous, and prolonged BMWing (Bitching, Moaning, and Whining) over the loss of their littlest family fuck up, ought to be glad that the citizens of Denver do not issue Shoot On Sight warrants on the entire loud-mouthed clan of shitbags, with any such additional expungement of the gene pool thereabouts visited upon his relatives and their shyster mouthpieces being declared a public service deserving of further recognition and civic commendation, even if it erased their entire line(s) from further contributions to society.
We further commend the vehicle's owner, for both his civic contributions and marksmanship, and note that the mayor and police chief of Denver owe him a written commendation, and a token box of ammunition as recompense for the lifetime of criminal activity and legal gymnastic exhibitions from which he proactively spared both the citizens of Denver, and the courts and prison system of the state of Colorado.
One can but hope that the other participants are apprehended, as the death of their accomplice makes all of them eligible for capital murder charges in the entire incident. Notably, no one in the DAIQ's family appears to be forthcoming with the identities of those little bastards. Maybe they, too, will win their own FAFO Medals in their inevitable subsequent future exploits.
Decided to do a 'net dig on that plane, just because.
Note to self: Be careful what you dig up. Probably better not to do that.
Wouldn't you know:
F-4 tail number 63-7656
"with 497th TFS, 8th TFT shot down by unknown gunfire while attacking boats near Ba Don, Quang Binh Province, North Vietnam Mar 3, 1967. Crew MIA"
Unit: The Night Owls
Station: Ubon Thailand '65-'74.
Maj Floyd Richardson
"Major Floyd W. Richardson was the pilot, and Lt.Col. Charles D. Roby the weapons/systems operator of an F4C Phantom fighter/bomber dispatched on a combat mission over North Vietnam on March 3, 1967. At a point near Ba Don in Quang Binh Province, the aircraft was shot down. Neither man was recovered, and both were classified Missing in Action.
When American prisoners were released from POW camps in 1973, Richardson and Roby were not among them. The Vietnamese denied any knowledge of them. Then in late 1989, it was announced that the Vietnamese had "discovered" the remains of Richardson and Roby and had returned them to U.S. control. For these two pilots, at least, the war was finally over.
Richardson and Roby were among nearly 2500 who remained unaccounted for at the end of the war. Of this number, nearly 100 were known to have been prisoners of war, yet were not returned. Others were mentioned by name by the Vietnamese to other U.S. prisoners, yet did not return. Military authorities were horrified in 1973 that "hundreds" thought to be prisoner were not released."
It's amazing what you can find out on the internet with a few mouse clicks.
Sophomore album hit opening 1976 for the Captain and Tenille and peaking at #4 for them, covering the #2 1960 original by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, of a song Rolling Stone voted into the Greatest 500 Of All Time. And still good advice.
Divemedic has elected to close his blog. His house, his rules.
Regarding whomever he was referring to in the latest post, I say only this.
1) Nobody is going to be "stacking up" on anyone, anywhere. Probably ever.
2) Some people - including folks some imagine are just "hiding behind a keyboard" - may have already "stepped up". If they did or do, the internet will be the last place to find out. The last of the Three Esses is "Shut up." For a reason.
3) We're already in a war. But like popcorn, it's only a few random kernels popping off. For the moment. 700,000 illegal aliens storming the border may alter that equation somewhat. Time will tell.
4) But what's beyond argument is that the ballot box has been taken away.
The soap box is on the endangered species list, whether you're a blogger, or the most popular newscaster in broadcast news.
The jury box is on life support, with daily back-and-forth battles between communist activist judges, and strict Constitutional constructionists occurring by the day, from coast to coast.
TPTB have been coming at the cartridge box using the other three boxes for the last 50 years and more, relentlessly.
5) The obvious question for anyone not insane has to be: Just how far up your leg and ass does the alligator have to swallow you before you think things are getting serious?
As my last essay pointed out, I don't think "organization", at this point is going to happen. Americans have a long and distinguished history of waiting until it's obvious to deaf and blind people that something needs to be done, before doing anything collectively. True from the 1700s to five seconds ago.
6) Meanwhile:
You have a demented, senile, drooling, babbling, doddering puppet installed in the Oval Office, with a certified moron and another senile drunkard idiot in the #2 and #3 slots.
Stevie Wonder, from space, can see the 2020 election was a total and complete fraud.
Epstein didn't kill himself.
Most of TPTB visited his island. None of them has been even investigated, let alone indicted.
A retarded former bartender, on a $155k/yr congressweasel salary, is worth $29M dollars after less than 6 years in office. No investigation or charges have been filed.
A local prosecutor in a blue hive has indicted the political opposition's frontrunner less than two years out from the next national elections, in a page from Banana Republic 101.
The entire military has been gutted, first with COVIDiocy, and now with pinktarded wokeism so rank it reeks to space. A quarter to half of all US military pilots are probably medically unfit to fly, and none of the services can make their recruitment quotas. We're headed for a mandatory draft in less than 5 years if this continues.
Most of unemployed Mexico, Central, and South America, along with a healthy contingent from Africa, Asia, Trashcanistan, and Shitholia lies poised at the Southern Border to overwhelm all life as you know it north of Brownsville, as we type this.
Your dollars, in real terms, are worth less than the ink and paper it took to create them, in flashbacks to Weimar, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela. And if the economy crashes, nothing you own that you can lay hands on will be worth a plugged nickel, including your pension, retirement benefit guarantees, savings, or anything else. We're talking Mad Max for real, which could happen in twenty years from now, or twenty minutes. Nobody knows which.
7) Now, looking at just that, anyone that thinks that internet rhetoric about what's already been inflicted on us is the most pressing concern in the country, signify by standing on your head, and clapping your hands.
We've been under attack for years. Like SAfrican farmers, the body count's getting obvious to anyone looking, from anywhere.
Some people are going to decide they've had enough. The smart ones are going to do something about it, as they can, when they can, to whomever they can. They're not going to advertise, or cock-a-doodle-doo.
They're just going to do what they think needs to be done.
They're going to Shoot.Shovel.*And Shut Up.
Eventually, that may become noticeable. Whether it does or doesn't, everyone is going to have to decide to get in that game, or just watch.
That's a you problem, not a me or an us problem.
Because if you do it, I don't want to know. And if I do it, I'm not telling. Not you, not anybody, not ever.
Anybody who does is a pure Grade AAA Idiot.
But It's. Going. To. Start. Happening.
Best to wrap your head around that reality. As opposed to waiting until it smacks you in the face like someone swinging a frozen cod.
The deafening silence to that last essay I wrote signifies a lookieloo to pipehitter ratio of about 100:1. Maybe even smaller than that. (The entire French Resistance under the Nazis was never more than 3% of the country, BTW.)
Twas ever thus.
But it's a big damned country. FTR, 1% of the country is bigger than the entire military and police, combined. 50,000 Taliban bested us in A-stan, and 500 PIRA boyos ran the entire British nation ragged for 50 years.
And some of the police and military are also in that 1% anyways. (That fact keeps TPTB awake at night.)
Hard times require hard goods, hard men, and hard friends. If you haven't got you some of each of those, best be about that mission, with a will and a purpose.
Say what you want. IDGAF. Do (or don't do) whatever you want. You will anyways. Go in peace.
But if things really are peachy where you're at - for the moment - or if you're too chickenshit to ever step up (I make no judgements in that respect either way) at least stay up on the porch with the small dogs, or just hold your peace, instead of yipping "You go first!"; let other people do what they will, and don't be getting all pissy about what you're not ready for. Yet. Time will tell who's right or wrong, and you may get off the porch one day of necessity, and wish you didn't have to walk back anything from sunnier days.
Mel Gibson's Patriot was the loudest voice at the town hall meeting for avoiding war and bloodshed. Until his ox was gored, his son was shot, his house was burned, and another son trundled off to be hanged.
He didn't post a declaration on the church door. He didn't run to the neighbor's house. He grabbed his tools, and got to work his ownself.
If you think there's not a lesson there for anyone with eyes and ears, you aren't paying close enough attention. May God make you fast and accurate when the time comes.
*Shovel: Sometimes a great idea. Sometimes entirely optional. LGOPs on D-Day ambushed an entire German patrol, then left the dead with their severed heads in their laps. Sometimes, Western Union isn't the best way to send a message. YMMV.
This, any pair of sunglasses or colored/tinted safety glasses, and any version of face diaper of your choice provides 100% defeat of facial recognition, for anyone seriously concerned about that. Low-tech solutions to high-tech problems FTW. (And yes, they come in black for P.O.C., and various other shades.)
If anyone gives you any crap, say you're taking COVID precautions, and tell them to MYOB.
Bonus points for making your own Deadpool or Spiderman mask instead which takes about $20 worth of material from Joanne's, Hobby Lobby, Michael's Crafts, etc., and a modicum of skill.
Then you can just say you're a huge Marvel fan.
Unless you're in a bank, and someone there is pointing a gun at you.
Otherwise, ROWYBS.
Gait analysis? Walking stick/cane. Rock in your shoe. Heavy backpack on one side.
You're welcome.
License plate readers?
With two pieces of 6" x 12" carboard, a set of colored Sharpies, and a grade-school ability to trace and color, you can have any license plate you want*. Including the mayor's, or the chief of police in your town. So I've heard. Check local laws. Do not iron shirt while wearing. Remove pizza from box before eating.
Follow me for more privacy tips.
*{For a small fee at the 'zon, you can also buy replicas of Jim Rockford's Firebird plates, Magnum P.I.'s Ferrari tags, Steve McQueen's fastback tags, or a set from Doc Brown's time-traveling DeLorean, among dozens of available options. This ain't rocket science. Just saying.}
2) "Three can keep a secret, if two are dead." - Benjamin Franklin
3) Submitted for your approval: If things are so bad that something needs doing, STFU, identify a target, and go do it yourself.
Nobody else is there to dime you out. There's no evidentiary trail. If we're suffering the death of 1000 cuts, imagine if one good prick received another in response, from a headless, leaderless amalgamation of 1000 people tired of Leftarded bullshit.
Somebody's a public face of societal destruction?
Any they suddenly got undone?
You believe in individual responsibility? Great. Stop looking for Fearless Leader to hold your hand, wipe your butt, and tell you what to do, when, where, or to whom.
Figure it out yourself, and just git 'er done. No waiting for someone else to tell you it's time, or it's okay, or it's not. No conspiracy to be prosecuted. No whining from the perennially slothful about Feebie McGlowballs the instigating C.I.
I'm not telling you to do or not do anything.
I'm telling you to figure it out for yourself. And do what seems best in your own mind. Nobody can hack that, nobody can read that, and nobody else can ever predict that. If in any one month 1000 Leftards randomly selected had themselves an accident, by the month after that, the species would be on the Endangered List.
And that could no more be stopped - by anyone - than you could command the waves to cease crashing ashore.
And the minute any thousand people on one side decide it's time to dish out their own version of a cut apiece, the Death Of A Thousand Cuts stops from the other side. With all the suddenness of Moldylocks getting punched in the face, or Trayvon becoming a good little criminal, or a BLM rioter or two getting Rittenhoused.
Without any plan per se, no video, no trials, just a sudden surplus number of casualties of what has been, thus far, a largely casualty-free operation: the destruction of civil society.
When egregious civilizational destruction needs skin in the game, the lemon will rapidly become not worth the squeeze.
As an added bonus, the other side is suddenly 1000 Useful Idiots lighter on the scales.
Think it over.
Local, Local, Local is largely a matter not so much of where, but rather one of whom.
The Roman legions were trained to where each man was only responsible for destroying the enemy in the three square feet to their direct front. They conquered most of the known world like that.
And as they say in the Navy, if you clean the edges and corners, the middle of the deck will take care of itself.
So if you see something that needs doing, stop waiting for Ironman, Hulk, and Captain America to show up.
"If everyone sweeps up in front of their own house, all the world's sidewalks will be clean."
Believe it or not, this was the Sunday Music pick I'd long had pre-scheduled for this week. And then on Tuesday, he passed away.
With Lightfoot's passing this week, it's already popped up multiple places. I repeat my comments first posted on Mike's Cold Fury site:
The list of classic Gordon Lightfoot music is damned near everything he ever recorded. Just his Top Ten would dwarf most people’s and group’s entire catalogs. And none of them, AFAIK, have suffered a whit with age.
Not bad for one guy with a guitar. 84 years? One helluva run.
The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald is an unquestioned multi-generational classic. I've already put up 3 or 4 other Lightfoot pieces as Sunday Music picks, but to mark his passage, here are a few others for your week. The hardest thing to do isn't to pick worthy Lightfoot works; the true challenge is to find a bad one.
Nothing special going on. Just took a few days off for binge-watching a couple of series I never got around to when they were running. No commercials. No cliffhangers. Just cold drinks and handy snacks, while doing a lot of nothing, in between naps.
Free car wash the other night when it rained like hell until mid-morning.
Couple of shopping trips to places that sell toys for grown-ups.
Generally doing a lot of nothing in between stints at work, lifeguarding in the shallow end of the gene pool. A job that waits on human stupidity for business will never want for customers, including folks old enough to know better who still find brave new ways to donate internal organs. Hope you're well.
