Don’t do this!
Woman found with gun during strip search pleads guilty
(Image 1: The Four Rules of Firearm Safety)
From the Pantagraph:
BLOOMINGTON — A Missouri woman accused of having a handgun concealed in her vaginal cavity during her booking at the McLean County jail pleaded guilty Friday to weapon and drug charges.
Anika Witt, 20, of Ozark, pleaded guilty to possession of a weapon by a felon and unlawful possession of a controlled substance. According to a prosecutor’s statement read in court in September, Witt was stopped Sept. 7 for speeding on Interstate 55 near Chenoa.
A search of the vehicle turned up heroin in her bra and ecstasy, said the statement.
This is way to far inside the waistband carry!
It also gives all new meaning to the user manual admonition to: “AVOID OVER-LUBRICATION OF (your firearm’s) COMPONENTS”.
Stay alert!
Open thread.
Shell
Wha…wha….Whaat?
Adam L Silverman
@Shell: Exactly!
EBT
And that’s why you don’t speed when you are a drug mule.
Inventor
Did she have a concealed carry license?
danielx
Sweet tidy bowl Jeebus skipping across the blue water…..I cannot begin to imagine how uncomfortable – at best – that particular carry location would be.
Jerzy Russian
The gun was completely inside her cooter? Is that comfortable? Can you walk when an object like that is inside your cooter? Do the guards routinely look inside cooters in these situations? My inner 12 year old boy has more questions along these lines, but I will stop there.
danielx
Awwwww….that is the first time I’ve seen that picture of Tunch the Mighty with wings and a halo.
Timurid
The Kimber .380 is a scaled down version of the Colt 1911. It’s meant to be concealable, but it’s not exactly a derringer. In a word… ouch.
Quinerly
This story sounded familiar. A quick Google search told me of at least two other heat packing vagina cases dating back a few years. ?
Brachiator
I know that happiness is a warm gun, but this is taking it too far.
The American dream, cruising along the highway, she’s got heroin in her bra, and a gun in her coochie.
geg6
How the hell? Why the hell? Talk about your ammosexual.
Uncle Omar
Missouah woman and Floridah man need to get together. Imagine the offspring.
Quinerly
And TN woman: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/tn-woman-loaded-gun-hidden-vagina-pleads-guilty-article-1.2440808
randy khan
It seems like that wouldn’t be a great option if you wanted a quick draw.
danielx
Taking concealed carry to new, uh, depths….
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
More evidence for my opinion that Missouri is just a mix of Kansas and Arkansas.
Related: If Memphis wasn’t depopulated by the yellow fever outbreaks in the 1870s, would its subsequent development look like St. Louis’, or would they have stabilized each other during the downswing of river transport in the late 20th century?
danielx
@Uncle Omar:
I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you. I’m thinking mutants…..
Gelfling 545
I’m cringing just reading that. And she was seated and driving like that. Ouch
Quinerly
Oklahoma woman: https://www.policeone.com/bizarre/articles/6142022-Okla-woman-packs-heat-meth-in-her-private-parts/
Yutsano
…
I got nothin’.
No really.
Feeling decent however. Tired, but decent.
Major Major Major Major
Post needs more puns.
Quinerly
Texas woman: http://news4sanantonio.com/news/local-deprecated/loaded-gun-hidden-in-woman39s-vagina
Brachiator
@Uncle Omar:
Might not have any offspring. That woman was packing a hell of an IUD.
jackmac
I thought stuff like this only happens in Florida.
Adam L Silverman
@Timurid: It does have both external and internal safeties. If you know what I mean. And I think you do.
M. Bouffant
@Jerzy Russian: I was popped for reefer possession in 1973 & before I was put in the cell the arresting ossifer asked me to drop my pants & spread my cheeks so he could be sure I hadn’t concealed something up there.
Adam L Silverman
@Quinerly: Yep, this seems to become a public issue every few years. Makes you wonder how many more women have opted for internal carry, but aren’t caught.
Omnes Omnibus
I, uh, um, well damn. I guess.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: Makes you wonder where she was hiding the ecstasy.
Quinerly
@Adam L Silverman: New Mexico woman. This one is rather famous: http://beta.nydailynews.com/news/crime/cormac-mccarthy-ex-wife-busted-bizarre-play-gun-article-1.1570196
wuzzat
I know sex ed’s not great in Misery, but that’s not what “use protection” means…
Jamey
If the gun went off, that would result in some really messy discharge. (Sorry.)
Adam L Silverman
@Quinerly: You might want to see someone about your fetish. We’re not judging, just saying…//
Brachiator
O/T. The British Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, resigned over an immigrant scandal. This is a big fucking deal. From news reports.
Rudd was a key ally of Prime Minister Theresa May, and one of the more capable people in her cabinet. Rudd was also, I believe, anti-BREXIT, and possibly a future candidate for prime minister herself.
This seriously wobbles May’s government. She is expected to announce Rudd’s replacement tomorrow.
Adam L Silverman
@jackmac: It probably does, but it seems to only become public outside of Florida.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
So I’ve mentioned that I’ve been writing this story I’ve mentioned before that has gone through several conceptual iterations.
How plausible is it that a white supremacist paramilitary group (formed from a global cabal of corporate and some government factions) could take over (and maintain control of) significant portions of South America (perhaps Argentina, Brazil, or Venezula [for the oil and other nat resources] following 20 years after a global 1980s nuclear war? Australia and New Zealand could qualify but I’ve read that they import a lot of their things and aren’t very self-suficient. Also, the main villain leading them is an American and I don’t think the Australians (certainly not the NZers (Nuclear Free NZ, anyone) who survive would appreciate being ruled by an American.
And how could they have kept that a secret in the years preceding said war?
Doug R
Insert joke about banging here
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m seriously trying not to think about it.
MomSense
@Jamey:
Ha!
Well this is weird and gross.
scav
@Brachiator: Ah yes, that paragon of stable non-wobbliness, May’s government. Will be intersting,
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Here you go:
https://www.history.com/shows/hunting-hitler
Wag
@Timurid:
I’m just going to let your linked advertisement speak for itself.
Sab
I am so old that I remember being taught gun safety by the NRA when I was twelve.
Adam L Silverman
@scav: Especially the reporting at the end of last week about Russian trolls and bots trying to boost Jeremy Corbyn’s candidacy.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/exposed-russian-twitter-bots-tried-to-swing-general-election-for-jeremy-corbyn-zffv8652x
Quinerly
@Adam L Silverman: As you might know, I live in St. Louis. A bunch of people have been gigging over Missouri woman for several days. All over the Book of Faces. I thought I was having some sort of weird flashback. That prompted me to Google. I guess I’m a bit of an expert on this now… And, yes, there is Florida woman: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/857626?ref=fb&src=sp
My work is done. Good night!
Adam L Silverman
@Wag: Kimber’s are so notoriously tight that they take between 500 and 1,000 rounds of ammo to be shot through the before they’ll function properly without malfunctioning. Failure to feed, failure to return to battery, failure to eject, failure to extract.
Sab
Adam,
I lovedyour emojji.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: Anti-immigrant and anti-Brexit seems odd.
SFBayAreaGal
@Adam L Silverman: Did you watch this? I’ve watched all the episodes. Pretty darn interesting.
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
There’s a wrters’ thread that sometimes pops up on Sundays and some authors who post here. Have you brought this up with them?
I don’t know nothing about writing fiction, but as a reader, I’m impressed whenever a writer makes an imagined world vividly real. I would think that even if you don’t include every detail in the final story, you have to work out how this world works and how it got from point A to point XYZ.
Good luck.
Adam L Silverman
@Sab: Thank you.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Adam L Silverman:
I am not a kook!!!
I know some Nazi war criminals fled to Argentina. That’s probably what made you think of that (alternate) History Channel show. At least back when they were the Hitler Channel it was real history.
That still doesn’t speak to the plausibility of my premise.
Gin & Tonic
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: In the late 1970’s and early to mid 1980’s there was a lot of speculative fiction, both books and TV, contemplating a third world war. It may be worth your time to peruse some of that. And then, as a sort of antidote, read Herman Kahn’s On thermonuclear War. There’s a lot of practical details you’re overlooking. But it’s late (for me) so I’ll leave it at that.
Omnes Omnibus
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Umm, ahem. Cough.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yep. PM May and her ministers are trying to juggle contradictory and nonsensical positions. And Nigel Farage has climbed out of the sewer to make the following statement.
Adam L Silverman
@SFBayAreaGal: I did. I have an exhaustively researched print copy of a book published in the mid 90s on the Der Spinner network. It’s in storage with 99% of the rest of my stuff (thus is the life of your over credentialed mercenary) or I’d give you the title and author. Baer’s reputation is legendary. Nada Bakos is one of the best network based analysts and targeteers there is. And I say this as someone who has taught network based analysis and targeting to military and civilian intelligence officers. I don’t know the actual ARSOF guys involved in the show.
I find what they’ve uncovered highly plausible. My understanding is that the genetic testing done on the recovered remains from the Fuhrer Bunker were not Hitler’s. They weren’t even male. And we know that the Der Spinner network existed and that it did move large numbers of NAZIs out of Europe. We also know, because it is well documented that the founder of German Foreign Intelligence, the BND, who was Hitler’s head of foreign intelligence that we decided to rehabilitate, used his assets to facilitate some of this using the early BND as cover. So I think it is certainly plausible.
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: I was teasing.
Also, we are still waiting from the investigators to report back their finding on whether you do or do not qualify as a kook. As well as what level of kook classification you will be awarded.//
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Do you know about the Confederates who fled to Brazil after the US Civil War?
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Man, does this thread need some hot BiP action.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Brachiator:
That’s the hard part. I’m worried that I won’t be able to write the world in a convincing and realistic manner.
I tried asking what the effects of 1983 nuclear war would have on the world on AH.com and I got 20 different answers. Didn’t help at all.
Truth be told, while the nuclear winter predictions were probably more dire than what reality would have been, popular depictions of post-apocalyptic settings are a little too rosy (probably more for plot convenience)
danielx
@Adam L Silverman:
I own a Sig pretty much like that and I cannot imagine how much that would hurt.
Gin & Tonic
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Yeah, now I know you’ve got to get you some Herman Kahn.
Adam L Silverman
This pisses me off. The tree was from the forest at Belleau Wood.
Adam L Silverman
@danielx: P238?
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Oh, Goku is a kook alright. How much of a kook is the question. I say lots of kook. Lots.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Was this one of his hobby horses?
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Maybe it sounds to glib, but maybe it would help if you just start writing. Maybe a short story set in your world. Then take a look at what you have.
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Serious suggestion: email your question to Cheryl. If she can’t answer it for you, then I’m not sure who to tell you to talk to.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m aware. I was joking.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Reinhard Gehlen sure was.
M. Bouffant
@Adam L Silverman: The planting was all for show, but not to worry:
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: I did not know that. Gehlen was an interesting individual.
Brachiator
I recently went to see the new Avengers movie. The only trailer was for the new Han Solo film. It looks pretty good, but one scene made me wish that the studio had done a stand-alone film centering on Lando, without Han or Chewie, and new characters and world’s that we had not seen before.
Adam L Silverman
@M. Bouffant: Fine, fine. I’ll let it go. This time.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Dear god.
Joeg
.380 cal dildo.
danielx
@Adam L Silverman:
Yup. It works fine.
danielx
@Adam L Silverman:
Trying to remember the name of the movie with Gregory Peck as a Nazi hunter finding adolescent Hitler clones in South America….
Villago Delenda Est
@M. Bouffant: A competent White House staff would have issued a press release prior to the planting to explain all this.
But we don’t have a competent White House staff.
mapaghimagsik
@Uncle Omar: that tyke will be a real pistol!
Villago Delenda Est
@danielx: The Boys from Brazil?
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Gin & Tonic:
@Brachiator: @Adam L Silverman:
All good ideas. I’ll probably give emailing Cheryl a chance too.
@Brachiator:
Vaguely.
Adam L Silverman
@danielx: The Boys from Brazil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_from_Brazil_(film)
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s a great book. Not so great movie, unfortunately.
M. Bouffant
@Adam L Silverman: When I saw the first reports I assumed there was a legit reason, as not even Trump & his flunkies could be that tone deaf, so I looked for an explanation, figuring maybe they had to put in a pot for a while for the roots to grow or …
The idea of a quarantine for dirty furrin trees seems somehow appropriate for Trump & his lumps.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
My Kimber Ultra-Carry .45 has about 300 rounds through it, and hasn’t ever misfired, stove-piped, or otherwise failed, so far. It is tight, though. A tiny drop of oil before shooting may be helping.
The tiny manual tells me I could expect mis-adventures until I put 500 rounds through it, hasn’t happened yet.
Mnemosyne
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Honestly, I wouldn’t make yourself too crazy figuring out the backstory unless that takeover is the plot of the book. If you read The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s never quite clear exactly how the USA became Gilead, just some of the leadup events and people.
danielx
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s it.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: you should definitely start writing. It will expose holes in your understanding and plotting very quickly.
@Mnemosyne: with many such things the author often has it outlined at least, even though the stuff never makes it into the book. As I’m sure you’re aware.
Adam L Silverman
@M. Bouffant: They had a real problem with the first batch of cherry trees that Japan gifted to the US for DC back in the 19th Century. So I understand the quarantine thing. Would’ve been nice if, as @Villago Delenda Est: said they made an announcement.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: You appear to have been blessed. Of course only the people that have the break in issues ever post about them online in the forums.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne:
Rhymes with Pike Mence and Cred Tuz.
danielx
@Adam L Silverman:
Didn’t remember the details, although confusing Mengele with Wiesenthal is kind of a major oversight. I just remember Gregory Peck chewing the scenery in one scene.
Adam L Silverman
@danielx:
It happens.
khead
I guess I picked the wrong open ahead to post in.
Did anyone else catch the Parts Unknown season opener about my home county tonight? It’s about to rerun on CNN. I have…. mixed feelings.
Brachiator
@M. Bouffant:
The first cherry blossom trees brought to the US from Japan had all kinds of problems.
But yeah, Trump is a dope who should have had people handle this better.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Me, I wonder why people feel that they need a side-arm.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Mnemosyne:
I know what you’re saying and the takeover isn’t part of the plot. Time travel to 1983 from an alternate 2005 is involved, so the backstory will probably come up (along with the pre-war world still being within living memory)
I’ve always been interested in the “lore” of fictional worlds and I like details that add flavor and make a setting come alive.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Outlined, sure, but you usually don’t have to work out every single detail. Conquests and wars are inherently chaotic and “implausible” things happen all the time. How plausible was it that Hitler would survive so many assassination attempts during the war?
Adam L Silverman
@khead: No I did not. I did see all the episodes of this though:
https://www.destinationamerica.com/tv-shows/ghosts-of-shepherdstown/
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
By Leon Uris, who wrote Exodus
Mnemosyne
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
If you haven’t read both Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood, I would really recommend it. She does a great job of conveying just the right details of a post-apocalyptic setting.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeh, I noticed that when I looked up F-350 diesel truck forums. Everyone posting had done “upgrades” to their chip, or exhaust, or turbo, and then the head bolts shattered and the cylinder head flew out the hood. Or something.
Guys who left their engines stock, not so much. Wonder why?
I once asked about a sound from the power steering pump, they replaced it, and they found a couple leaky cooling devices as they penetrated into the pump, all under the warranty. Put 90K on it without any issues. Well, brakes, oil changes, that kind of thing.
They lift the cab off for major repairs, like a semi-tractor…
Lyrebird
@Adam L Silverman: The joke possibilities here are pretty endless but I can’t get over the OW NOT COMFORTABLE level of your original post to think of any.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
Not at all — it’s by Ira Levin, author of Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives.
rikyrah
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Need SA countries that have all but wiped out the indigenous population-Argentina and Chile. Venezuela has a sizeable indigenous as well as Afro population. Same with Brazil and Peru.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: When the people trying to do it were line and staff officers, the odds of it not working were high. I was a line officer and a staff officer. That was never something we could be good at.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I wonder that too. But given JR’s choice, he seems, based on reporting, to have been lucky.
rikyrah
The stories in this post’s replies are ???
Adam L Silverman
@Lyrebird: I can’t imagine it would be.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I was also thinking of Richard Ross, who survived the Peninsular Wars to defeat Napoleon the first time around in 1814, only to be killed by an American sniper after burning Washington DC. War is weird and unpredictable.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Mnemosyne:
I’ve been meaning to read Handmaid’s Tale.
Anyway, my story, while being a pretty serious adventure will just be a fanfiction. Do you remember G1 MLP?
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Reynolds on the morning of the first full day at Gettysburg…
As my ASO used to remark to me often: “There’s a bullet out there with everyone’s name on it. I don’t worry about that one. I worry about the ones marked ‘to whom it may concern'”.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t carry it around all that much. I use it for target shooting here on the farm, have put down injured animals, etc. Not in my pocket all the time, for crying out loud! Or other less comfortable places!
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: @Mnemosyne: also anything by William Gibson, try The Peripheral for a master class in having obviously outlined an entire universe but never once expositing.
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Read this:
https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3128&context=faculty_scholarship
It was published in Parameters, which is the Army’s strategic level professional journal. It was his strategic research project from when he attended National War College. Lt. Gen. (ret) Dunlap was one of the most senior staff judge advocates in the US Air Force.
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: Why is it needed?
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: Given what you’ve told me about where you live – middle of nowhere in a holler – I figured that’s what it was for.
Mnemosyne
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Sorry, I have no clue what G1 MLP is. ?
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Or the original several Shannara trilogies until Brooks decided to explicitly connect the world of the Four Lands to our own.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
Crap. That’s what I get for relying on 60 year old memory.
I probably conflated it with Topaz.
Bill Arnold
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
How big of an exchange? All-out between the USSR and the US, with maybe 50 percent of the arsenals being used and the rest destroyed or duds or never launched, with China, UK, France, Israel not involved?
Here’s a Pollyanna-ish version:
Approximately, maybe 500M prompt and fallout-related deaths mostly in destruction zones. Some (early 1980s, no internet) tech infrastructure survives (I don’t know about power grids of 1983; probably they mostly survive (with some exceptions) or are repairable outside destruction zones) or is easily repaired, oil continues to flow and coal continues to be mined, albeit at maybe 1/4 then-current levels. Nuclear winter and supply chain collapses cause massive crop failures / distribution failures for a year and lesser failures for a few more, a billion or two (of 5) starve to death. Massive improvised fixing and other improvisation (because people like to fix things especially if they’re highly motivated by fear of collapse of civilization, e.g. T1D people.) brings things back to maybe 50 percent outside destruction zones within 15 years. Lots of attempted migration to the southern hemisphere to escape lingering fallout, and lots of other migration, hard to predict. I’ve not seen it done convincingly in fiction, but may have missed an example. I have a survivalist manual from that era somewhere, but it focused on the US. (e.g. medical care reverts to a mix of early 20th and mid-20 century levels in many places.)
As Braciator says, you need to write down the alt-history, and edit it until it seems plausible to you, then run it by somebody else. Even if the details don’t escape into the fiction. And you probably want to understand economics and tech of the era in detail.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Mnemosyne:
This is it
I was thinking of doing a crossover of that and current G4 MLP. Megan would be a high-functioning alcoholic 20 years later. Having grown up in a post-nuclear hellscape has caused her to become a cynical mercenary that has to be convinced to once again come to the rescue of the ponies to face down an old enemy. Only this time more humans (the white supremacists I was talking about) than just her cross over and plot to squire reality altering powers to take over what remains of the Earth.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
My brain stopped working right there. Is this real life and no some slash fiction thing?
Major Major Major Major
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: No no, that’s real, the slash fiction is what young Goku is writing.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: That’s brony slash fiction to you!
Adam L Silverman
And with that, I’m to bed.
Mart
Stories like this woman’s and those on the cable TV shows like COPS and LIVE PD make me sad. Instead of being repeat offenders, theses poor folks should be getting some proper help. This woman could well be on the dead from opioids list 6 months after she gets out of jail. Her home town of Ozark, MO is a prime example of the rural white opioid and meth crisis here.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m not writing slash. That’s exploitative porn.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Adam L Silverman:
I have always hated that term. It defeats the whole idea of breaking down barriers and enjoying something for it’s own sake regardless of what the target audience is. To me, it’s always been a sign insecurity in your masculinity that you have use “bro” to describe your fandom. It’s also very gendered for no reason.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: i was joking. Although I don’t see what makes slash ‘exploitative.’
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major:
I know you were. I’ve always associated it with bad stories that have no plot and only exist to provide fanservice. They don’t depict same-sex romance in a very sensitive and respectful light.
Man, you people probably think I’m a freak now lol
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
Whoops, thought my edit didn’t go through. Disregard this comment!
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: I mean yeah, it’s garbage, but it’s not exploiting anybody.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major:
Eh, I’m probably talking out of my ass anyway. Have a good night and thanks for the advice!
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: don’t let the bedbugs bite.
lgerard
Evidently Scott Pruitt took care of that stupid French tree
Tree planted at White House by Trump and Macron appears to have vanished
Major Major Major Major
@lgerard: see above, the tree is merely temporarily out for quarantine.
normal liberal
I am exceedingly grateful that 1-this lunatic decided to avoid a trial for which I might have been called for jury duty (I’m imagining voir dire…) and 2-that the jury I was on two weeks ago featured a defendant who apparently steered clear of weapons in his home-based controlled substance business. Unexpected, given the drug trafficking, wads of cash, etc.
As to our visitor from Missouri, well, yikes. What a shame there was no quote from the officer who located the extremely concealed weapon.
lgerard
@Major Major Major Major:
so they say….
Major Major Major Major
@lgerard: ‘they’ in this case being a French official as quoted by Adam, yes.
Suzanne
Um…..how, uh, BIG is her, uh….holster?
Trying NOT to make any hot-dog-down-a-hallway jokes…..
Suzanne
@Brachiator:
God, it’s so painful, when something is so close and still so far up your snatch…
prostratedragon
@rikyrah:
Overview of the history of Africans in Argentina.
“A fuego lento,” a tango by the Afro-Argentine composer Horacio Salgán.
AxelFoley
@Brachiator:
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
NineDragonSpot
I guess “vagina dentata” no longer edgy enough…
Frankensteinbeck
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Answering as a writer: Totally plausible. The world is weird and things much weirder than this can happen. It is not an extreme setting in terms of what people are used to swallowing. However, you’re setting yourself up for tons of research so that you know which issues to at least brush off with hinted answers, and to present issues and cultures of the countries involved.
If it helps, and I’m sure it will, remember nothing in your backstory has to happen the likely way, including the results of a nuclear war. You only have to know the issues well enough to imply why it didn’t.
The conspiracy part of hiding who controls South America is the hardest part, because readers have a higher threshold for conspiracy swallowing. Not much harder, and you have the advantage in a post-Internet age of blaming pre-internet information lag as rhetorical sleight-of-hand.
EDIT – And as a writer I also advise: Don’t go out of your way to give the explanations to your reader. Have them there in the backstory so they can leak out when relevant, and at the minimal levels a character would feel like describing. It’s the ‘nobody describes how the engine of their car works’ argument.
J R in WVone of them were ever attacked
@Omnes Omnibus:
We live on over 200 acres with 3 households, probably a minimum of 45 minutes or an hour from nearest LEO support if something happens, from a sneak thief looking for tools in the shop, a timber rustler trying to cut valuable cherry or walnut trees, someone trying to break into the house for tools or money. EMTs with a county ambulance is a little closer, maybe 15 or 20 minutes if they aren’t on a call when you call them for help.
One day early one morning an old gray truck with a brushed on paint job drove right up to the shop , expecting to steal some expensive power tools. At the time we had a 95 pound brown dog with a big bark, we called him Boomer from his bass voice. I let Boomer out to run over to the strange truck 200 hards away at the shop, tucked a gun into my hip pocket and walked down to the shop road where it hit the main farm road and waited for the two guys to come out from the shop. They got right back in their truck the minute big old Boomer got up there barking.
When they came down to me, I asked “What are you boys up to out here?” and the driver, a dumbass looking fat boy with a beer between his legs said “We’re stone cutters from Marmet and we’re looking for country rock to cut for a job.” There are boulders lying around the place, but these boys didn’t have any stone mason tools, hell their little old truck wouldn’t have held much in the way of stone workers tools.
So I told them there was no country rock hard and tight enough to use for building stone any where around this neighborhood, so they were wasting their time looking. I went on to say that they should get out of the community quickly, and stay away, as some people were touchier about strangers than I was, They left without further incident. which was good.I will take
I had a gun in my hip pocket which I didn’t even need to brandish to get rid of those sneak thieves. I could have held them and had my wife call the cops, who could have found out what was in the truck bed of those boys from the day of driving around to see what they could find that wasn’t locked up or fastened down. In those cases the gun is a combination of personal security tool and farm or remote living security tool.
We have had livestock with fatal injuries, that I was able to put down and bury. We have had feral dogs coming contact with livestock aiming to take down a $2500 cow to eat, when I needed to shoot leader dogs to protect our herds! So in those cases the pistol is a farm tool.
Sometimes when I go out to our little place I built in Arizona I feel the need to take a large pistol, as there are mountain lions commonly around the ranch at 5500 feet in the Dragoon Mountains. I’ve seen them within spitting distance down at my cousin’s little farm house in the valley since the fire in the Mountains along the east of the Valley, which drove all the wildlife out of the national monument down into the valley fields and woods.
There the pistol is purely for personal protection against an apex predator perfectly willing to attack a person for lunch. And I will confess that driving cross country from WV to AZ, a 2050 mile trip from house to house, I feel more secure having a Kimber .45 with us on remote roads in the middle of seriously no where. We usually also have a Taurus .40 pistol too, not quite as big a gun for a lion, but perfectly adequate for people with evil intent.
My grandmother lived on a farm in the country, and kept a tiny general store, with 50 pound sacks of flour and cornmean, kerosene and gas and oil, fan belts and canned beans and tomatoes. She carried a pistol in her apron pocket, with the reciepts, all day every day, and everyone knew about it. She was never robbed in her store. She did hold a guy at gunpoint who had broken into her enclosed back porch and was working to open the back door when she opened it, holding her .32Colt on him, They stood there waiting the half hour it took the sheriff to get there. She was probably 75 or 80 at that time, and had been raised on a farm in Louisa KY and taught to shoot by her parents as a girl in about 1895. when Louisa was a river boat town with a mill and warehouses for mining equipment, farming tools, and mill tools.
I did an oral history project while in an Antioch University history class, I interviewed elderly high status women who had grown up in New River Gorge when the mining of the area was getting started. They had all been taught how to shoot, and to carry a pistol in their purse at all times in the late 1890s. At night they hung their gun from their bedpost, and in the morning they wore it to school, or to work or church. None of them were ever attacked, but others were, and they all believed that having a gun made then both safer and freer.
Most of them who still drove still carried a small pistol, all the time. My Grandma quit carrying one as a daily practice after she sold her store, in about 1955-57 or so. I remember staying at the store with Grandma when my Mom was beginning to go back to work as a reporter for the family business – the small town newspaper.
Booger
@Adam L Silverman: Don’t they make little pills for that these days?
retiredeng
Holy Hoohah Batman!
Miss Bianca
@J R in WVone of them were ever attacked: damn, J R…have you got the stories! Yeah, rural CO has all the same conditions you described…livestock, livestock predators, the occasional shady character, long distances between one’s house and the ER or the vet…i don’t carry, myself, but everything you’ve dsecribed is why I think about it from time to time.
J R in WV
@Miss Bianca:
Well, as I say, I don’t often actually carry one around, except when I do. Mostly they lay where I keep them. The old guns I inherited which are no longer functional are on a shelf with other knicknacks.
Anybody my age that hasn’t got some stories didn’t do anything with all those years. You actually used to be able to travel just by going out to a road and showing people your thumb! There were some stories!!
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: @Major Major Major Major: I was joking too.
Kenneth Kohl
@Quinerly:
Not quite sure that “unholstered” is the verb we’re looking for…
Jay
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: o
Bolivia, the Cocaine Coup, Klaus Barbie was neck deep.