By far one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do here lately in preparation for the move I finished today: packing away all my larger fighting knives.
Sure, I still have my pistols and my rifles available to me — and a few smaller knives, including a “semi-auto” retractable and an “executive letter opener” made out of hardened resin, intended to beat metal screeners. And yes, my bear traps are still quite ready to take a limb if needs be. Too, I still have any number of baseball bats and fighting sticks that I could do some damage with in a pinch — and my crossbow isn’t ever that far away that I can’t make a dash for it and plant an expanding tip blade formation into an eye at medium range.
— But there’s something so incredibly tactile about a K-bar or a Cold Steel Japanese edged knife that makes locking them away in a taped-up old Corona box quite upsetting, like putting a loved pet up for adoption, or, say, not being able to stab some meddlesome solicitor offering “free” roof inspections repeatedly in the trunk and neck with enough force that you can literally cut bone on your way to seeing him fall dead at your feet, the spray of blood and the emptying of entrails or neck sinew a warm, viscous balm to the hand, the wrist, and — if you’re especially blessed and especially skilled — the elbow, the upper bicep and triceps region, and even the front delts.
Ah. Such poignancy! Such sorrow! Such a goddamn shame.
Though on the glass-half-full side, I did just find a Guinness hiding in the back of the fridge! So there’s that.
I’m glad I don’t have your dry-cleaning bills.
Ever since my last hard-drive crash the only means I still possess for doing grievous bodily harm is a dead-on accurate Gorgon stare a la Hillary.
I’ve never been able to perfect an imitation of Obama giving a speech because if I get too good at it I start bleeding out my own ears after just a few words.
Most of which are first-person pronouns…
But…but…I thought all your firearms went down to the bottom of the lake in the boating accident???
Heh. Edgy!
By available maybe he meant “nearby”
Jeff, no reason to feel sad, you should take comfort in the fact that you could kill most ordinary men with your bare hands. An added bonus is that cleanup is easier without all that messy arterial spray.
I feel your pain, Jeff.
Guns are the requisite defense against a potentially armed assailant, but blades are so wonderfully personal.
Greetings:
It was back during my military daze that I had my first attack of bayonetophobia. When our Drill Sergeants would force march us draftees out to the bayonet training area, have us affix a not very long knifey-looking thingy to the business end of a perfectly good shooting iron, and then run us full-speed at a bunch of used tires into which we were to stick the pointy end of the aforementioned underdeveloped knifey thingy all the while shouting at the top of our already overworked lungs, “The purpose of the bayonet is to kill”, I couldn’t help but think that these almost-adult supervisors of ours were out of their ever loving one-track minds. So, being a fairly autonomous Private from the Bronx of the day, I decided to offer the nearest individual whose sleeves had more stripes that mine ever would, my take on our current endeavor. So, I says, “Hey Sargey baby, how’s about we change our explication to something along the lines of, “The purpose of the bayonet is to remind all of us to bring plenty of ammo.” ? “Wouldn’t that be less labor intensive and saving all that carbon dioxide that we would be exhaling would probably give us a headstart on that global warming problem that will be showing up in about 30 years ?”
Well, it turns out that the aforementioned Sargey baby was uninterested in either the global environment or why own personal mental health. Thus, my bayonetophobia took hold of every fiber of my being (and upon my return to civilian life, it morphed into the even more crippling kitchenophbia, but that’s a bit off-topic if you know what I mean). Things progressed steadily downhill from there, especially when I started my all-expense-paid vacation (they told me) tour of somewhat sunny Southeast Asia where there were, in lieu of cabana boys, an awful lot of misguided miscreants with, instead of drink trays, these gunny looking thingies with perpetually attached bayonety thingies that still haunt me to this day (and especially when I’m wanted on the kitchen). It was just so much longer than ours, that, if it wasn’t for my already established phobia, it would certainly have given me a severe case of bayonet-envy. It was way long, with a tapered triangular shaft and instead of ending in a pointy point, it ended in a tip like a regular screwdriver. (Those little devils were multitasking when Bill Gates was not yet a gleam in his father’s eye.)
So, things were looking kind of grim for my mother’s favorite and only son. But then, one day not long after, a (pre-DADT) man came into my life to lead me through and out of the darkness. He was long and tall, much like my self, and always spoke the truth, not so much like myself. All his sleeves were be-striped. His first name was Platoon and his last name was Sergeant and thus he spaketh unto me, “The basic combat load is 22 magazines; we hump 29.”
Yeah, 11Bravo, but those were those rinky-dink, undersized 20 round magazines.
Any rusty scimitars in your collection? I hear they’re all the rage these days…
No vintage Randall?
Jeff, have you considered the Kershaw Ken Onion Chive Pocket Knife? Amazingly sharp and opens with just the press of a finger. Then there is the Kershaw Ken Onion Blur, a bit larger and more formidable than the Chive, yet still pocketable.
good allan jeff you attract funny/crazed fiction writers
well i be goofball too
Casting Crowns – All You’ve Ever Wanted
i heard the piano piece in that song today as bumper music on a syndicated talk show today. breitbart :politics is downstream of culture
Rabbi Joseph Raskin shot dead on way to Miami shul
August 9, 2014 9:38pm
Abercrombie, who has spent nearly 40 years in Hawaii politics, is the first Hawaii governor to lose to a primary challenger and only the second not to win re-election. His defeat comes after President Obama last month urged residents of his native state to back Abercrombie, invoking the Hawaiian word for family in a radio ad, saying Abercrombie is “like ohana to me.”