Neanderpundit

and defense, and it’s excellent reading as always.

The thing you need to remember is the training and the drilling and the workout will get you to that moment. The moment when you are face to face with an attacker and you have managed to get your firearm pointed at him/her.

That moment in time is important. Either you will take out your attacker, or you will be taken out yourself, and the difference is a different kind of preparedness.

Are you prepared to take a life? Are you prepared to deal with the legal ramifications of taking a life? Are you prepared to hit the road and never go back, if you have to? Are you willing to go to jail because of what you are about to do? Odds are good that you might, in this world. Are you morally prepared to end another human life? this is not a deer or a bear. This is a human being, capable of thought, a fellow traveller no matter how deranged. Are you at peace with God and the idea that you are standing in God’s stead, preparing to take someone’s life away?

That moment when your adrenaline is pumping and your attacker’s is too, and the muzzle of the gun is trembling a bit, perhaps, that moment is not the moment to be having these thoughts. Spend a part of every day picturing yourself in that situation, so that when the time comes, you have already had that inner dialog. If you are sane, it’s a godawful decision to make, and if you are normal, if you’re not heavily prepared ahead of time, you will falter, and die.

The mental preparedness to take a life is what separates victor from victim. The will to understand when it’s time to shoot, shoot. An awful lot of people think they’re ready to make that split second decision, but until you find yourself in that situation, you just don’t know. It would be a horrible shame if, at that moment, when your physical training has saved your life, if your lack of mental preparedness lost it agian, for you.

Sherriff Tom Bell(Tommy Lee Jones) is not the hero of “No country for old men”, it’s Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). He’s the one constant in the film; he has a specific job to do, and does it, with precision and thoroughness, through the entire film. he’s portrayed as the heavy, but he is really a guy who just has a job to do, and does it extraordinarily well. He does some things that are extremely distasteful to normal people, but he has the will to do his job no matter what.

there was a Jetta on fire on the way to work. It was in the eastbound lanes while I was in the west, so it didn’t affect me, but I did get to see it, huffing and puffing smoke and belching fire from under the hood. It was a diesel, I could smell the kerosene burn.

I have been thinking about a Jetta diesel as a work car eventually, but there have been several issues; they aren’t AWD and I like AWD. I want a stick but the idea of rowing a clutch 110 miles in Chicago traffic every day doesn’t appeal too much.And now this.

I realize a diesel is much less likely to toast itself than a gas engine, but I always wonder, is it lack of maintenance that ense up with a flaming car by the road, or what? I have known people who will NOT check their car until the engine siezes, or the brakes fail, but other than normal deterioration from age and sitting (Like the brakes on Ed’s FireArrow) don’t you NOTICE that the brakes are going to shit? I guess not everyone drives enough that they can feel the squealer hit the rotor with their foot.

and I do wish the hell Velikovsky would just get to the fucking point. It’s like reading Clavell, you have to have a history lesson before he can tell you the name of the protagonist. Good lord almighty, this is almost as dull as Rand.