Sunday, April 15, 2012

Stranded




http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2004/October/04_crt_695.htm


Department of Justice [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2004


FEDERAL AUTHORITIES ARREST IOWA MAN FOR SENDING E-MAIL THREAT

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Justice Department today announced the arrest of Daniel Middleman of Dubuque, Iowa for allegedly sending a threatening e-mail to a national leader of the Arab-American community. The email allegedly threatened the victim with physical injury.

Middleman was arrested yesterday following his indictment by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia. The indictment alleges that on May 9, 2003 Middleman sent an e-mail message to the victim that stated “you’re all going to get bullets in your... heads.”


The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is being prosecuted by attorneys from the Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.





http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/reagan-hinckley/


PBS


Biography: John Hinckley, Jr.

On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. set out to win actress Jodie Foster's heart. As "the greatest love offering in the history of the world," the 25-year-old attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton hotel. Though flanked by administration members, police officers, and Secret Service agents, Reagan was shot under the left arm. The bullet malfunctioned and failed to explode on impact, seriously wounding but not killing Reagan.

The youngest of three children, Hinckley was born in Ardmore, Oklahoma, on May 29, 1955.





http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1349235/releaseinfo

IMDb

The Internet Movie Database

Release dates for

"The Stand" [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]

The Plague (1994)

Country Date

USA 8 May 1994
UK 10 August 1996



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1349235

IMDb

The Internet Movie Database

The Stand (TV mini-series 1994)

The Plague (#1.1)


Release Date: 8 May 1994 (USA)










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/80261/King_-_The_Stand.html


Stephen King

The Stand - The Complete & Uncut Edition [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]


She drew closer to him and saw that his Bible was open on his lap. “Judge, you’ll strain your eyes doing that.”

“Nonsense. Starlight’s the best light for this stuff. Maybe the only light. How’s this? ‘Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? are not his days like the days of an hireling? As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow, and as an hireling looketh for the reward of his work: So am I made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me. When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise, and the night be gone? and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day.’”

“Far out,” Lucy said without much enthusiasm. “Real nice, Judge.”

“It’s not nice, it’s Job. There’s nothing very nice in the Book of Job, Lucy.” He closed the Bible. “ ‘I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day.’ That’s your man, Lucy: that’s Larry Underwood to a t.”

“I know,” she said, and sighed. “Now if I only knew what was wrong with him.”

The Judge, who had his suspicions, kept silent.

“It can’t be the dreams,” she said. “No one has them anymore, unless Joe does. And Joe’s… different.”

“Yes. He is. Poor boy.”

“And everyone’s healthy. At least since Mrs. Vollman died.” Two days after the Judge joined them, a couple who introduced themselves as Dick and Sally Vollman had thrown in with Larry and his assorted company of survivors. Lucy thought it extremely unlikely that the flu had spared a man and wife, and suspected that their marriage was common-law and of extremely short duration. They were in their forties, and obviously very much in love. Then, a week ago, at the old woman’s house in Hemingford Home, Sally Vollman had gotten sick. They camped for two days, waiting helplessly for her to get better or die. She had died. Dick Vollman was still with them, but he was a different man—silent, thoughtful, pale.

“He’s taken that to heart, hasn’t he?” she asked Judge Farris.

“Larry is a man who found himself comparatively late in life,” the Judge said, clearing his throat. “At least, that is how he strikes me. Men who find themselves late are never sure. They are all the things the civics books tell us the good citizens should be: partisans but never zealots, respecters of the facts which attend each situation but never benders of those facts, uncomfortable in positions of leadership but rarely able to turn down a responsibility once it has been offered… or thrust upon them. They make the best leaders in a democracy because they are unlikely to fall in love with power. Quite the opposite. And when things go wrong… when a Mrs. Vollman dies…”

“Could it have been diabetes?” the Judge interrupted himself. “I think it likely. The cyanosed skin, the fast drop into a coma… possibly, possibly. But if so, where was her insulin? Might she have let herself die? Could it have been suicide?”

The Judge lapsed into a thinking pause, hands clasped under his chin. He looked like a brooding black bird of prey.

“You were going to say something about when things go wrong,” Lucy prompted gently.

“When they go wrong—when a Sally Vollman dies, of diabetes or internal bleeding or whatever—a man like Larry blames himself. The men the civics books idolize rarely come to good ends. Melvin Purvis, the super G-man of the thirties, shot himself with his own service pistol in 1959. When Lincoln was assassinated, he was a prematurely old man tottering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. We used to watch Presidents decay before our very eyes from month to month and even week to week on national TV—except for Nixon, of course, who thrived on power the way that a vampire bat thrives on blood, and Reagan, who seemed a little too stupid to get old. I guess Gerald Ford was that way, too.”

“I think there’s something more,” Lucy said sadly.

He looked at her, inquiring.

“How did it go? I am full of tossings and turnings unto the dawning of the day?”

He nodded it?

Lucy said, “Pretty good description of a man in love, isn’t it?”

He looked at her, surprised that she had known all along about the thing he wouldn’t say. Lucy shrugged, smiled—a bitter quirk of the lips. “Women know,” she said. “Women almost always know.”

Before he could reply, she had drifted away toward the road, where Larry would be, sitting and thinking about Nadine Cross.

“Larry?”

“Here,” he said briefly. “What are you doing up?”

“I got cold,” she said. He was sitting cross-legged on the shoulder of the road, as if in meditation. “Room for me?”

“Sure.” He moved over. The boulder still held a bit of warmth from the day which was now passing. She sat down. He slipped an arm around her. According to Lucy’s estimation, they were about fifty miles east of Boulder tonight. If they could get on the road by nine tomorrow, they could be in the Boulder Free Zone for lunch.

It was the man on the radio who called it the Boulder Free Zone; his name was Ralph Brentner, and he said (with some embarrassment) that the Boulder Free Zone was mostly a radio call-sign, but Lucy liked it just for itself, for the way it sounded. It sounded right. It sounded like a fresh start. And Nadine Cross had adopted the name with an almost religious zeal, as if it was talismanic.

Three days after Larry, Nadine, Joe, and Lucy had arrived at Stovington and found the plague center deserted, Nadine had suggested they pick up a CB radio and start conning the forty channels. Larry had accepted the idea wholeheartedly—the way he accepted most of her ideas, Lucy thought. She didn’t understand Nadine Cross at all. Larry was stuck on her, that was obvious, but Nadine didn’t want to have much to do with him outside of each day’s routine.

Anyway, the CB idea had been a good one, even if the brain that had produced it was icelocked (except when it came to Joe). It would be the easiest way to locate other groups, Nadine had said, and to agree upon a rendezvous.

This had led to some puzzled discussion in their group, which at that time had numbered half a dozen with the addition of Mark Zellman, who had been a welder in upstate New York, and Laurie Constable, a twenty-six-year-old nurse. And the puzzled discussion had led to yet another upsetting argument about the dreams.

Laurie had begun by protesting that they knew exactly where they were going. They were following the resourceful Harold Lauder and his party to Nebraska. Of course they were, and for the same reason. The force of the dreams was simply too powerful to be denied.

After some back and forth on this, Nadine had gotten hysterical. She had had no dreams—repeat: no goddam dreams. If the others wanted to practice autohypnosis on each other, fine. As long as there was some rational basis for pushing on to Nebraska, such as the sign at the Stovington installation, fine. But she wanted it understood that she wasn’t going along on the basis of a lot of metaphysical bullshit. If it was all the same to them, she would place her faith in radios, not visions.

Mark had turned a friendly, gapped grin on Nadine’s strained countenance and said, “If you ain’t had no dreams, how come you woke me up last night talkin in your sleep?”

Nadine had gone paper white. “Are you calling me a liar?” she nearly screamed. “Because if you are, one of us had better leave right now!” Joe shrank close to her, whimpering.

Larry had smoothed it over, agreeing with the CB idea. And in the last week or so, they had begun to pick up broadcasts, not from Nebraska (which had been abandoned even before they got there—the dreams had told them that, but even then the dreams had been fading, losing their urgency), but from Boulder, Colorado, six hundred miles farther west—signals boosted by Ralph’s powerful transmitter.

Lucy could still remember the joyous, almost ecstatic faces of the others as Ralph Brentner’s drawling, Oklahoma accent had cut nasally through the static: “This is Ralph Brentner, Boulder Free Zone. If you hear me, reply on Channel 14. Repeat, Channel 14.”

They could hear Ralph, but had no transmitter powerful enough to acknowledge, not then. But they had drawn closer





- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 9:08 PM Pacific Time USA Sunday 15 April 2012