Muscle Car Undercarriage
A fat county sheriff made a leap for Robert and missed. Janice didn’t dodge left or right of the sheriff who was suddenly in his way. He simply went through the exact space the man was occupying at the exact moment he occupied it. Given that momentum equals mass times velocity squared, it’s a miracle the sheriff didn’t explode into component molecules. He merely bounced off Janice and landed on the pavement with a “thunk.”
The next to give it a shot were six burly guys from the National Guard. They formed up in a classic football defensive line and tried to clothesline Robert; who dodged left, skidded past a parked Fiat, and kept running. Janice rolled through the line like a bowling ball; turning the extreme left and right into a human 7/10 split and the rest into walking wounded.
Up in the chemistry lab the crowd was on their feet whooping and shouting. A naked man bulldozing a half dozen army grunts? This was exactly the point of a university!
The Tri-county, Anti-drug, Community Interdiction, Special Programs, Environmental Task Force Team Pilot Project knew all about Janice. They didn’t move an inch. Likewise Ed stayed put. This inaction frustrated one of the 4×4 groupies who flipped his baseball hat backward and shouted the All-American Battle Cry of Freedom… “Hold my Beer and watch this!”
Any man who has welded a V8 short block onto a rototiller has no fear. Having done such things and more, he was the right man for the job. He took two big strides, vaulted the Gatlin gun’s array of barrels, and caught Robert; shoulder high. Twisting in mid-flight he executed the perfect takedown.
Robert never had a chance. The 4×4 redneck had performed a feat that would have taken out a wildebeast and Robert was a soft college dude. He landed like a sack of wet cement. ‘Merica!
The man from the 4×4 club had many stories. Shockingly, all of them were true. His favorite story happened when he was eleven years old and his older brother was seventeen. His brother had a hopped-up Plymouth Barracuda and the two had been arguing about suspension sag when the Barracuda went airborne (a situation that was surprisingly common). In order to solve this important debate, the two of them labored all afternoon to build a suitable ramp. Then he’d laid on the pavement while his brother jumped over him with the Plymouth. Their mother had arrived just in time to nearly have a heart attack. She grounded them both for six months.
He though he’d never again experience such a heady rush of machismo and narrowly avoided catastrophe. He was wrong. When he and Robert toppled to the pavement he landed face up; just in time to see Janice’s undercarriage as the maniac flew overhead. Reliving the greatest and stupidest feat of an exceptionally stupid youth! What more could a man ask for?
Re: The college scene: It reminds me of something I read a while back. Ayn Rand wrote a polemic (yeah, I know…) that was pretty on point about progressive education, called “The Comprachicos”. If you haven’t read it, it might resonate. But it’s a polemic, so, need to be in the mood for yet more ranting about the evil among us.
That’s pretty much Ayn Rand’s core skill. I’ll read it sometime. Her points are usually excellent but she’s so damn grouchy. I’ve often wondered what kind of connection Any Rand could’ve reached with actual humans if she went fishing once in a while, drank more, and employed a fearless editor with a chainsaw. Btw: someday I’ll get a video of Gen Z boneheads non-ironically screaming “fuck Eastasia” and my life will be complete.
Ehh, on rereading it all these years later, it’s a little nuttier than I remember. Some of the points are good, if applied to kids who are much older.
It’s not just her though. It’s every Russian author. Every Russian author is basically exorcising their personal demons and working out the issues that come from growing up in that bright Victorian world (or on the fringes of it, at least), and seeing it detonated by fanatics. None of them came out of that experience unbent.
There is this rocket scientist I read who is a little further along the “drunk the koolaid scale.” It’s darkly hillarious. “Oh yeah, Ivan, great guy. Soviet guidance systems would be nowhere without him. SMERSH cut off his fingers and made him sign a confession with his nose. … Peter couldn’t make it to staff meeting on Monday because he got sent to the gulag. That bastard! Project is now behind!” “Only in Soviey Union do scientists have so much serious responsibility! Other countries are just playing around. In Russia, strict targets for results are expected to be met.”
Now I must read it!
PS: Now for something creative/productive
Not creative writing, but here are some scripts that may be of use to those of you with a Linux environment. They’re designed to dump slow highly compressed archive.org books (which I find to be very slow to load and cumbersome to page through) to a pile of images. They can then rebind that pile of images into a new pdf that (while less compressed) loads pages much faster and can be flipped through.
https://www.amssolarempire.com/Blog/?p=712
Also, if it interests you, I may post (or post links to) some of the things I’ve read from people who *aren’t* insane: I’ve been reading a lot of old biographical material from Victorians and contemporaries. The last chapter of Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin is pretty good. The presentation of Wilbur Wright to the Western Society of Engineers.
Interesting people from a genuinely interesting culture in a bright time in human history. An antidote to the darkness maybe.
Please do!
As offered:
Here is a link to Wilbur Wright’s speech about his glider experiments at Kitty Hawk. Very interesting stuff, IMO.
https://www.amssolarempire.com/Blog/?p=714
I only had time to read the first half so far but what I’ve read is excellent. Thanks for the link!
Finally read the whole thing. It’s brilliant! So many observations that seem obvious in retrospect but were completely new at the time. I was particularly impressed with their notion that the secret of flight lay in more practice which is less about lift than control. Without control nobody could fly long or far without serious risk of crashing. With the risk of crashing so high nobody got hours and hours of practice at control. Very well reasoned and they went at it hammer and tongs to get that practice figured out.
I recommend the link (it can be read as a 16 page pdf) not just because Wilbur and Orville were pioneers of science but to enjoy their methodical attack at the problem. It’s pretty interesting if you’re the right sort of nerd.
Our new battle cry, “FUCK EASTASIA!!!” I’m seeing 4+4=5 popping up all over the place. I’ll bet there’s plenty of younger (than me, 70) folks reading 1984 for the 1st time, and getting worrieder (it’s practically a real word, go with it).
Thanks for your thankless labor of bringing back the Squirrels. It’s great reading during our interesting times.
Glad you like it. I’m not sure Squirrels will change the world but they’ll lighten the day for a few people. What more can anyone ask for?
I’m getting a changed world in my head, really, what more can one ask for? Outrageous humor is great for the world.