Happy Halloween!

Nobody decorates much for Halloween on my street. We used to, but the endless line of dark houses to either side of us discouraged Trick or Treaters from making the long walk so we don't even bother to give out candy any more.

I did see one house on my block that's pretty scary, though.....

Completely unscientific and just an observation on my part: This is the only pro-Obama sign in my entire neighborhood. I spend at least 10-11 hours a day driving around various parts of the town where I work. Rich areas, poor areas... I eventually visit them all. Back in the ramp up for the 2008 elections there was a pretty even mix of Obama signs vs. McCain signs. This year I can count the number of Obama signs that I've seen on two hands.

Either:

A. Support for Obama is significantly lower here than in 08.

B. The people that support Obama are just too damned embarassed to express it openly.

Ah-choo!

Rich Ferguson is a street magician and mentalist. I love this sort of thing! Up close illusions and actual reactions from people on the street are awesome to watch. The illusion in this case is the guy's head coming off - and my favorite audience reaction in the video is the group of kids at the very end :)

Girl Friday - 10/26/2012 - Evan Rachel Wood

Halloween is this coming Wednesday, and in honor of that fact today's Girl Friday is the hottest looking Vampire ever to cringe at garlic*....

Evan Rachel Wood

Hit the jump for more...

It don't make sense....

I don't usually post music stuff here. It's not that I don't like music. Nothing could be farther from the truth! I love lots of different kinds of music. Country, Heavy Rock, Pop, Jazz, Bluegrass... even some Rap music makes it into the mix from time to time.

The main reason that I don't post music links is that I almost NEVER click on those links when they appear on someone elses blog. Don't know why. It's just a thing.

I do make exceptions from time to time and I'm doing so now mainly because I want an answer to a Question:

How in the world is this girl singing on the street for bucket tips, and in small venues, while simultaneously Brittany Spears is "famous"?

Her name is Charlie Rae and she's a singer/songwriter living in California. Her Youtube page is here. Her website is here. 

A look back at war in the future...

This is how some folks saw us fighting future wars, back in 1917.

I don't know how effective the extension cord arrangement would be... I'm guessing not very. I suppose if you're not done advancing by the time you hit the end of the cord you could always unplug yourself and advance using your side arm

Girl Friday - 10/19/2012 - Candice Cassidy - NSFW

This week's Girl Friday was Playboy Playmate of the month back in June of 2009 -

Candice Cassidy

Hit the jump for more, including a couple of NSFW shots... because she's a playboy centerfold fer cryin' out loud!

Don't worry, the boobies won't hurt you.

How long have I been "Paladin"?

Longer than you might think.

When I was a kid, maybe 12 or 13, my Dad and I packed on horseback into the Uintah Mountains of northern Utah one summer. Spent about a week camping in the mountain valleys and fishing for trout. Good, good times.

I've got pictures from the trip, and some wonderful memories, and now this - found in the back of a drawer the other day, where it's lain forgotten for years...

That's a carving that I did from a little chunk of aspen during that trip. I sat around the campfire at night and whittled it with my trusty Schrade Old Timer pocket knife.

It's darkened with age and has developed a few stress cracks....

But then again, so have I.

I turn 48 years old today. A little wear and tear is to be expected :)

Bad Human, Bad!

One of my least favorite calls to run at work is "Dog in Car", during the summer months. What possesses people to think that they have to take their freakin' dog with them every freakin' place they go during the day? Especially when you can't take dogs inside most stores once you get where you are going.

Here's one of mine from this summer....

When I arrived, all the windows were up, there was no shade at all, and a 4 month old beagle mix puppy had been inside the vehicle for at least 20 minutes (the amount of time it took me to get to the location after I received the call).

These are difficult calls for us to run, because it can be extremely hard to locate the owner of the vehicle. You pull up to a mall, or shopping center, and there's no way you are going to find the owner of the vehicle in anything like a reasonable amount of time.

And time? .... you ain't got much.

If it's 90 degrees outside, the inside temperature can go up 10 degrees in just 10 minutes. In half an hour, the inside temperature can go over 120 degrees. When you combine that fact with a dog's method of self-cooling (panting), you have a recipe for disaster. Too... the courts where I work have been less than supportive when it comes to backing us up on calls like this. The dog has to be pretty much in severe crashing distress before I can do something extreme like bust out a window. They've even dismissed citations that we've issued to people for leaving their dogs in cars with temps in the 90's, because the dog wasn't in bad enough shape to require vet treatment for the heat stress.

Anyway... on this particular call I lucked out. This Jeep had a soft top and it was an easy matter to unzip one of the back windows and pull the little guy out....

No, I'm not half man/half woman. The hairless arm in this picture was a concerned lady that I couldn't seem to keep out of my camera shots while I was on scene. I impounded the dog, which was drooling/panting but otherwise fine, and left a note on the windshield for the owner. She called me in response to the note after I left the scene - a full 45 minutes after I had originally recieved the call.

Had I left the dog where it was until she returned to the Jeep after that length of time, I've no doubt the little guy would have been dead.

All your blankets are belong to us.

From the Liberal Paradise of Detroit....

Two weeks ago, a house caught fire, and the elderly man who lived there was brought outside wearing only his underwear. Paramedic Jeff Gaglio gave him a blanket. Then on Tuesday, Gaglio was informed that the department was bringing him up on charges for his action. Jerald James, chief of the Emergency Medical Service (EMS), who is responsible for Gaglio's punishment, said in defense of the charges, "We can't have an employee who feels that they have a right to give away state property without getting prior approval."

It seems that the Progressives have so mismanaged their finances in Detroit so badly that the operating expenses for the Department out run their budget every year by about $8 million. 

Who the Hell do they think they are.... the Federal Government?

Girl Friday - 10/12/2012 - Heo Yoon Mi

The week's Girl Friday is Korean Beauty

Heo Yoon Mi

Hit the jump for more...

Why Liberalism Sucks

This occurred in Sweden, but it wouldn't surprise me a bit had it happened here in the US. In fact, I can virtually guarantee that it will happen before long (assuming it hasn't already) -

A talented head cook at a school in central Sweden has been told to stop baking fresh bread and to cut back on her wide-ranging veggie buffets because it was unfair that students at other schools didn't have access to the unusually tasty offerings.


The municipality has ordered Eriksson to bring it down a notch since other schools do not receive the same calibre of food - and that is "unfair".


Moreover, the food on offer at the school doesn't comply with the directives of a local healthy diet scheme which was initiated in 2011, according to the municipality.


In case you missed the point of the news excerpt above, I'll explain. Liberalism and Socialism suck in this instance for the same reason they suck in every instance when applied. Instead of celebrating excellence and encouraging others to emulate success and rise to the highest level that they can reach - they strive to achieve "equity" by dragging people down to the lowest common denominator in a quest for "fairness".

Who is better off than they were before this happened? Are the schools that robotically follow the school lunch master plan better off now that the thoughtful, caring school lunch lady no longer provides excellent service at the school where she works?

Of course they aren't. Instead of looking at the anomaly of this one school and trying follow their example by stepping up the game at the other schools, its much easier to just smack the good school down to the level of everyone else.

Nice Aim, Sweetie Pie...

But you need to work on threat assessment a little bit, though.

That's what I found when responding to a call this summer. Its a Rat Snake that a resident had found on her back patio. She was so freaked out at the sight of it that she ran back into the house, got her .38 revolver, came back outside, and started blasting away.

The neighbors called the Police because of the gunfire. When I met the police officer on the scene she was a total sobbing mess. The LEO had to tell me what happened, because she was too upset to even talk. Apparently she thought it might be poisonous and didn't want it to get away.

It's hard to tell how many times she hit it, since snakes coil when hurt/frightened and some of the holes maybe from the same round. Still pretty good shooting considering how freaked out she was.

Rat Snakes, in case you didn't know, are completely harmless. Actually very beneficial critters to have around. I pick them up at work all the time from Spring through Fall every year. We just turn them loose elsewhere, when they aren't full of bullet holes that is. The one below I picked up a couple of weeks ago. Exactly the same kind of snake, but very different coloring.

That's why its not a good idea to go by color/pattern alone when identifying snakes.

Its also a really bad idea to shoot your gun in your backyard when you live in a residental neighborhood with folks going about their lives all around you, just a few feet away...... but then again you already know that.

Don't you.

No charges filed by the Cops. Just a "Hey, you realize this was stupid now so don't do it again" warning. I don't know if the neighbors nearby had any words with her after we left, but you can bet that if one of MY neighbors went wiggy with a gun in their backyard one day I'd be in their shit big-time about it.

Return of the Hat Cam

I haven't shot any Hat Cam video in a while at work. Mostly that's because I haven't had the intersection of:

A: a call interesting enough to Hat Cam, and
B: time to deploy said Hat Cam before I was in the thick of things.

The stars aligned the other day, though, so I shot the video below. Call started out simply enough. Nuisance Barking complaint from a neighbor. Seems the owners of some dogs went out of town on vacation, leaving their dogs in the backyard where they proceeded to bark non-stop for three days and nights. The Police had been called out every night by angry neighbors who couldn't sleep, but since there was no one home they took no further action.

By the time the angry neighbors got around to calling Animal Control, they were pretty steamed. Added to the mix was the fact that the dogs had begun to chew their way out of their yard through the wooden fence. When I arrived at the location one of the dogs was already outside its yard and running amok through the neighborhood. The other dogs were doing their best to enlarge the hole in the fence so they could join their buddy in the fun of menacing people as they tried to leave for work/school.

I arrived first on the scene and pretty quickly impounded the dog that was running loose. Then a Police Officer arrived. He was there because one of the Complainants was kind of a knucklehead. Angry, venting people in my face while my adrenaline is up on an aggressive dog call can quite easily result in me having to clobber someone - so its a good idea to have some human crowd control at hand.

My partner, Cwn, arrived shortly afterward to give me a hand with the two dogs remaining in the yard.

  A couple of thoughts about the video above:

The dogs were impounded at our Animal Shelter, where their owners can redeem them when they get home from their trip.


There seems to be an endless supply of armchair quarterback experts that watch the way we do things on calls like this and then offer up their wisdom as to how they could have done things much better. They watch a couple of Discovery Channel shows... maybe volunteer at an Animal Shelter a couple of times... and they are an instant Dog Whisperer.

Look... my job in these circumstances is pretty simple. Control/confine the dogs without:

A. Getting anyone else hurt.
B. Getting myself hurt.
C. Getting the Animals hurt.

In That Order.

I'm not there to socialize these people's dogs. I'm not there to train them. I'm not there to punish them. I'm not there to make you feel good about the experience if you happen to be watching.

That's it. Dog on truck without getting bitten while using as little force as possible given the particular circumstances. Then I have to move on to the next call.... because they do continue to pile up into a line while we are out on calls just like this, all day long.

Cwn and I make a good team on calls like this. We've worked dogs like these (and much, much worse) frequently enough that each of us instinctively knows what the other is doing most of the time. Having a partner that you don't trust can get you hurt badly - even in situations like this where the dogs aren't that bad to begin with.

As I've said often in the past: Fear Draws Aggression. It takes a combination of good dog-reading skills, respect for the danger involved, and realistic confidence in your abilities (ie balls) to do this job well.

Girl Friday - 10/05/2012 - Nadia Bjorlin

This week's Girl Friday is an Actress who was born in a America, but spent her early childhood in Sweden before returning to The States. Her father was Swedish, and her mother Persian. The result of that mix is

Nadia Bjorlin

Hit the jump for more...

Behind every stereotype...

.... There lurks a little truth.

Hollywood Survival Tips

I DVR'd the first couple of episodes of the new TV series "Revolution" so that I could check it out. I didn't expect much and I wasn't disappointed in that regard. I won't bother to watch any further, but I did glean a few tips/hints for surviving a post disaster WROL (without rule of law) situation that we all might find useful.

There was also something very important that they got completely right.

The premise of the show is that "something" happens and electricity suddenly no longer works - even batteries are useless. The show takes place mainly 15 years after the event, but contains flashbacks of some characters during the initial days after the lights go out.

1. The first thing you do after the power fails, is light all of the 50 or 60 candles and oil lamps that you have at your house. Then - eat all the ice cream, because their ain't gonna be no more of that good stuff.

2. Next - walk out of the city and go to the "country". Because that's where all the food is.

3. During your walk from the city you won't see much of anyone else. Mainly just abandoned cars and trash and stuff. No dead people laying around or anything. I'm assuming all the other people are still in their houses eating their ice cream or they are already out in the countryside - because that's where the food is.

4. Elizabeth Mitchell is HOT!

5. Demographics after the collapse: The "good guys" will be 95% attractive. The "bad guys" will be 80% unattractive. This will be useful if you want to play the odds when you meet people. Also, everyone is amazingly clean and healthy looking. Even the bad guys. Young people look like they walked out of the Twilight series.

6. When shot with an arrow, people will drop dead immediately. Every arrow hits its target but gunfire might be hit or miss. If someone is shot with a gun they might linger on a bit, but an arrow is an immediate trip to the great beyond. Most of the time if you're hit by an arrow, even if you are shot with a little crossbow pistol, you'll fly backward with great force from the impact of the mighty bolt.

7. End times cause people to develop amazing ninja-like sword skills.

8. Did I mention that I think Elizabeth Mitchell is HOT?

Aside from the all to brief appearances by Ms. Mitchell, there was one other bright spot in the show. Someone on the writing team actually has a grasp of why we have the Second Amendment to the Constitution. It wasn't the Fuddy hunting and sports reasons either. On more than one occasion they clearly pointed out that the reason we are specifically promised the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is as a protection against Tyranny.

That did my heart good to see.

Pull Up..... Pull Up.....

I know I have some readers who aren't conservative in their political leanings - or really have no political leanings at all. Some of you stop by for the restoration stuff, some for the Animal Control stuff, and of course for the ever popular Girl Friday.

If this is you, then please take a moment to read a brief post from my friend LL - it does a very good job of explaining a bit about why we are all about to slam face first into a wall of serious hurt if we don't straighten up and get our shit together.

Is it safe to go in the water?

If you read my blog, especially any of the posts having to do with my job, you've undoubtedly noticed that I bag pretty harshly on the citizens of the city where I work. For the most part, I feel completely justified in doing so because their behavior and lack of common sense make it SO EASY.

In the interest of fairness, though, I think its important to point out that not everyone that I run into during the course of my day is a completely helpless sheeple. Take the guy who sent me a couple of pictures of the odd fish he caught in a neighborhood pond the other day...

Doesn't look too odd, does it? Kind of like a really big sunfish or maybe some sort of perch?

Take a look at pic #2.

HOLY JEEZ!!!!!! GAH.... A FISH WITH HUMAN TEEETH!!!!! OMG, A PIRANHA!!!!!

It's actual a Pacu. Pretty freaky, huh?

They are native to South America and are pretty harmless. They'll eat most anything, but are generally content to eat plants and nuts and they aren't aggressive like their more evil Amazonian cousins. They end up in waterways around here when people who have them as aquarium pets dump them in the lakes and rivers for whatever reason.

"Pacu" is sort of a generic term, like "Catfish". There are several species of Pacu just like there are Channel Catfish, Blue Catfish, etc.

The guy that sent me these pictures just wanted us to know it was in the pond. He had already done some research and figured out what it was and that it wasn't harmful to people. He even turned it loose where he caught it (which I don't recommend).

No Pants-shitting Hysterics. No calls to the media about the dangerous fish that will eat the children. No blasting away at the fish with a shotgun....

So here's to you, Anonymous Fisherman Dude. You surprised me and made me proud :)