Generally, knockoffs aren’t as good as the original.

Our Man Flint? Not as cool as James Bond.

Mello Yello? Not Mountain Dew. Not by a long shot.

John Cafferty? A great night out at a bar, but no Springsteen.

Hot Gear Friday? Can’t hold a candle to Hot Chick Friday.

But every once in a while, the copy confounds expectations.

Everyone who deserves the right to vote knows the Gibson SG:

Originally putatively a lighter, double-cutaway version of the Les Paul, (whre “lighter Les Paul” makes about as much sense as “Lamborghini with a Hyundai engine”), it’s most famous as Angus Young’s main guitar this past thirty years or so.
And I always hated ’em; after years of playing the slim, elegant neck of my Fender Jazz, playing the SG felt like a thick piece of firewood; the fingerboards always seemed soft, almost porous. Maybe I’ve tried bad guitars – but every SG I’ve ever played felt cheap.

So you’d think the cheap knock-off would be a real doozy – right?

Well, no.

Ibanez guitars was, and is, a company based in Japan that started in the late sixties and early seventies making knock-off guitars. And one of their mid-seventies efforts was the SG:

If you look online, sellers will refer to various early-mid ’70s Ibanezes as “Lawsuit Models”, because – well, in 1975, Gibson sued Ibanez for copying Gibson guitars down to the absolute finest details of their designs (tuning machines, headstocks, truss rods…everything). Ibanez responded by changing some of the details…

…which is where my old SG comes in. It is a virtual dead-ringer for the red Gibson at the top of this post – but for the “Gibson” marque on the headstock, it could be the same axe.  I bought it from a friend in 1979, after he’d gotten it from a second-hand store for $90. I’m not sure if it was built immediately before the lawsuit (it looked exactly like a factory SG) or immediately after (the neck was thinner and slicker; the rosewood fingerboard was much nicer than any SG I’ve ever played). But it is a sweet guitar – especially after I dropped a Seymour Duncan “Jeff Beck” pickup in the bridge position (think “Hyundai with a Lamborghini engine”).

If you can find one, and you have a choice between saving your significant other’s life with a rare but relatively inexpensive surgery, and buying the SG – well, save you significant other. Duh. And then buy the SG.

If you have a heart arrhythmia and a doctor has told you to avoid excessive excitement, skip this post, in which Tom Elko answers the question “has the Minnesota Monitor turned into a syndication repeater for Dump Bachmann (a stalkerblog whose stopwatch ticked past 20:00 about two years ago)?” with a rousing “heck, yeah!”

But don’t give up yet!  Because while the Dump pioneered the edgy blogging technique of copying and pasting entire comment threads from other blogs’ comment sections, Elko has taken us that extra step  beyond that we’ve come to expect from the Monitor.

That’s right; they’re now reprinting transcripts of phone conversations!  In this case, between long-time Bachmann-derangement posterboy Bill Prendergarstst and Rep. Bachmann’s various staffers:

BP: I’m trying to get to [former chief of staff] Andy Parrish.

Male Bachmann Staffer: He, uh…Hold on real quick.

(Put me on hold. After about a minute.)

Presson [the new chief of staff]: Hello, this is Michelle, how can I help you?

BP: I’m trying to get a hold of Andy Parrish, please.

Presson: Is Andy a friend of yours?

Presson: No, I’m not a friend, I’ve spoken to him before–

Presson: Andy isn’t here now, would you like to leave your information and if he calls I’ll give it to him? What’s your name?

BP: I’m Bill Prendergast.

Presson: Oh, Bill Prendergrass, with the Daily Kos, right?

BP: Well, sometimes I write stuff and submit it to the Daily — Look, I’m just calling to try to get in touch with Andy …

Presson: Are you a friend of his?

BP: Well, no, we’re not friends, I spoke to him during the last campaign–

Presson: (pleasantly) I’m sorry, we don’t give out personal information about the staff–

Oh, it gets better!

Oh, I’m sorry.  I lied.  It does not.  It stays right about there.

Coming soon:  Sixth District GOP grocery lists!

(Look at it this way:  it’s $1,500 a month that George Soros isn’t getting anything useful out of…)

How Hanoi Jane spent her summer:

How Cmdr. McCain spent his:

Hey, they even have the same hand gesture…:

Jane and her friends had their rallies…:

[UPDATE:  Oops – that one’s a hoax.  I even remember something about that.  Blah.  Since I’m not Sixty Minutes, “fake but accurate” doesn’t cut it.  My bad.   But this one’s real…]

…and Mac? Well, he and his friends really had only one:

Oh, yeah; Fonda has endorsed Obama.

Ed writes:

In fact, Obama’s campaign will probably keep their heads down and hope this passes quickly. McCain’s narrative as a Vietnam War POW who suffered torture while Fonda gave his captors photo-ops will resonate even further if she takes to the stump on Obama’s behalf. Her presence would draw connections between Obama’s anti-war supporters and the radicals — like Ayers and Dohrn — of Fonda’s generation. While that might thrill the MoveOn crowd, it will likely lose Obama the heartland, independents, and centrists who will balk at that kind of radicalism, especially while the more moderate option in McCain is available.

Some might be surprised that Fonda didn’t support Hillary Clinton in gender solidarity. Hillary, in this one case, probably isn’t among them, but instead relieved to avoid Fonda’s baggage.

Well, if Obama wants it kept on the down-low, give the man what he wants.

Oh, the hell.

HANOI JANE ENDORSES OBAMA

There. I feel better now.

My schedule is fairly out of control today. Posting will be a little on the light side.

Of course, it occurs to me I’ve said that before some of the heaviest posting days I’ve ever had.

So we’ll see, I guess.

Brad Carlson reminds us that today’s the birthday of the patriarch of the MOB’s First Family, and the MOBster who vies with me for title of “most voluble Springsteen fan”, John “Not That One” Stewart of Night Writer.

I think we might be tryng to get together with him at a certain Irish joint this evening, maybe. Stay tuned.

“MLP” is married to the guy who coached my college’s basketball team when I was in school, whom I remember mainly for being the only other guy in Jamestown who’d ever heard of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, much less being a fellow fan.

And her little sister is Katie “Yucky Salad” McCollow and their brother Bill, who are both two of the funniest bloggers in the Twin Cities (but you knew that, and most of you read them, hence they’ll be part of a future series called “Minnesota Blogs You Probably Are Reading”, which might just start any day now), and her other brother is Joe, who lived down the hall from me, and across the quad from this person in college…

…OK, I seem to have subreferenced myself into a corner.

Anyway – MLP writes “Casual Sundays with Mr. Curry“, which “does low-key and droll” the way little sister Katie does “side-splitting”.

It’s a lot of “family life” stuff – where “family” means a bunch of wryly-drawn kids and a bunch of siblings whose biography could be called “Seven Brides for Seven Itinerant Basketball Coaches…”

Oh, dear. Again, I’ve slipped down a long tangent.

Which is kinda how “Casual Sundays” rolls, anyway.

“I did four pages, no sweat,” [son] told me. “And at the end, we were supposed to come up with a metaphor for hope. I wrote ‘Hope is a fish; it breathes where there is no air.’.”

“Hey, that’s good.” I said, “Where did you get that?”

“I pulled it right outta my butt!”

My son, the poet.

Oh, there’s tons more.

It was 2AM, Thursday, April 3, 1988.

The previous day had been pretty much like every other day, these days.

I had gotten up up around ten.

I’d started keeping my radio station calling to Mondays; the long-distance bills were sorta out of hand, if I didn’t ration things.  And there was really not much going on, anyway.

I walked Mookie.  I went to the library.

I drove out to City Limits, the bowling-alley bar in Rosemount, and worked the evening.  It was a slow, dull evening, like all weekday evenings at Jams.

I drove home, stopping at Perkins in Apple Valley, at the corner of Cedar and 42, to grab an idle late-night snack.  I loved the potato pancakes – although I never figured out why they served ’em with syrup.  Potato pancakes were like fluffy hash browns; we all know that ketchup is the only acceptable topping.

It was probably 2:15AM as I went to the counter to pay.  I took out my checkbook and filled it in…

…April 3.

It’d been a year since I’d gotten whacked at KSTP.  One year to the day.

And I’d not made one millimeter of progress.  Things had gotten worse, in fact.  I hadn’t had a voice-over job since October; I hadn’t sold a newspaper article since January.

Of course, I’d stopped trying to do either.   Pointing that out to myself made it worse.

The anniversary sat in my stomach like an undigested golf ball as I drove back to Saint Paul.

Now I was depressed.

We’ve ripped on “MNBlue” before; in a city full of batsh*t-crazy leftyblogs, it may be the dumbest of the lot.

And of the whole crew, “Grace Kelly” may be the worst of the lot. Grace is a flaming liberal (which is fine), and a 9/11 Truther (which is not).

And this is her idea of an April Fool’s joke:

Being lefties in Saint Paul, it’s easy for people like “MNBlue” to think that everyone agrees with ’em.

It’d be really cool if they were to get the word that politicizing the 35W Bridge disaster this crudely and stupidly is lame, even for someone as deeply dim and morally myopic as Grace Kelly.

Say, through a bunch of firm, polite, but forceful comments explaining exactly why this is so deeply, abidingly moronic.

Hypothetically, of course.

Michael writes:

Less than two weeks ago, the Minnesota DFL and liberal blogs screamed foul when images of the 35-W bridge collapse were used in an issue ad about Senator Coleman’s leadership.

MN Publius called labeled the ad “exploitive” and the DFL Party said that “Senator Coleman’s shadowy supporters are politicizing the tragic I-35W bridge collapse for his and their own benefit.

Living in a one-party town means never needing to develop a sense of shame.

Sean, the alpha gigglyfratboy at MNDFLPressReleaselius MNPublius, really really thought he had something “light” this morning: some dirt on Derek Brigham, graphics designer to the center-right stars and a principal at FreedomDogs and True North:

The designer of MDE’s and David Strom’s website(s) is compared to a propagandist for Stalin on his website.

“If Derek Brigham lived in the Soviet Union he would have designed propaganda posters for Stalin.“

Some things in this world are funny. Millions of dead Russians– are not not funny.

I’ll cut Sean the benefit of a doubt and assume the double negative was not not not an endorsement of genocide.

The little feeling in your stomach when you just thought about the fact that the guy who designed the David Strom’s website was compared to Stalin’s propagandist?

That deserves a chuckle.

Not as big as the one that Sean deserves.

A little bird – in this case, a source with very close knowledge of both parties to the quote on Derek’s site – writes:

If they knew anything about Pavel [the author of the quote] they would know how much he hates the commies, he grew up under them as a Speznatz [special forces] trainer in Latvia. [Russian Constructivist-influenced design motif is a] tip to his Russian heritage and the great determation in sports with a healthy dose of disdain for the communist shackles it was under.

Wow.

That’d be really embarassing – to try to link a blogger (not to mention David Strom, the most liberty-conscious pundit in the Twin Cities) to Stalin, and then find out you’d not only extracted the wrong motivation, but done it in a way that the originator of the quote would probably find deeply insulting, to say nothing of incredibly presumptuous.

You’d think after last week’s “McCain’s Teeth” incident, the Twin Cities Sorosphere would learn to “be quiet and be thought a fool, rather than open their mouths and remove all doubt”.

(more…)

The tang of cold on my cheek told me it was chilly in the apartment. But under the big quilt, it was still warm. I opened my eyes, rubbed a little sleep out with my left hand, and lightly blew a few strands of her black hair out of my face. I wrapped my hand around her waist as she slept, savoring a few more warm minutes before I began the longest three days of my life so far.

The alarm clock read 5AM; a half hour until it was supposed to ring, and I was already burning daylight. I slowly pulled my right arm from under her head, trying not to disturb her. I had…well, we both had big days coming up.

Slowly – like defusing a land mine – I drew my arm away, slowly lowering her head onto the pillow. No time like the present. I counted to three…

…as she reached behind her and grabbed my arm. I wasn’t going anywhere.

———-

The alarm clock read 6:30. I tilted my head. “Hon, I gotta meet someone. I got a job today”.

She pouted theatrically as she pulled the covers back over her shoulders. “Oh, I know. I gotta get up too…”. She didn’t move.

I stuck my foot out from under the quilt. I took a deep breath, and drawing on a reserve of strength I never knew I had, flipped the quilt off and jumped up. Then it was down on the floor, where I started my morning regimen with my first 100 pushups.

“So…what…choo…got…going…on…?” I panted between reps.

“I got a screen test”, she said, gathering the quilt tighter around her shoulders. “With Joe Pesci”.

“Wow…the guy…from…the Godfather?” I wheezed as I ground through the forties.

“Er…naw. But close. Anyway, I’m not sure what I’m going to use for my audition…”

86…87…She needs a break, I thought. She hadn’t had a good gig since she’d been dropped from the cast of some Lisa Bonet vehicle a few years earlier.

“You’ll…do…fine…”, I said, finishing off the last few pushups one-handed.
“So what you got?” she asked, grinning wistfully as I finished and started putting on my stuff for my morning six mile run.

“Talking with a guy about a job. Never met him.”

“What kind of job?”

“Probably over in Asia. The guy I’m meeting handles mostly Asia stuff, so that’s kinda how they roll”.

“It’s gonna be nasty, isn’t it?” she asked ruefully, rolling onto her stomach and turning to look at me from under the quilt, her soft brown eyes looking just a little moist.

“I doubt it”, I lied. “I’m due for a milk run. Hey – what should I wear?”

She thought for a second. “Imagine you’re a terrorist. You’re sneaking along. You get thirsty. You spot a little brook. You put your little terrorist lips down to the cool, clear water – an’ BAM. A f*ckin’ bullet rips off part of your head. Your brains are lying on the ground in little bloody pieces. Now I ask ya, would you give a f*ck what the guy who shot you was wearing?”

I looked at her, mildly stunned.

She grinned and rolled her eyes.

“Hon? Remember that bit for that audition, OK?”

We laughed as we kissed goodbye.

———-

She’d left for her screen test when I got back from running. I showered up and walked over to the little Greek cafe down on the corner. Mrs. Kiriakos was at the counter, as usual.

“Καλημερα, Μιτσελ!”, she greeted me as she did every morning, with a broad grin and a cup of Καφες ready to go.

“Καλημερα, κ. Κυριακο! Τι ειναι καλο για το πρωινο σημερα?”, I said, feeling that rumbling I usually got in my stomach this time of the morning. Of course, the answer was rarely in doubt…wait for it…

“Χαζο αγορι. Θα παρετε μια μπακλαβα για εσας”. The baklava here was to kill for. And, indeed, I very nearly had – well, not for the baklava, exactly, per se, but there’d been that unfortunate armed robber who’d tried to make off with Mr. Kiriakos’ till a few months back. He’d left the hospital for jail a few weeks later – which was why the normally-taciturn Mrs. Kiriakos was so friendly, and why I usually got a couple baklava a week for free.

I took my seat, and opened up the Times. Economy was so-so; rumblings from the Gulf. I was starting to dig into the latest…

…when my contact walked in. Nigel Worcesterhampton-Bloodnok, a dissipate leaf clinging to a far twig on an obscure branch of British royalty, was the associate case officer for MI7 in New York. Slight yet doughy, with thinning blond hair combed to a perfect peak over his pale face, usually flushed from too much clubbing and scotch and too little nutrition, framed by a foppish ascot. He’d joined the Service after the requisite stints at Cambridge and Eton. Paying for his appetite for all things Dominican – cigars, women and gambling – reportedly led him into some petty corruption when his Service salary and his bankrupt family’s resources gave out, but on the job he was all business.

“Good morning” he grunted, looking over a racing form wrapped around a manila envelope. “I hear Dominican Senorita is running at Monmouth”

“Yes”, I responded, rolling my eyes as I gave the response, “I’m thinking she’s worth $500 to win”.

Nigel sat across the table from me. “Excellent. Here are your arrangements”, he said, leaving the folder on the table and looking, theatrically, at his watch. “Oh, goodness, look at the time! I have an appointment in Manhattan” he said, getting up and making a rushed exit. Nigel was known for neither social skills nor fieldcraft. “Cheers”.

“See ya, Nigel”.

I opened the envelope. A British Airways ticket to Bankok, a Royal Thai flight to the “island paradise” of Phuket, an envelope with $20,000 Swiss Francs, a mission brief, and and an Irish passport for my assumed identity, a Hibernian woodworking machinery exporter named…

…”Nigel, you bastard“, I thought, pondering a week of traveling as “Paddy O’McFitzPatrick”. Nigel’s sense of humor was as odd as his taste in suits.

I shook my head, and turned to the mission brief. This was going to be an ugly one.
———-

I got on the train to Kennedy, on the 747 to Bangkok, and then a Thai puddlejumper to Phuket, the island paradise where the Indian Ocean and South China Sea collide.

I climbed down the ladder to the tarmac, observing the phalanxes of private jets and luxury charters, bearing tony European vacationers, Japanese sex tourists and American slackers to the warm beaches, warmer hookers, and low prices, respectively.

I would have time for almost none of the above. I climbed into the back of a Jeepney, paid the driver half a franc, and started toward Hotel row. I mentally reviewed my long-destroyed mission brief for the twentieth time.

Subject AUDACIOUS is in possession of materials that could be highly embarassing to a prominent politician and potential world leader.

Secure these materials by any means necessary. While lethal force is authorized, as usual, MI7 does not admit to your existence.

I wondered – who could this “potential leader” be? And why would British Meta-Intelligence (MI7) be involved?

Well, that question was way above my pay grade, I thought as a balmy breeze stirred the palms as I checked into my hotel, along the waterfront. MI7 wasn’t paying me contractor rates to ask questions.

Other than “how do I do this?”, I thought as I took the key from the “concierge”, a club-footed Hindu who I’m pretty sure worked for the DGSE.

“Your bag, Mr. O’McFitzPatrick”, asked the bellhop.

———-

First things first. I needed to find some tools of the trade – the kind of thing you can’t carry on international flights. And while there were any number of people in Phuket who could fix me up, there was only one that was so desperate that he’d do anything to help.

With the ongoing collapse of the USSR, the local KGB station chief, Yuri Stukachev, was at serious risk of having his decade-long idyll disrupted by the most mundane of causes – budget cuts. He’d managed to wangle being stationed in Phuket in ’80, at the height of the Cold War, when the SoPac Rim was still bleeding from the dominoes that fell in the seventies. But Phuket had been a bucolic backwater then, and was even more so, now; bucolic, and gorgeous, with the sort of lifestyle that mid-level KGB bureaucrats in the dying days of the Soviet Union couldn’t get for love, money or violence; indulgences that would have made his Leningrad cohorts drool with envy, Stukachev could get for a pittance, even on his rapidly-deflating KGB salary, to say nothing of his side trades in drugs, racketeering and prostitution.

So Stukachev was taking bids on everything.

I stopped by “Phuket Tall and Big”, a clothing store that was the front for the KGB station. A slinky Chinese-Thai girl with lively, darting eyes greeted me from behind the cash register.

“是老闆嗎?” I asked. The girl nodded, and motioned for me to follow her into the back room.

As I stepped through the door, someone grabbed me from behind and jacked me up against the wall, hard. I didn’t resist; this was about as pro forma as it got.

“Добрый день, Евгений Борисович”, I grunted as casually as one can while being jammed up against a wall and frisked for weapons. “Вы бы, по крайней мере купить ужин для меня, в первую очередь?”

Yevgenii Borisovich Batiukh, the Sevastopol-born “muscle” of the operation, wasn’t amused. He never was. He finshed frisking me, and spun me around.

“Каков Ваш бизнес с товарищ Стукачев?”, he grunted, sizing me up through the squinting slits of his eyelids.

“Я передаю грязных капиталистической “lucre”, I said, grinning at my stolid audience. ” что вы хотите остаться в Пхукете. Право? ”

His left eyebrow raised just a millimeter – and it was all the “tell” I needed. Of course he wanted to stay in Phuket, with its soft tropical breezes and its cheap Korean vodka and cheaper Malaysian floozies; the alternative, with the wheels quickly flying off the KGB, was a posting to Chelyabinsk or some such hellhole.

I had him.

“Следуй за мной”, he muttered, motioning toward the door to the back room.

———-

It took me five minutes of one-sided conversation with Stukachev – sort of a Slavic Don Knotts – to get what I needed; a Czech CZ85 9mm pistol, carefully sanitized, with no serial numbers. And, more importantly, a name.

Joshua Micah Grombacher.

In exchange, I gave him $500 in mixed bills, and a piece of legal paper on which I’d scrawled “I will be sending Yuri Stukachev the secrets to America’s defense systems, within the next two weeks. I will convey these secrets ONLY to Mister Stukachev, and ONLY if he’s in Phuket, where he can be reached. Or the Riviera. Sincerely, President George H.W. Bush”.

Stukachev told me Grombacher – a UC Berkeley dropout with contacts in a number of transnational leftist organizations – was staying in a flat above a brothel in the town’s red-light district. He gave me an address, which I memorized.

“Благодарим вас, господа”, I said, pocketing the pistol and nodding to Stukachev. I offered Batiukh a “high-five” on the way out. He ignored it with a steely glare.

I bought a couple of cuban cigars from a shop next door as I planned the rest of the evening.

———-

I waited at a bar until after dark, having a few cocktails and delightful conversation with a Japanese lingerie model who was vacationing in the area before finishing her PhD in Comparitive Literature; her opinions on James Joyce were as smoothly serpentine as her figure – before taking my leave to get on with the evening’s work. I found a jeepney and rode to a corner a few blocks from Grombacher’s flat. The evening was warm, but not unpleasant, stirred by a breeze coming from the ocean; the streets were crowded with streetwalkers, pushers, grifters, Thai sailors and the occasional tourist; this wasn’t really the tourist-friendly part of town.

There.

I walked in front of the brothel, nodding at the Mamasan as I walked past, “Enter Sandman” by Metallica wafting out through the window over the sound of the girls and their johns negotiating the evening’s contracts, and slipped into the alley. There was a rickety, rotting wooden stairway that led up to a veranda attached to a second-story flat. I pulled the pistol from my pocket and racked a round, holding it under my un-tucked, billowing Hawaiian shirt as I silently padded up the stairway.

I got to the top, and heard voices…

…and pop – pop. It sounded just like…

…a silenced pistol, I thought as a rush of adrenaline poured into my system.

I leaped up the last two stairs and through the open door, scanning the corners of the room, pistol at the ready.

Two slackers, wearing tie-died tank tops, cargo shorts and sandals, looked at me. One, with dreadlocks, giggled. The other, with longish, dirty blond hair, smiled.

“Dude”.

“Josh Grombacher?” I said, backing to the corner of the room.

“Dude!” he responded.

“And you?”, I asked the guy in the dreadlocks.

“Dude. Derek Redlock”.

You don’t come across that every day, I thought. “I’m looking for some documents…”

“…oh, yeah, Dude”, said Grombacher. “I figured somebody would come by looking for them. The ones from Barry. Dude”, he said, “You can have ’em. They’ve been a pain in the ash since I got ’em”.

“Dude”, Redlock giggled, “you said ash. I need to torch up…hey, Dude”, he said, getting vaguely serious, “why the gun? You harshed my mellow”.

“Oh, that”, I said, pocketing the pistol. “I heard that popping sound, and thought it sounded like a silenced .22 pistol, used for assassinations”. I walked to the end-table near the couch, and picked up a Glass-Pak muffler that’d been converted into a bong, turning it over in my hand, marveling at the creativity…
“Oh, no – dude, we were doing Amyl poppers…”

pop…pop…pop…

“…that was the sound of a silenced .22″, he said, slumping to the floor.

The door splintered, and two stocky, muscular Asian men in gray suits burst through. Without thinking, I spun around and smashed the first one in the face with the Glass-Pak bong, knocking him reeling into the second man, sending his pistol clattering across the floor. The second stepped sideways, and leveled a silenced pistol at me – but he was too close; I knocked the silencer aside with my forearm, and the shot went wild to my left, scorching my hands with gunpowder residue but missing me otherwise. I brought my knee up into his crotch, and head-butted him as he collapsed with a cry of pain; I stripped the pistol from his hand as he fell, and dispatched him as he reeled to the floor looking in vain for his footing. I turned and finished #2 in mid-teeth-spitting.

“Dude”, Grombacher exclaimed, wide-eyed; he’d not had time to move from his spot on the couch.

“Get up, man. We gotta get outta here”, I hissed, willing myself not to panic, grabbing for the unruly stack of documents, scanning them quickly.

It looked like a questionnaire with some hand-written notes, and it seemed – innocuous? – as I scanned random notes:

“I believe handguns should be confiscated from citizens…

…I think abortion should not only be legal, but a civil sacrament…

…paying taxes makes you a better person…
…Sincerely, Barry…” I couldn’t make out the last name. O’Donnell?

I’ll finish it later, I thought.

“Look, Josh, those two guys are gonna have a backup team. We gotta move”.

“Dude”, he said, nodding enthusastic agreement.

I tossed the .22 and pulled out the CZ85 – no need to be subtle. “Any other way out of here?”

“Dude”, he said sadly.

I looked in the bedroom as I stuffed the documents in my pocket. “C’mon”.

We slipped through the window, and ran along the roof of the bordello for about fifteen feet…

SHKANGGGGGGG

A bullet ricocheted off a metal exhaust pipe. I ducked and rolled…

…and saw the silhouettes of two men running behind us, and a bright muzzle flash with a loud report. Grombacher fell; “Dude!” he yelled in alarm and pain.

I turned and fired four quick shots, mainly to get the two charging men to reconsider. They took cover. I rolled behind a chimney. I quickly stuffed the documents into a crack in the brick.

“우리에게 문서, 그리고 우리가 걸어 드리죠”, one of them yelled in a clipped, guttural North Korean accent.

Yeah, right, I thought. I’ve heard that one before. I was in deep kimchi; those bastards never let anyone go.

“제 생각 넘겨줄 수없습니다 – 저는 교도소 시설이 아니합니다.”, I yelled with more bravado than I felt.

One of the men was starting to maneuver to outflank me. I had to move…

I rolled out from behind the chimney, toward a half-wall, as the other man, carrying the unmistakable outline of an AK47, ran to new cover about ten feet away.

All the opening I need, I thought, squeezing off two shots as I rolled; both rounds caught him in the forehead. Instant bulgogi, I thought grimly as I rolled behind the brick half-wall.

The other man panicked, and started backing toward the stairs, spraying shots at where I had been with a Russian-made AKR submachine gun, trying to keep my head down as he backed toward the window. I lined up a shot. One was all it took.

I slowly got up and walked over to Grombacher.

“duuuuude”, he muttered weakly. He needed medical…

…I heard a phump, and everything went black.

———-

Stars circled my field of vision. I shook my head; focus! Focus! I commanded myself. My head felt like it was going to split open.

I was lying on the roof. Gradually my eyes focused on the silhouette…

…of a woman, with long, white hair, wearing a knee-length leather trenchcoat.

“We meet again, Mista Bug”, she hissed.

Crap, I thought. Li Chuk Soon, AKA “The Black Widow”, North Korea’s most notorious “fixer”, I thought, remembering a long-forgotten briefing.

“It’s BERg, you illiterate swine”, I said.

“Where the documents?”, she said, reaching into her pocket.

“Why should you care?” I groaned, looking for an option, finding none.

She drew a nasty-looking corkscrew-shaped device from her pocket, as she covered me with her pistol. “Because these documents will enable us to play hob with your presidential election, someday, and will make Dear Leader the master of the whole wide world…”

She stopped.

“And…?”, I asked, trying to remember my old torture-resistance training, and coming up with nothing…

Her eyes dilated, and a drop of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth. After a few seconds, her knees buckled, and she fell to the ground. As she slumped forward, I saw where something – a hollowpoint pistol round, from the looks of it – had hit her in the back of the head, which was a raw salad of blood and tissue…

…and looked up, gradually focusing on the figure of Yevgenii Batiuk, a silenced Heckler and Koch automatic trained where Soon’s head had been.

“И сейчас, вы находитесь в МОЕЙ долга!”, he said, emotionless.

Yep, Yevgenii, I certainly am.

“I guess so”, I muttered, trying to clear my head, feeling sticky blood on the back of my scalp where Soon had sucker-kicked me. “How can I…”, I started, before remembering who I was talking too. “Итак, как же я буду выплачивать долг?”

And for the first time ever, Batiukh grinned. “У вас есть первый сезон “заместителей мир” по Бетамакс? В ублюдки в Москве не будет посылать их к нам.”

I rolled my eyes. “да”. I think I could find a copy.

“Не делайте мне подождать, Михаил Павлович”, he said, slipping into the darkness.

I got up, cleared my head, and walked over to the chink in the mortar where I’d stashed the documents. As the sounds of the street wafted up to me, I pulled out a cigarette lighter and lit “Barry’s” questionnaire on fire.

I remembered the Cuban cigar from earlier. I pulled it out of my pocket and lit it with the flames, taking a couple of luxurious puffs as I watched the papers burn. As they finished, I tossed the glowing flimsy embers on the roof, and went over to try to get Grombacher to the hospital.

———-

UPDATE: Damn. I miswrote again. The “questionnaire” wasn’t filled out until 1996, on the occasional of Barrack “Barry” Obama‘s first run for the Illinois Legislature. Not 1991.

UPDATE 2: I erred further; video shows that I was really working as a nightclub DJ in the fall of 1991. I wasn’t in Thailand, and I apparently had nothing to do with Marisa Tomei’s audition for “My Cousin Vinny”.

It was an honest mistake.

UPDATE 3: Hey, I think Joshua Micah Grombacher is some kind of senior policy analyst for Obama’s campaign, anyway. Honest. I do.

Last year, I biked to work most of the summer.  It was a great thing; it had an almost immediate and very dramatic effect on my health – mental and physical – and generally improved my attitude about most things.

Of course, by “Summer”, I mean “from about June 15 to mid-September.  The kids’ school situations made it difficult to ride during the school year.  Last year, anyway.

This year, one way or another, things are shaping up much better; due to changes in kids’ schedules and levels of responsibility, I can reasonably expect to be able to hit the road for my half-hour ride early enough to make it in by 8:30, grab a quick shower, and be working in plenty of time.

And since this week is the kids’ spring break, I figured in a fit of optimism that I mght be able to kick the season off this week.

But while I do know people who ride year-round, and might try it myself when the kids move out (in about three years, two months and fifteen days), I gotta confess – waking up and flipping on the weather on April 3 and seeing 25 degrees is a bit of a deterrent.

Ooof.  Maybe next week.

The bad news: Minneapolis has a horrible dropout rate:

America’s Promise Alliance ranks Minneapolis as 45th out of 50 cities in terms of graduation rates, putting the district’s rate well below the average.

The good news? It might just be bad statistics:

But Minneapolis Public Schools researcher David Heistad said not only are the numbers the report uses four years old, but they inaccurately consider students who transfer as dropouts.

“We have a lot more kids moving to charter schools and moving to suburban districts and therefore we had a decline in enrollment during that period of time. So it confounds dropouts with any kind of mobility,” Heistad said.

The “bad” news?

The district’s most recent official reports showed graduation rates of nearly 67 percent, more than 20 points above what the America’s Promise numbers show.

A fifth of the district’s students are seeking alternatives in mid-stream.

And at the end of that, you still have only 2/3 of your students graduating – according to the district itself..

While Islam is growing in many parts of the world, Diamand Dog at Freedom Dogs has some very good news.  The Dog notes:

Muslims are converting by the thousands to Christianity.

According to the website Islam Watch, in Russia, some two million ethnic Muslims converted to Christianity last year. Ten thousand French Muslims converted, as did 35,000 Turkish Muslims. In India, approximately 10,000 people abandoned Islam for Christianity.

In his book Epicenter, author Joel Rosenberg details amazing stories of Muslims converting to Christianity. In Algeria, the birthplace of St. Augustine, more than 80,000 Muslims have turned to Christ in recent years. This, despite the stiff opposition from Islamic clerics who have passed laws banning evangelism.

In Morocco, newspaper articles openly worry that 25,000 to 40,000 Muslims have become followers of Christ in recent years.

There’s plenty more – read the whole thing.

And DD adds:

Osama bin Laden may be the greatest catalyst the world has ever seen to convert Muslims to Christ.

Here’s the thing I think is interesting; these conversions are largely happening in places where people can see the differences between the faiths and their effects on peoples’ lives and societies, face to face.

I’ve pointed this out for years; none of the 9/11 hijackers were from India, Bosnia, Senegal, Mali, Turkey, Albania, or any other place where Moslems live in social pluralism, relative economic as well as political freedom, and exposed to more than one point of view about the world, society and faith.  This isn’t to say that there aren’t extremist Madrassas in any or all of those countries.  But the extremism and militancy that breed jihadism are tempered by exposure to the notion that other societies not only have validity, but work pretty darn well.

Whether that means people convert to Christianity (something Christ bade me to work, pray and hope for – and I do) or merely justs files off the edges of the militant extremism that plagues Islam in less-pluralistic parts of the world, it’s all good.

Somewhere in Corinthians, it says that God gives people gifts in the faith according to what people can best put to use – or words to that effect (I blame translation difficulties from the Greek for any misunderstandings. That’s the ticket).

Which is one of the reasons I don’t write a whole lot about religion; God’s seen fit to put my strengths in areas other than “being articulate about faith”.

But it’s always a treat – and a blessing, in every sense of the term – when I find someone who not only writes articulately about faith, but asks the big questions and reflects the churn a lot of us feel in looking (or waiting) for the answers.

Which is why I like Amanda Carranza’s “Within the Discord” so much.

Yes, I said big questions:

A lot of things have happened the last few days, a lot of things reminding me of just what an active role my Heavenly Father plays in not only my life, but my every happiness. A lot of these things are confusing, yet exciting, and I’m not exactly sure what to do with them. How do I harness this and bring glory to God through the written word? How do I encourage others with my blatherings, and yet not come across as self-important? (How do I not feel self-important when something I write just happens to make sense in my own head?) How do I convey my flaws, how do I prevent myself from shying away from them? How do I present who I am, my identity of who God sees me as, as accurately as can be expected, and yet still encourage each others and not thoroughly discourage myself?

Well, there’s a question, can I become thoroughly discouraged while examining myself through God’s eyes?

Of course, reading pushes me to ask the same questions – and that’s usually pretty revelatory, or at least something most of us could stand to do more of, no matter what we believe.

Regular NARN caller Quentin from Zimmerman must be happy – or happier, anyway – today.  After thirty years of leading their mutual homeland Zimbabwe on a social and economic kamikaze ride, Robert Mugabe is calling it a long-overdue quits:

Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe is ready to step down after he accepted he failed to win the country’s presidential election, a senior source in his ruling party and diplomats told AFP Tuesday.

An official in Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party said the long-ruling president was prepared to step down but was still trying to win agreement from the army’s chief of staff Constantine Chiwenga.

Ed notes at Hot Air:

He took the former nation of Rhodesia and reduced it to pauper status. Zimbabwe had a booming agriculture industry and the beginnings of industrialization when he took charge. Thanks to a mix of statism, post-colonial petulance, and sheer stupidity, Zimbabwe cannot feed itself after being a net exporter, and all of the capital that promised to bring modernization to the country has fled to avoid confiscation.

I’ll leave the obvious Minnesota/DFL parallels to the rest of you.

UPDATE:  Not so fast, says South Africa’s Johannesburrg Mail and Guardian:

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and the Zimbabwe government both denied on Tuesday that they were in talks to arrange the resignation of President Robert Mugabe. At a news conference on Tuesday evening, Tsvangirai confirmed, however, for the first time personally that his party had won the elections.

Keep your fingers crossed.  Zimbabwe has suffered enough.

I still maintain Paul Schmelzer might be the closest thing to a legitimate journalist at the MNMon anymore.

But I read this piece this morning at the Monitor – which, as Erik Black noted in confirming a years’ worth of hints and suspicions, numbers George Soros among the other “liberals with deep pockets” that underwrite the operation – and almost yakked up my skull.

I quote, with emphasis added:

The propaganda potential of blogs — noted by former Bush adviser Dan Bartlett, who said many conservative sites “regurgitate exactly” what the administration tells them — isn’t lost on the U.S. government: in 2006 the military’s Joint Special Operations University explored the possibility of covertly paying prominent bloggers or training and promoting new bloggers to “pass the U.S. message.”…We shouldn’t be surprised that the Bush administration considered paying bloggers to tout its messages, writes Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report.

So let me get this straight – the blog that is paid to spout propaganda (and, let’s be honest, lied about it for a year), is writing about an academic exercise where someone proposes paying someone to spout opposing propaganda.

Now that’s meta.

Schmelzer also notes

While the document doesn’t specifically name friendly blogs it could seek to channel its message, it does note the roles of conservative blogs like The Drudge Report, Little Green Footballs, Townhall.com and Free Republic forums, without listing any centrist or left-leaning blogs.

So Schmelzer’s “standard of proof” is “innocent until mentioned by a couple of writers with track records, themselves, as left-leaning shills?”

We’ll keep that in mind.

UPDATE:  Maybe it’s an April Fool’s joke!

Thats’ gotta be it.  Not even the MNMon can talk that far out its’ ass…

Charlie Quimby may be the Twin Cities’ generally least-insane leftyblogger, but it doesn’t mean he’s not prone to some wishful thinking:

After all, Minneapolis has a ripe current case that provides a provocative example of the ambiguities surrounding self-defense claims.

Now, Charlie’s been debating the proposed changes in Minnesota’s self-defense laws wtih Joel Rosenberg for a few weeks now – but if he thinks this case is “ambiguous” – well, he’s learning. A few more weeks with Joel might help.  And so for the second day in a row,I’m gonna go after something he’s written.
Let’s be clear on a few things.

As we’ve talked about on this blog many, many times, there are four criteria that the accused must achieve to the satisfaction of a jury (or, preferably, to prosecutors before any charges are filed) to claim self-defense.  I’ve you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know ’em, and may skip ahead.  They are:

1. You can not be a willing participant in the scuffle
2. A jury must believe that you feared death or great bodily harm.
3. A jury must believe you made reasonable effort to disengage – whatever that means to the prosecutors, judge and jury (which was one of the points of Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill).
4. That jury must believe that lethal force was appropriate.

That’s it.

Oh, and if you use a gun outside your house or place of business, you should have a concealed carry permit (although illegal carry might not be used against you in a self-defense claim).

Finally, if you’ve taken a concealed carry training class (I do endorse my arma mater, Joel Rosenberg’s class), there are, let’s just say, certain standards of behavior you need to follow after using lethal force in self-defense.

Now, let’s remember; the debate is about the rights of law-abiding gun owners who follow the rules; not about the “rights” of people who are too criminal, impaired or stupid to follow the law.

Tyeric Lessley believed it was life or death.

In town to celebrate his fiancée’s birthday, the 22-year-old and his two cousins were leaving a downtown Minneapolis club early March 17 when they crashed into a pickup on Washington Avenue S. Lessley got out and started to walk away, but Darby Claar went after him.

So let’s add up the pros and cons of Mr. Lessley’s case, and his career as poster boy for the law-abiding gun owner who’d benefit from Tony Cornish’s bill – and in so doing, let’s take every element of Quimby’s story at face value.    On the one hand, Mr Lessley was apparently not a “willing participant”.  On the other, the story doesn’t mention if he’d had anything to drink at “the club” (the legal limit to carry a gun with a permit in Minnesota is .04) – which begs the additional question, did he have a permit?  I’d suspect not, or Heather Martens would have held a press conference – but, as it happens, evidence appears later:

Lessley’s family claims racial epithets were shouted and punches thrown. As Lessley stumbled to the ground, he pulled out a .44 caliber Smith and Wesson handgun and fatally shot Claar in the chest. Within minutes, a random twist of fate shattered two families.

So did Lessley “reasonably fear death or great bodily harm” from a guy armed with his fists, and “is lethal force appropriate” in dealing with a guy who evidences no actual weapon (wouldn’t brandishing the gun have worked)?  Both of those are questions for trial.  But, again, the more interesting question is “was Lessley carrying legally, with a Minnesota permit?”

Evidence to contrary follows:

Lessley planned to turn himself in because he had no doubt the shooting was in self-defense, relatives said. Before he did, a SWAT team arrested him at his aunt’s house. It wasn’t until Lessley saw a news report on a jail television that he realized Claar, 32, was dead.

If you’ve had any of the training that’d qualify one to get a permit (and to legally have a firearm under the circumstances in this story), the following would have been repeatedly beaten into your head, to the point where you repeat it in your sleep:

1. If you ever even DRAW your pistol, you call the cops; from the scene if possible, from as close by as is prudent if there is continuing danger.  Even if you didn’t fire a shot.  Even if all you did was scare someone off with a gun.
2. If you did  shoot; when the cops arrive, show them any evidence.  And then lawyer up. And don’t consent to a search. And say nothing else without your lawyer holding your hand and, preferably, moving your tongue by remote control.
3. Do not run to your aunt’s house.  Do not assume that it’ll go away.  Even if you never fired a shot – to say nothing of pumping a .44 slug at point blank into someone’s chest.

If you learn nothing else in concealed carry training, you learn this.

So I’ll say this without fear of rational contradiction; Mr. Lessley was not a legal carry permit holder.  I can’t speak to his motivations for carrying a .44 on a night of clubbing – and either can Charley Quimby – but he was certainly not the law-abiding, honest, trained, competent citizen that the Minnesota Personal Protection Act and the Cornish/Pariseau bill are designed to protect.

Lessley is the father of three children. He recently received an Applebee’s employee of the month award because of his rapport with customers.

I feel for the guy – on many levels (levels which will be revealed in an episode of “Twenty Years Ago Today” in about ten months).   It’s a shame one of his customers hadn’t been one of Minnesota’s certified carry permit training instructors.  It woulda saved everyone a lifetime of heartache.

He was charged with intentional second-degree murder. Lt. Amelia Huffman, head of the Minneapolis Police Department’s homicide unit, said she’s not surprised he would argue self-defense.

“But in this scenario, we had only one person who was armed with a weapon of any kind,” she said. “There are no other aggravating factors that I believe would lead a reasonable person to feel they were in a situation in which they would be likely to lose their life.”

And while I feel for Mr. Lessley, that might seem to be that.  It’s an ugly, stupid situation.

And as an indictment of the behavior of the law-abiding, trained permit-holder (or citizen at home), it’s really a non-sequitur.

Spring will eventually spring.  (My biggest regret was that I used the line “March in Minnesota; in like a lion, out like a cold, wet lion one week and a snowstorm too early).

And when it does, Black Thumbs like I will need the help of someone who knows how to do something with plants other than mulch the remains.

And so – since my college friend Jackie hasn’t posted in a year – the spot of “official gardenblog of Shot in the Dark goes “Growing Things“, run by my neighbor (the guy who lives the other way from Flash, who along with his wife actually runs a pretty mean garden over the summer himself; he gets plenty of practice sprouting conspiracy theories over the winter.  But I digress), Peter.

This year, my resolution is to make my customary salsa garden actually work.  Of course, along about mid-August I’ll have to find a good canning blog.