Month: October 2021

Fog Of Confusion

Bad News

For you to understand the approaching train wreck that is my aging brain, you need only to look at this email exchange between me and a Reader:

Kim,
Thanks for your post about Michael Caine this morning.
Thought I’d add my $0.02, if you don’t mind. One of my favorite movies that he made was “The Eagle Has Landed”.
I wondered if you like it, and if not, why not? I’m not much of a discerning literature or movie connoisseur as you are, but I like to learn. — Tim

Tim,
Love it.  I have the movie AND the novel trilogy.  (Higgins is one of my favorite modern authors, ever since Eye Of The Needle.)

Well, you all know where this is going, right?  Hold on:

Kim,
I haven’t read the novel, thanks for the heads up. I’ll put the trilogy on my reading list. — Tim

Then about ten minutes later, some pieces of Truth came upon me, and I hastily continued:

Tim,
I’m losing my mind.  The author of Eye Of The Needle was Ken Follett, not Jack Higgins.  DOH!!!!
But Higgins did write the trilogy:  Eagle Has Landed, Eagle Has Flown, Night Of The Fox.
Although Follett also wrote a novel called The Fox.
All very confusing to an old man like me.

The latter is not to be confused with D.H. Lawrence’s novella of the same name, nor with the Peter Sellers / Vittorio De Sica movie After The Fox, which featured the luscious Maria Grazia Buccella:

The movie was derived from a play of the same name by Paul  Neil Simon.

Where was I?  Oh, yes.  Anyway:  Jack Higgins wrote The Eagle Has Landed  and its two sequels (a.k.a. the Liam Devlin Trilogy ).

And Ken Follett wrote The Eye Of The Needle and other fine stories.

Everyone got that?  Good.

Now explain the middle bit to me.

Letter To Alec

The Gun Thing, Tragedy

Here’s an interesting headline:

The sequence of events on set that led to Alec Baldwin accidentally shooting and killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins remains unclear but there are a handful of options.

…none of which are relevant.

Look, I know that Alec Baldwin has the mental capacity of a bag of cement, so all that follows below is wasted on him.  But here are the simple rules which, had they been followed in sequence,  would have prevented Baldwin from shooting an innocent bystander.  They are universally known to us serious gun owners as “Cooper’s Rules” (after the late and much-missed Col. Jeff Cooper):

RULE I: ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED

Had Baldwin known anything at all about guns (he clearly doesn’t), he would have checked to see whether the round loaded in the gun was live or a blank (they look completely different from each other).

RULE II: NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY

Had Baldwin not been a complete tit (he is), he would also have made sure that the gun was pointed in a direction where no one was standing, or else told whoever was standing in front of him to get out of the line of fire, even if he had made sure the gun was loaded only with a blank.

Cooper’s last two rules are not relevant to this tragic story, but nevertheless, here they are:

RULE III: KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET

RULE IV: BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET

And that’s all that need be said.

Nothing Wrong

Good Stuff, House & Home

Quite a rumpus has ensued following this man’s gentle reminder that private property is, in fact, private:

A homeowner has divided opinion by coming up with a unique method to stop people taking a shortcut across his front lawn.
CCTV footage posted on TikTok shows several people getting soaked by an automatic sprinkler if they get too close to the man’s house.

At the heart of all of this is the extended form of socialism which gives people the “right” to disregard someone else’s property rights just because it’s a “shortcut” (i.e. they being too lazy to walk an extra few yards along the sidewalk).

And if a mild soaking seems outrageous, consider anti-personnel mines, which ia what I might have considered in his situation.