LUCKIEST

"They found out about him in July and stayed angry all through August.  They tried to kill him in September.  It was way too soon.  They weren’t ready.  The attempt was a failure.  It could have been a disaster, but it was actually a miracle.  Because nobody noticed.

They used their usual method to get past security and set up a hundred feet from where he was speaking.  They used a silencer and missed him by an inch.  The bullet must have passed right over his head.  Maybe even through his hair, because he immediately raised his hand and patted it back into place as if a gust of wind had disturbed it.  They saw it over and over again, afterward, on television.  He raised his hand and patted his hair.  He did nothing else.  He just kept on with his speech, unaware, because by definition a silenced bullet is too fast to see and too quiet to hear."

Lee Child, Without Fail (2002).

NOTE:  That isn’t what happened, not hardly.  My lecture continued because I wasn't finished, that’s all.  Words follow other words; there were more words to speak.  I was delivering at last my new paper on the passaro bonito and I was very pleased how it had turned out.  An extraordinary bird!  They missed me only because I saw it coming:  the shot, the bullet, the unkind sentiment, the intended consequence. At the moment, I nodded very slightly to the left to live and to avoid upsetting my audience who seemed intent on following me and the brightly colored Brazilian birds to our collective conclusion.  


These weren't powers I was born with.  They arrived suddenly, following a childhood operation to correct a lazy eye.  I had been promised X-ray vision. X-Ray Vision!  Waking in the hospital insanely sore and discovering the deception was cruelly disappointing. Can you possibly imagine?

But my new powers of enhanced observation and hearing, speed and agility, dexterity and physical grace, have more than compensated. 

It is an insincere world, a friendless world, a cold and cruel world. I am a friendless man and a lucky man. 

Alan Price: O Lucky Man (Link)

Pretty Things: Cold Stone (Link) 

61 HOURS (REALLY SAYING SOMETHING)

"A bizarre career.

The Silver Star and the Purple Heart came from Beirut.  Reacher had been an army liaison officer serving with the Marine Corps at the time of the barracks bombing.  He had been badly wounded in the attack, and then heroic in the immediate aftermath.  All the other medal citations were redacted, which meant they involved secrets.

He had many formal qualifications.  He was rated expert on all small arms.  He had won an inter-service thousand yard rifle competition with a record score.  Anecdotally his fitness reports rated him well above average in the classroom, excellent in the field, fluently bilingual in English and French, passable in Spanish, outstanding on all man-portable weaponry, and beyond outstanding at hand-to-hand combat.  Susan knew what that last rating meant.  Like having a running chain saw thrown at you."

NOTE:  61 Hours, Lee Child’s 14^th Jack Reacher novel, like the rest of the series, is very, very good.  It features a dwarf Mexican drug lord with a Napoleon complex villain and a U.S. Polar Vortex winter like the one we're having as the backdrop for its meth lab on steroids, Nazi art horde mega-destruction climax.

That being said, my own career was also pretty bizarre and, like my Flappy Bird high score, is still evolving. I might eventually give Reacher a run for his money.

I visited the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia today with my old friend Virginia and her friend Sue. The park ranger who lectured us about the American history events from 1760 through the ratification of the U.S. Constitution did an outstanding, inspiring job.  When I think about our president’s recent, entirely discretionary, decision to close down the major Philadelphia history monuments during the  government shutdown (while retaining the services of his cook, his food taster, Dover Sole filleter, and martini steward) I am filled with disgust and horror.  These monuments should be kept open and available all day every day in perpetuity.

Virginia and Sue are leaving tomorrow.  Olympic downhills are being televised tonight after yesterday evening’s exhausting cross-country sessions and the sensational Amazonian biathletes, beautiful women who can shoot a rifle straight and then ski away like woodland goddesses.  

They’re Really Saying Something, although I’m not sure what they’re saying. (Apologies to the French/Filipino actor Herve Villechaize, a victim here of Central Casting.) 

Bananarama: Really Saying Something (Link)