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JOURNAL ARCHIVE: August 9, 2006
My hunch is that I was taken captive again by natives, where they threw me in to fight a lion. There is this memory I have been thinking about for a while. It was when i was a kid, maybe 7 years old. Mom was married to James Nevell and we lived in De Queen. He had not gone back into the Marines at that time or he had just gotten out. I think it was the former. Anyway, one day, I was rummaging through our storage shed and I found his U.S. Marines-issued saber. Or I found a machete that day. I remember both happening. Anyway, I was playing with the machete or the saber out in the yard and I was chopping away at any threatening blades of grass or tree limbs. At one point, I started to chop a tree limb that was laying on the ground in front of me. After I swung the blade over my head to strike down on the limb, mom's new puppy ran between my legs and run under the blade. I struck the little bastard square on its backbone, but remarkably, I didn't even break the skin. It ran off yelping but wasn't even bleeding. I was very scared because I thought I had just killed it, but it was all right. As I was just writing that memory, I felt a greater association to it and that Costner movie I just wrote about. When I started writing about hitting that dog, I was thinking about something with lions. As in, a lion rushed at me, I leapt into the air, did a something like a somersault, but not the backflip, rather the other....what do you call that? It wouldn't be a backflip....but something like a side-flip....I'll have to look that up. Anyway, as I flipped over the top of the lion, I either punched its backbone or I had some kind of weapon I used to break its back. I have no idea if this is memory or imagination but I think of this many times. I just wish I knew. So anyway, as I was writing about hitting the dog, that Costner movie took on more meaning, so maybe both incidents are real. The Borg and Queen Borg Bill Gates need those kinds of skills to improve college recruitment and to sell more video games so that is why I keep them guarded in my mind.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 09 August 2006 excerpt ends]
http://www.online-literature.com/tennyson/710/
THE LITERATURE NETWORK
Literature Network > Lord Alfred Tennyson > The Charge of the Light Brigade
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Some one had blundered:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre-stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not,
Not the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/79701/Clancy_-_Red_Storm_Rising.txt
Tom Clancy
Red Storm Rising
35 – Time on Target
USS REUBEN JAMES
"Vampire, vampire! We have incoming missiles."
Here we go again, Morris thought. The tactical display was more modern than what he'd had on Pharris--each of the incoming missiles was marked with a velocity vector that indicated speed and direction. They were coming in low.
Morris lifted his phone. "Bridge, Combat. Execute separation maneuver."
"Bridge, aye. Separating now," Ernst said. "Crash stop! All back emergency!"
The helmsman pulled the throttle control back, then abruptly reversed the pitch of the propeller blades, throwing the ship from ahead to full astern. Reuben James slowed so rapidly that men had to brace themselves, and Battleaxe forged ahead, accelerating to twenty-five knots. As soon as it was safe, the British frigate turned hard to port, and Reuben James went to ahead full and turned sharply to starboard.
Any Soviet radar operator who had lingered behind would have been impressed by the deception. The oncoming AS-4 missiles had been targeted on a single blip. Now there were two, and they were separating. The missiles divided their attention evenly, with three opting for either target.
Morris watched his display intently. The distance between his ship and his companion was widening rapidly.
"Missiles are tracking us!" the ESM operator said loudly. "We have multiple missile seeker heads tracking us."
"Right full rudder, reverse course. Fire off chaff rockets!"
Everyone in the Combat Information Center jumped as four canisters exploded directly overhead
- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 8:37 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Monday 24 November 2014
