Shooter Quotes

They're professionals at this in Russia, so no matter how many Jell-O shots or Jager shooters you might have downed at college mixers, no matter how good a drinker you might think you are, don't forget that the Russians - any Russian - can drink you under the table.

Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location.

I might like to have someone courting me. But it would have to be someone who is a square shooter and who has a train load of courage. And it would have to be someone who doesn't have to talk down to folks to feel good, or to tell a person they are worthless ifthey just made a mistake. And he'd have to be not too thin. Why, I remember hugging [my brother] Ernest was like warpping your arms around a fence post,and I love Ernest, but I want a man who can hold me down in a wind. Maybe he'd have to be pretty stubborn. I don't have any use for a man that isn't stubborn. Likely a stubborn fellow will stay with you through thick and thin, and a spineless one will take off, or let his heart wander.

No matter how much crap you gotta plow through to stay alive as a photographer, no matter how many bad assignments, bad days, bad clients, snotty subjects, obnoxious handlers, wigged-out art directors, technical disasters, failures of the mind, body, and will, all the shouldas, couldas, and wouldas that befuddle our brains and creep into our dreams, always remember to make room to shoot what you love. It’s the only way to keep your heart beating as a photographer.

You weren’t worried about sleeping beside Aria when she still despised you so why should I?” “You can’t compare Aria to Gianna. They are like two different species. And I trust Aria absolutely. She caught a fucking bullet for me.” “Must be nice,” I muttered. “Gianna would probably applaud my shooter.

Slim throws me a startled look. I aim my bolt shooter at him. Who am I, you sonofabitch? Helluva time for a identity crisis, he says.

In the shooter hypothesis, a good marksman shoots at a target, creating a hole every ten centimeters. Now suppose the surface of the target is inhabited by intelligent, two-dimensional creatures. Their scientists, after observing the universe, discover a great law: “There exists a hole in the universe every ten centimeters.” They have mistaken the result of the marksman’s momentary whim for an unalterable law of the universe. The farmer hypothesis, on the other hand, has the flavor of a horror story: Every morning on a turkey farm, the farmer comes to feed the turkeys. A scientist turkey, having observed this pattern to hold without change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: “Every morning at eleven, food arrives.” On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at eleven, food doesn’t arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock.

When school kids are shot by a random shooter, nobody asks whether the victims should have taken more precautions. Nobody suggests that maybe the victims should have skipped school that day. Nobody ever blames the victims. So why is it that when women are attacked, the onus is on them?

My Father taught me how to be a man – and not by instilling in me a sense of machismo or an agenda of dominance. He taught me that a real man doesn’t take, he gives; he doesn’t use force, he uses logic; doesn’t play the role of trouble-maker, but rather, trouble-shooter; and most importantly, a real man is defined by what’s in his heart, not his pants.

You’ve gotta taste the light, like my friend and fellow shooter Chip Maury says. And when you see light like this, trust me, it’s like a strawberry sundae with sprinkles.

John Loengard, the picture editor at Life, always used to tell me, ”If you want something to look interesting, don’t light all of it.

You’re all here to bury the smartest girl, the sharpest shooter in the whole wide world. But I’m burying my guiding light.

I’m not a bad guy. I don’t lie; I don’t sandbag women with flowery words about a future together and love at first sight. I’m a straight shooter. I’m looking for a good time—for one night—and I tell them so. That’s better than ninety percent of the other guys in here, believe me. And most of the girls in here are looking for the same thing I am. Okay, maybe that’s not exactly true. But I can’t help it if they see me, fuck me, and suddenly want to bear my children.

The National Institute of Mental Health spends only $4.3 million on fetal prevention research, all of it for studies in mice, from its yearly $1.4 billion budget,” Freedman noted recently. “Yet half of young school shooters have symptoms of developing schizophrenia.

Unpredictability. Accidents. Not good when you’re engaging in, say, brain surgery, but when lighting...wonderful!

And I didn’t neglect to point out to my Yankee buddies that most of the high shooters in our platoon were Southern boys.

So I want to share a little news." "You getting married?" Butch tossed back half the new Lag. "Where you registered? Crate and Bury 'Em?" "Try Heckler and Koch." The Reverend opened his jacket and flashed the butt of a forty. "Nice little poodle shooter you got there, vampire." "Put a hell of a-" V cut in. "You two are like playing tennis, and racquet sports bore me. What's the news?" Revh looked at Butch. "He has such phenomenal people skills, doesn't he." "Try living with him.

You’re the leader, the most high-value person here. What is your brilliant plan to escape the active shooter out there in the pitch-black who can see us but we can’t see him?

THE INVENTION OF THE RULES ain't come from my brother, his friends, my dad, my uncle, the guys outside, the hustlers and shooters, and definitely not from me.

Columbine also changed police response to attacks. No more perimeters. A national task force was organized to develop a new plan. In 2003, it released “The Active Shooter Protocol.” The gist was simple: If the shooter seems active, storm the building. Move toward the sound of gunfire. Disregard even victims. There is one objective: Neutralize the shooters. Stop them or kill them.

You can’t compare Aria to Gianna. They are like two different species. And I trust Aria absolutely. She caught a fucking bullet for me.” “Must be nice,” I muttered. “Gianna would probably applaud my shooter.

I can’t tell you how many pictures I’ve missed, ignored, trampled, or otherwise lost just ‘cause I’ve been so hell bent on getting the shot I think I want.

When shooting a story about someone, their hands should always be on your list to shoot.

My blood!" ejaculated the vexed coachman, "and not atop of Shooter's yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!" The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip

One more, final question came from the audience on my last night in Newtown, and it was the one I most did not want to hear: “Will God protect my child?” I stayed silent for what seemed like minutes. More than anything I wanted to answer with authority, “Yes! Of course God will protect you. Let me read you some promises from the Bible.” I knew, though, that behind me on the same platform twenty-six candles were flickering in memory of victims, proof that we have no immunity from the effects of a broken planet. My mind raced back to Japan, where I heard from parents who had lost their children to a tsunami in a middle school, and forward to that very morning when I heard from parents who had lost theirs to a shooter in an elementary school. At last I said, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t promise that.” None of us is exempt. We all die, some old, some tragically young. God provides support and solidarity, yes, but not protection—at least not the kind of protection we desperately long for. On this cursed planet, even God suffered the loss of a Son.

We look to statistics for reassurance in these types of situations. Here is one: 100% of mass shootings have been enabled by access to guns. I can guarantee that even if there were a genotype shared by the mass shooters, which there will not be, none of the killings would have happened if they didn't have guns.

A lot of people are afraid to tell you the truth in this business. Yes, you're going to have to suck a lot of dick. Yes, double penetration makes your ass look fat. Yes, that does look diseased. But I've always tried to be a straight shooter.

Maybe Shooter was a writer. He fulfilled both of the main requirements: he told a tale you wanted to hear to the end, even if you had a pretty good idea what the end was going to be, and he was so full of shit he squeaked.

Surrender is no guarantee that an armed police officer will not shoot you.

She is a moron and too dumb to menstruate straight. --perhaps the best line from Shooter

Oh, is that all?” Riley frowned, gesturing to the broken window. “And how are we supposed to find where this shooter is without taking a hole to the head? I don’t feel like playing whack-a-mole with a trained sniper right now.

...'Well, I think of you as a straight shooter, Sheriff, but one who can't stop lustin' after the goddamn ineffable.' "She said that, hunh?" "Yup." "Shitfire, Sheriff, what'd you do?" "Well, I shot her.

You're very dangerous," he informed her, taking a bigger bite. "Very devious. If you had enough money and a small army, you could take over the whole country. And no one would care because you are so damn cute." "Of course they wouldn't mind. I'd let them eat cake," Hayley replied, grinning.

She has stepped out into a different night, a different town altogether, one of those first-person-shooter towns that you can drive around in seemingly forever, but never away from. The only humanity visible are virtual extras in the distance, none offering any of the help she needs.

Ohmigod,” I moan, clutching my stomach. I’m sure I’m going to be sick. I’m going to become an exhibitionist vomiter. My heart is back to beating—racing, actually—as a new level beyond mortification slams into me. I sounded just like the actress in that awful video of Ben’s that Kacey made me watch over the summer. Literally. I accidently walked in on those weirdos watching it one night. Kacey took that as an opportunity to pin me down on the couch while Trent, Dan, and Ben howled with laughter at my flaming cheeks and horrified shrieks. My sister is the Antichrist. This is all her fault. Hers and Stayner’s. And those stupid Jell-O shooters.

Every once in a while, it pays to listen to those annoying characters who are just waiting to tell you how to do your job.

What can I say? I’m a straight shooter who’s never cared to dance around the pink elephant in a room, and had no intentions of doing that two-step now.

He'd possessed all the key elements of a school shooter: hormones, misery, ammunition. People wondered how something like Columbine could happen. Jude wondered why it didn't happen more often.

pain is the only real emotion. Everything else can be taken away. Love,happiness,joy can always be taken away. Even old sadness can be dissipated if you pee enough ha-ha into it. But pain is pure

Haymitch isn't thinking of arenas, but something else. "Johanna's back in the hospital." I assumed Johanna was fine, had passed her exam, but simply wasn't assigned to a sharp shooters' unit. She's wicked with a throwing axe but about average with a gun. "Is she hurt? What happened?" "It was while she was on the Block. They try to ferret out a soldier's potential weakness. So they flooded the street, " says Haymitch. This doesn't help. Johanna can swim. At least, I seem to remember her swimming around some in the Quarter Quell. Not like Finnick, of course, but none of us are like Finnick. "So?" "That's how they tortured her in the Capitol. Soaked her then used electric shocks," says Haymitch. "In the Block, she had some kind of flashback. Panicked, didn't know where she was. She's back under sedation." Finnick and I just stand there as if we've lost the ability to respond. I think of the way Johanna never showers. How she forced herself into the rain like it was acid that day. I had attributed her misery to morphling withdrawal. "You two should go see her. You're as close to friends as she's got," says Haymitch. That makes the whole thing worse. I don't really know what's between Johanna and Finnick, but I hardly know her. No family. No friends.Not so much as a token from District 7 to set beside her regulation clothes in her anonymous drawer. Nothing.

Ten minutes, good, past eleven." "My blood!" ejaculated the vexed coachman, "and not atop of Shooter's yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!" The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followed

When school kids are shot by a random shooter, nobody asks whether the victims should have taken more precautions. Nobody suggests that maybe the victims should have skipped school that day. Nobody ever blames the victims. So why is it that when women are attacked, the onus is on them? “If only she hadn’t walked home alone.” “If only she hadn’t cut through the park.” “If only she’d taken a cab.” When it comes to rape, it seems to me “if only” is used all the time. Never about the man. Nobody ever says “if only” he hadn’t raped her. It’s always about the woman. If only …

I find it very obnoxious when people present problems with obvious solutions, dismiss the solution, and continue complaining about the problem.

Dr. Bone Specialist came in, made me stand up and hobble across the room, checked my reflexes, and then made me lie down on the table. He bent my right knee this way and that, up and down, all the way out to the side and in. Then he did the same with my left leg. He ordered X rays then started to leave the room. I panicked. I MUST GET DRUGS. "What can I take for the pain?" I asked him before he got out the door. "You can take some over the counter ibuprofen," he suggested. "But I wouldn't take more than nine a day." I choked. Nine a day? I'd been popping forty. Nine a day? Like hell. I couldn't even go to the bathroom on my own, I hadn't slept in three weeks, and my normally sunny cheery disposition had turned into that of a very rabid dog. If I didn't get good drugs and get them now, it was straight to Shooter's World and then Walgreens pharmacy for me. "I don't think you understand," I explained. "I can't go to work. I have spent the last four days with my mother who is addicted to QVC, watching jewelry shows, doll shows and make-up shows. I almost ordered a beef-jerky maker! Give me something, or I'm going to use your calf muscles to make the first batch!" Without further ado, he hastily scribbled out a prescription for some codeine and was gone. I was happy. My mother, however, had lost the ability to speak.

Fubuki, wouldn’t it be a thousand times better to stay unmarried than tie yourself down with some creep? What would you do with a husband like that? And how can you feel ashamed of not marrying one of these men, when you’re so sublime, so Olympian? They’re almost all shorter than you. Don’t you think that’s a sign? You’re too long a bow for any of these pathetic little shooters.

You sold a story last week," said Pettit, "about a gun fight in an Arizona mining town in which the hero drew his Colt's .45 and shot seven bandits as fast as they came in the door. Now, if a six-shooter could—" "Oh, well," said I, "that's different. Arizona is a long way from New York. I could have a man stabbed with a lariat or chased by a pair of chaparreras if I wanted to, and it wouldn't be noticed until the usual error-sharp from around McAdams Junction isolates the erratum and writes in to the papers about it." (from "The Plutonian Fire")

I slid down in the seat and began to weep. I wept for her, for me, but mostly because the siren call of my first big story with a yellow border around it was more powerful than the call of fatherhood.

The United States is baiting China and Russia, and the final nail in the coffin will be Iran, which is, of course, the main target of Israel. We have allowed China to increase their military strength and Russia to recover from Sovietization, to give them a false sense of bravado, this will create an all together faster demise for them. We’re like the sharp shooter daring the noob to pick up the gun, and when they try, it’s bang bang. The coming war will be so severe that only one superpower can win, and that’s us folks. This is why the EU is in such a hurry to form a complete superstate because they know what is coming, and to survive, Europe will have to be one whole cohesive state. Their urgency tells me that they know full well that the big showdown is upon us. O how I have dreamed of this delightful moment.

but is it not heartening to know that so many are willing to fight for the good? Think of that young librarian, Sophie, who made certain you escaped. Think of S.Q., who risked my brother’s wrath to make me more comfortable. Think of Captain Noland, and Joe Shooter, and all the others – even strangers – who were prepared to sacrifice their safety, perhaps even their lives, on our behalf. That’s something, is it not?

Take a little thought experiment. Imagine all the rampage school shooters in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas; now imagine they were black girls from poor families who lived instead in Chicago, New Haven, Newark, Philadelphia, or Providence. Can you picture the national debate, the headlines, the hand-wringing? There is no doubt we’d be having a national debate about inner-city poor black girls. The entire focus would be on race, class, and gender. The media would doubtless invent a new term for their behavior, as with wilding two decades ago. We’d hear about the culture of poverty, about how living in the city breeds crime and violence. We’d hear some pundits proclaim some putative natural tendency among blacks toward violence. Someone would likely even blame feminism for causing girls to become violent in a vain imitation of boys. Yet the obvious fact that virtually all the rampage school shooters were middle-class white boys barely broke a ripple in the torrent of public discussion. This uniformity cut across all other differences among the shooters: some came from intact families, others from single-parent homes; some boys had acted violently in the past, and others were quiet and unassuming; some boys also expressed rage at their parents (two killed their parents the same morning), and others seemed to live in happy families.

Miles fired the shooter at the TV, a wad of web turning it on. Ganke shook his head. “So lazy.

Big evil. There was no doubt that the same callous malignancy moved through the blood of the shooter here.

Dr. Fuselier saw the danger early on. “Once we understood there was no third shooter, I realized that for everyone, it was going to be difficult to get closure,” he said. The final act of the killers was among their cruelest: they deprived the survivors of a living perpetrator. They deprived the families of a focus for their anger, and their blame. There would be no cathartic trial for the victims. There was no killer to rebuke in a courtroom, no judge to implore to impose the maximum penalty. South Jeffco was seething with anger, and it would be deprived of a reasonable target. Displaced anger would riddle the community for years.

Sometimes everybody touches in the dark. You touch to see what you can stand to touch, what you can to feel with your fingers probing parts you never though you could probably probe" - Gray

Keep your voice down. And before you go all badass cop on me, I’m the one who saved your life outside. (Nathan) How do I know that? (Terri) Let’s use some logic. You stuck your head in here. Someone tried to use it for target practice, but I yanked you away before you ended up headless. If I was the shooter, you’d be dead now and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. (Nathan)

Oh, the dream. The goddamned man + baby dream. Written by the High Commission on Heterosexual Love and Sexual Reproduction and practiced by couples across the land, the dream's a bitch if you're a maternally inclined straight female and not living it by the age of thirty-seven -- a situation of a spermicidally toxic flavor. Of course you want to bring out your six-shooter every time you see another bloated mom hoisting up another pinched-faced spawn on Facebook. You want the dream too!

They took turns looking deep, deep into the universe: Saturn like a knee that had been dipped in iodine, Neptune like a peach covered in mold, Jupiter like a half sucked jawbreaker, Mercury like a large shooter marble, galaxies like crushed candy, galaxies like the suds from a bubble bath blown off the palm of your hand.

Police Officer Angry Aggression Theory (POAAT) is why you need to video record the police before they shoot you. Always start the video camera at the first contact, as it can go sour at any time and without warning.

Fuselier arrived at Columbine with one assumption: multiple gunmen demanded multiple tactics. Fuselier couldn’t afford to think of his adversaries as a unit. Strategies likely to disarm one shooter could infuriate the other. Mass murderers tended to work alone, but when they did pair up, they rarely chose their mirror image. Fuselier knew he was much more likely to find a pair of opposites holed up in that building. It was entirely possible that there was no single why—and much more likely that he would unravel one motive for Eric, another for Dylan.

Consider the games that get all the attention lately: shooters,* fighting games,* and war games. They are not subtle about their love of power. The gap between these games and cops and robbers is small as far as the players are

It shocks me how easily people believe the worst, how quick they are to point fingers and lay blame, and, sadly, how silent when at last they learn the truth

Violence was just as much about WHAT was happening as it was how it happened.

Sometimes the psychiatric drugs themselves are a factor as withdrawal from selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can be particularly unpleasant. British psychiatrist Dr. David Healy notes that “almost all the school shooters that we know of have either been on or using these drugs or in withdrawal from them,” a condition called SSRI discontinuation syndrome.

What did you discover about the shooter?” Jude asked as he struggled to sit upright. “Once I spotted him on the rooftop, I ran up the back stairs to follow him. He was long gone, but he left something behind,” Sussex said. “Oh?” “Yes, I’ll take it upon myself to investigate it.” Jude opened his eyes, his stare focused on the duke. “Do you need my help?” Alynwick snorted. “A soiled dove with a broken wing,” he drawled. “What use would you be?” Jude grumbled, “I’ll be fine by the morning.

What roles do you want to play? Consider, for example the roles of: team builder; manager; individual contributor; change agent; technical expert; relationship builder; trouble shooter; someone who makes things happen; consolidator; problem solver; conceptualizer; big picture thinker; marketer; decision-maker; talent spotter/nurturer; mentor; turnaround artist; mediator.

Had I somehow short-circuited the control panels when I stomped across them? Cool! I might die, but I had saved New York. 'Try unplugging it,' said the second tech. 'Then plug it back in.' Clearly, he was the senior trouble shooter for 1-555-ASK-EVIL.

the fact that a police officer on TV said what used to be a fist fight or road rage is now a shooting, and what used to be a domestic dispute is now a gun rampage, and what used to be a tardy or disruptive student is now a school shooter, the fact that the police aren’t much better themselves, the fact that what used to be an arrest or a warning is now a split-second execution

His fear-inflamed mind sent the control-signal to his finger-joint to fold back. The trigger sliced back. The blast seemed to lift the booth clear off the floor, drop it down again. A pin-wheel of vacancy appeared in the glass, flinging off shards and slivers.

I feel nothing, I hear nothing, my eyes watch the puck, my body moves—like a goalie moves, like I move; I don’t tell it to move or how to move or where, I don’t know it’s moving, I don’t feel it move—yet it moves. And when my eyes watch the puck, I see things I don’t know I’m seeing. I see Larson and Nedomansky as they come on the ice, I see them away from the puck unthreatening and uninvolved. I see something in the way a shooter holds his stick, in the way his body angles and turns, in the way he’s being checked, in what he’s done before that tells me what he’ll do—and my body moves. I let it move. I trust it and the unconscious mind that moves it.

A terrifying affliction had infested America’s small towns and suburbs: the school shooter. We knew it because we had seen it on TV. We had read about it in the newspapers. It had materialized inexplicably two years before. In February 1997, a sixteen-year-old in remote Bethel, Alaska, brought a shotgun to high school and opened fire. He killed the principal and a student and injured two others. In October, another boy shot up his school, this time in Pearl, Mississippi. Two dead students, seven wounded. Two more sprees erupted in December, in remote locales: West Paducah, Kentucky, and Stamps, Arkansas. Seven were dead by the end of the year, sixteen wounded.

Beer bottles and whisky jugs exploded from ill-aimed bullets. Wood chips showered down from the rafters and the air filled with the metallic smell of gun smoke. Trace fired a shot or two of his own, but decided his best option was to find some sort of shelter--drunks made horrible shooters.

When I was in school, I wanted to be W. Eugene Smith. He was a legendary staffer at Life, a consummate photojournalist, and an architect of the photo essay. He was also kinda crazy. That was obvious when he came to lecture at Syracuse University and put a glass of milk and a glass of vodka on the lectern. Both were gone at the end of the talk. He was taking questions and I was in the front row, hanging on every word. Mr. Smith, is the only good light available light?” came the question. He leaned into the microphone. “Yes,” he baritoned, and paused. A shudder ran through all of us. That was it! No more flash! God’s light or nothing! But then he leaned back into the mic, “By that, I mean, any &*%%@$ light that’s available.” Point taken.

Three months after Columbine, the FBI organized a major summit on school shooters in Leesburg, Virginia. The Bureau assembled some of the world’s leading psychologists, including Dr. Hare. Near the end of the conference, Dr. Fuselier stepped up to the microphone and gave a thorough briefing on the minds of the two killers. “It looks like Eric Harris was a budding young psychopath,” he concluded. The room stirred. A renowned psychiatrist in the front row moved to speak. Here it comes, Fuselier thought. This guy is going to nitpick the assessment to death. “I don’t think he was a budding young psychopath,” the psychiatrist said. “What’s your objection?” “I think he was a full-blown psychopath.” His colleagues agreed. Eric Harris was textbook.

My name is Captain Najarian. Most of what’s left of my platoon just call me Cap.” He extended a hand to help Doc up. “The shooter is Corporal Hildie. Her illegal fraternizing partner next to her is Lieutenant Butz. Just call him ‘Buzz’ or he gets mad. This is my wife Dina,” he said, introducing the woman to his right. “And then there’s Chaplin. We think he might be prior military, but since he hasn’t said a word in the two months we’ve known him, we don’t have a clue.

they wanted the guy left right there on the sidewalk as a message to those who needed to know the guy did not get away with whatever it was he had done. Anytime you read in the paper about a masked gunman, rest assured the gunman had no mask on. If there are any eyewitnesses on the street, they always say the gunman had a mask on, so everybody on the shooter’s side of the thing knows the eyewitnesses didn’t see a thing and the eyewitnesses don’t have to worry about a thing. I

Now, in death, he looked to Louis like the old Church. The mouth, so small and bloody, filled with needle-sharp cat’s teeth, was frozen in a shooter’s snarl. The dead eyes seemed furious. It was as if, after the short and placid stupidity of his life as a neuter, Church had rediscovered his real nature in dying. ‘Yeah,

In 1996, Britain banned handguns. Prior to that time, over 54,000 Britons owned handguns.70 The ban was so tight that even shooters training for the Olympics were forced to travel to Switzerland or other countries to practice. Four years have elapsed since the ban was introduced, and gun crimes have risen by an astounding 40 percent.

I think the shooter is Kevin Burns. I know him pretty well. Maybe I can talk him down." "Are you nuts? He’s crazy. Everyone knows he’s a lunatic. No one can talk him down. Get out of there!" "I can’t sit around and do nothing. I have to do something. Remember what Mom and Dad told us after Father Gerry? If you have a chance to save or protect innocent people, you have to make that sacrifice. I won’t let another predator get the best of me." "That’s not what they meant, you idiot! Get the hell out of there and let the police handle it. I’m sure they’re on their way!" "If anything happens to me, I want you to know you’re the best little brother a guy could hope for, squirt. Take care. I love you." "I love you too. Please don’t do anything stupid." "We’re going to get out of this together. Understand? We’re best brothers, forever." "Forever, bro . . .

Were there any Pyr in DC other than the two of them? No! It couldn't be! Raffery spun again, but Thorolf was keeping a wary distance. "It's not your firestorm, is it?" Bitterness welled within Rafferty at the prospect. If Thorolf, who did not care at all for romance or love or long-term relationships, should have a firestorm before Rafferty, then the Great Wyvern truly had no place in Her heart for him, even after all these centuries. "Me?" Thornolf looked as horrified by the prospect as Rafferty. "Wouldn't I be, like, the first to know?" "Can't you feel it?" Rafferty couldn't keep the anger from his tone. If Thorolf was having a firestorm, it wouldn't be unreasonable that he, of all the Pyr, wouldn't have a clue. Rafferty had never met a Pyr so disinclined to use his abilities. "Someone is our vicinity is having one." He switched to old-speak. "Feel it!" Thorolf stared at Rafferty, then started to chuckle. "Dude, I can't feel anything except the pounding in my head. That's no firestorm--that's plain old beer. Lots of it. With vodka shooters.

The FBI and the Secret Service each published reports in the first three years, guiding faculty to identify serious threats. The central recommendations contradicted prevailing post-Columbine behavior. They said identifying outcasts as threats is not healthy. It demonizes innocent kids who are already struggling. It is also unproductive. Oddballs are not the problem. They do not fit the profile. There is no profile. All the recent school shooters shared exactly one trait: 100 percent male. (Since the study a few have been female.) Aside from personal experience, no other characteristic hit 50 percent, not even close. “There is no accurate or useful ‘profile’ of attackers,” the Secret Service said. Attackers came from all ethnic, economic, and social classes. The bulk came from solid two-parent homes. Most had no criminal record or history of violence. The two biggest myths were that shooters were loners and that they “snapped.” A staggering 93 percent planned their attack in advance. “The path toward violence is an evolutionary one, with signposts along the way,” the FBI report said.

The dial revolves like the chamber of a six-shooter, and suddenly turning from station to station becomes a harmless form of Russian roulette. If I change the channel, I might miss something. If I don’t, I might miss something on one of the other channels. I start to understand why Bill kept them all running simultaneously. At the same time, while we’re all sitting around waiting for something to happen on the television, the world outside is passing us by. Imagine how many things flicker into and out of existence while we wait for incoming transmissions.

Jay Maisel always says to bring your camera, ‘cause it’s tough to take a picture without it. Pursuant to the above aforementioned piece of the rule book, subset three, clause A, paragraph four would be…use the camera. Put it to your eye. You never know. There are lots of reasons, some of them even good, to just leave it on your shoulder or in your bag. Wrong lens. Wrong light. Aaahhh, it’s not that great, what am I gonna do with it anyway? I’ll have to put my coffee down. I’ll just delete it later, why bother? Lots of reasons not to take the dive into the eyepiece and once again try to sort out the world into an effective rectangle. It’s almost always worth it to take a look.

Things I Used to Get Hit For: Talking back. Being smart. Acting stupid. Not listening. Not answering the first time. Not doing what I’m told. Not doing it the second time I’m told. Running, jumping, yelling, laughing, falling down, skipping stairs, lying in the snow, rolling in the grass, playing in the dirt, walking in mud, not wiping my feet, not taking my shoes off. Sliding down the banister, acting like a wild Indian in the hallway. Making a mess and leaving it. Pissing my pants, just a little. Peeing the bed, hardly at all. Sleeping with a butter knife under my pillow. Shitting the bed because I was sick and it just ran out of me, but still my fault because I’m old enough to know better. Saying shit instead of crap or poop or number two. Not knowing better. Knowing something and doing it wrong anyway. Lying. Not confessing the truth even when I don’t know it. Telling white lies, even little ones, because fibbing isn’t fooling and not the least bit funny. Laughing at anything that’s not funny, especially cripples and retards. Covering up my white lies with more lies, black lies. Not coming the exact second I’m called. Getting out of bed too early, sometimes before the birds, and turning on the TV, which is one reason the picture tube died. Wearing out the cheap plastic hole on the channel selector by turning it so fast it sounds like a machine gun. Playing flip-and-catch with the TV’s volume button then losing it down the hole next to the radiator pipe. Vomiting. Gagging like I’m going to vomit. Saying puke instead of vomit. Throwing up anyplace but in the toilet or in a designated throw-up bucket. Using scissors on my hair. Cutting Kelly’s doll’s hair really short. Pinching Kelly. Punching Kelly even though she kicked me first. Tickling her too hard. Taking food without asking. Eating sugar from the sugar bowl. Not sharing. Not remembering to say please and thank you. Mumbling like an idiot. Using the emergency flashlight to read a comic book in bed because batteries don’t grow on trees. Splashing in puddles, even the puddles I don’t see until it’s too late. Giving my mother’s good rhinestone earrings to the teacher for Valentine’s Day. Splashing in the bathtub and getting the floor wet. Using the good towels. Leaving the good towels on the floor, though sometimes they fall all by themselves. Eating crackers in bed. Staining my shirt, tearing the knee in my pants, ruining my good clothes. Not changing into old clothes that don’t fit the minute I get home. Wasting food. Not eating everything on my plate. Hiding lumpy mashed potatoes and butternut squash and rubbery string beans or any food I don’t like under the vinyl seat cushions Mom bought for the wooden kitchen chairs. Leaving the butter dish out in summer and ruining the tablecloth. Making bubbles in my milk. Using a straw like a pee shooter. Throwing tooth picks at my sister. Wasting toothpicks and glue making junky little things that no one wants. School papers. Notes from the teacher. Report cards. Whispering in church. Sleeping in church. Notes from the assistant principal. Being late for anything. Walking out of Woolworth’s eating a candy bar I didn’t pay for. Riding my bike in the street. Leaving my bike out in the rain. Getting my bike stolen while visiting Grandpa Rudy at the hospital because I didn’t put a lock on it. Not washing my feet. Spitting. Getting a nosebleed in church. Embarrassing my mother in any way, anywhere, anytime, especially in public. Being a jerk. Acting shy. Being impolite. Forgetting what good manners are for. Being alive in all the wrong places with all the wrong people at all the wrong times.

We all looked at Shelton, who rolled his eyes. “Like my vote matters now.” Hi patted his back. “If it makes you feel better, your vote’s never mattered.” “Hilarious.” Shelton rubbed his face. “I hope my parole officer finds you as funny.” I sprang up and hurried for the exit, stopping Chance with a hand on his shoulder. “Give me a second alone with Ben. He’s still worked up, probably needs a few minutes to decompress.” Chance’s expression soured, but he held back. Hi fired a shooter my way. “Good idea. We need him mission focused. Rodger dodger.” Shelton covered his face with his hands. “Enough already.

That’s the problem today. It ain’t the kids’ faults. It’s the parents who don’t trust ‘em enough to teach ‘em to fend for their own. Now I ain’t never been the best shooter, never raised me a prize steer, and there were a hundred guys around here who could fix a roof faster than I could change a light bulb. But the point is I learned how to do lots of different things that parents don’t teach kids anymore.” “My

The only gold stars the CIA gives out are for death in the field, and then only to actual employees, not contracted assets. You get my appreciation.” She smiled. “You’ll get a gold star in a forgotten file when you die. It will have to wait for now, but I doubt it will wait for too long.” “With friends like you.” “All your friends fucked you over, Court. Face it, you are better off with a straight shooter like me managing you.

The first school shooting that attracted the attention of a horrified nation occurred on March 24, 1998, in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Two boys opened fire on a schoolyard full of girls, killing four and one female teacher. In the wake of what came to be called the Jonesboro massacre, violence experts in media and academia sought to explain what others called “inexplicable.” For example, in a front-page Boston Globe story three days after the tragedy, David Kennedy from Harvard University was quoted as saying that these were “peculiar, horrible acts that can’t easily be explained.” Perhaps not. But there is a framework of explanation that goes much further than most of those routinely offered. It does not involve some incomprehensible, mysterious force. It is so straightforward that some might (incorrectly) dismiss it as unworthy of mention. Even after a string of school shootings by (mostly white) boys over the past decade, few Americans seem willing to face the fact that interpersonal violence—whether the victims are female or male—is a deeply gendered phenomenon. Obviously both sexes are victimized. But one sex is the perpetrator in the overwhelming majority of cases. So while the mainstream media provided us with tortured explanations for the Jonesboro tragedy that ranged from supernatural “evil” to the presence of guns in the southern tradition, arguably the most important story was overlooked. The Jonesboro massacre was in fact a gender crime. The shooters were boys, the victims girls. With the exception of a handful of op-ed pieces and a smattering of quotes from feminist academics in mainstream publications, most of the coverage of Jonesboro omitted in-depth discussion of one of the crucial facts of the tragedy. The older of the two boys reportedly acknowledged that the killings were an act of revenge he had dreamed up after having been rejected by a girl. This is the prototypical reason why adult men murder their wives. If a woman is going to be murdered by her male partner, the time she is most vulnerable is after she leaves him. Why wasn’t all of this widely discussed on television and in print in the days and weeks after the horrific shooting? The gender crime aspect of the Jonesboro tragedy was discussed in feminist publications and on the Internet, but was largely absent from mainstream media conversation. If it had been part of the discussion, average Americans might have been forced to acknowledge what people in the battered women’s movement have known for years—that our high rates of domestic and sexual violence are caused not by something in the water (or the gene pool), but by some of the contradictory and dysfunctional ways our culture defines “manhood.” For decades, battered women’s advocates and people who work with men who batter have warned us about the alarming number of boys who continue to use controlling and abusive behaviors in their relations with girls and women. Jonesboro was not so much a radical deviation from the norm—although the shooters were very young—as it was melodramatic evidence of the depth of the problem. It was not something about being kids in today’s society that caused a couple of young teenagers to put on camouflage outfits, go into the woods with loaded .22 rifles, pull a fire alarm, and then open fire on a crowd of helpless girls (and a few boys) who came running out into the playground. This was an act of premeditated mass murder. Kids didn’t do it. Boys did.

In Miss Chen's English class, we learned, 'To be or not to be...' but there's a big gray area in between. Maybe in Shakespeare times people only had two options. Griffin Wilson, he knew that the SATs were just the gateway to a big lifetime of bullshit. To get married and college. To paying taxes and trying to raise a kid who's not a school shooter. And Griffin Wilson knew drugs are only a patch. After drugs, you're always going to need more drugs.

THE URGENCY ADDICTION Some of us get so used to the adrenaline rush of handling crises that we become dependent on it for a sense of excitement and energy. How does urgency feel? Stressful? Pressured? Tense? Exhausting? Sure. But let’s be honest. It’s also sometimes exhilarating. We feel useful. We feel successful. We feel validated. And we get good at it. Whenever there’s trouble, we ride into town, pull out our six shooter, do the varmint in, blow the smoke off the gun barrel, and ride into the sunset like a hero. It brings instant results and instant gratification. We get a temporary high from solving urgent and important crises. Then when the importance isn’t there, the urgency fix is so powerful we are drawn to do anything urgent, just to stay in motion. People expect us to be busy, overworked. It’s become a status symbol in our society—if we’re busy, we’re important; if we’re not busy, we’re almost embarrassed to admit it. Busyness is where we get our security. It’s validating, popular, and pleasing. It’s also a good excuse for not dealing with the first things in our lives. “I’d love to spend quality time with you, but I have to work. There’s this deadline. It’s urgent. Of course you understand.” “I just don’t have time to exercise. I know it’s important, but there are so many pressing things right now. Maybe when things slow down a little.

A 2001 study of adolescent school shooters, prompted in part by the massacre at Columbine High School, resulted in two interesting findings. The first is that 25 percent of the thirty-four teenage shooters they looked at participated in pairs. This is different from adult rampage killers, who most often act alone. Dr. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and expert on targeted violence and threat assessment, authored the study. He told me that these deadly dyads mean it’s absolutely critical for parents to pay attention to the dynamics between kids and their friends. The second finding from his study: typically, one of the two kids was a psychopath, and the other one suggestible, dependent, and depressed.

It was only as a mature man that I became mortal. The visceral insight of my end came to me abruptly more than a dozen years ago. I had wasted an entire evening playing an addictive, firstperson shooter video game that belonged to my teenage son—running through eerily empty halls, flooded corridors, nightmarishly twisting tunnels, and empty plazas under a foreign sun, emptying my weapons at hordes of aliens pursuing me relentlessly. I went to bed late and, as always, fell asleep easily. I awoke abruptly a few hours later. Knowledge had turned to certainty —I was going to die! Not right there and then, but someday. ... My interpretation of this queer event is that all the killing in the video game triggered unconscious thoughts about the annihilation of the self. These processes produced sufficient anxiety that my cortico-thalamic complex woke up on its own, without any external trigger. At that point, self-consciousness lit up and was confronted with its mortality.

Bok knows everything about me, including my thing with auras. Truth is, though, he isn't much good as a bodyguard. Bok is a shade heavier than an eating disorder, has a cute button nose and long, silky, straight hair most girls would kill for. We've been friends since prep when he used to sit behind me in class and hit me with his ruler. I put up with it for weeks, and then one day when the teacher stepped out of the room I pushed him off his chair and watched as he fell flat on his skinny, pretty arse.

From the line, watching, three things are striking: (a) what on TV is a brisk crack is here a whooming roar that apparently is what a shotgun really sounds like; (b) trapshooting looks comparatively easy, because now the stocky older guy who's replaced the trim bearded guy at the rail is also blowing these little fluorescent plates away one after the other, so that a steady rain of lumpy orange crud is falling into the Nadir's wake; (c) a clay pigeon, when shot, undergoes a frighteningly familiar-looking midflight peripeteia -- erupting material, changing vector, and plummeting seaward in a corkscrewy way that all eerily recalls footage of the 1986 Challenger disaster. All the shooters who precede me seem to fire with a kind of casual scorn, and all get eight out of ten or above. But it turns out that, of these six guys, three have military-combat backgrounds, another two are L. L. Bean-model-type brothers who spend weeks every year hunting various fast-flying species with their "Papa" in southern Canada, and the last has got not only his own earmuffs, plus his own shotgun in a special crushed-velvet-lined case, but also his own trapshooting range in his backyard (31) in North Carolina. When it's finally my turn, the earmuffs they give me have somebody else's ear-oil on them and don't fit my head very well. The gun itself is shockingly heavy and stinks of what I'm told is cordite, small pubic spirals of which are still exiting the barrel from the Korea-vet who preceded me and is tied for first with 10/10. The two brothers are the only entrants even near my age; both got scores of 9/10 and are now appraising me coolly from identical prep-school-slouch positions against the starboard rail. The Greek NCOs seem extremely bored. I am handed the heavy gun and told to "be bracing a hip" against the aft rail and then to place the stock of the weapon against, no, not the shoulder of my hold-the-gun arm but the shoulder of my pull-the-trigger arm. (My initial error in this latter regard results in a severely distorted aim that makes the Greek by the catapult do a rather neat drop-and-roll.) Let's not spend a lot of time drawing this whole incident out. Let me simply say that, yes, my own trapshooting score was noticeably lower than the other entrants' scores, then simply make a few disinterested observations for the benefit of any novice contemplating trapshooting from a 7NC Megaship, and then we'll move on: (1) A certain level of displayed ineptitude with a firearm will cause everyone who knows anything about firearms to converge on you all at the same time with cautions and advice and handy tips. (2) A lot of the advice in (1) boils down to exhortations to "lead" the launched pigeon, but nobody explains whether this means that the gun's barrel should move across the sky with the pigeon or should instead sort of lie in static ambush along some point in the pigeon's projected path. (3) Whatever a "hair trigger" is, a shotgun does not have one. (4) If you've never fired a gun before, the urge to close your eyes at the precise moment of concussion is, for all practical purposes, irresistible. (5) The well-known "kick" of a fired shotgun is no misnomer; it knocks you back several steps with your arms pinwheeling wildly for balance, which when you're holding a still-loaded gun results in mass screaming and ducking and then on the next shot a conspicuous thinning of the crowd in the 9-Aft gallery above. Finally, (6), know that an unshot discus's movement against the vast lapis lazuli dome of the open ocean's sky is sun-like -- i.e., orange and parabolic and right-to-left -- and that its disappearance into the sea is edge-first and splashless and sad.

Take a little thought experiment. Imagine all the rampage school shooters in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas; now imagine they were black girls from poor families who lived instead in Chicago, New Haven, Newark, Philadelphia, or Providence. Can you picture the national debate, the headlines, the hand-wringing? There is no doubt we’d be having a national debate about inner-city poor black girls. The entire focus would be on race, class, and gender. The media would doubtless invent a new term for their behavior, as with wilding two decades ago. We’d hear about the culture of poverty, about how living in the city breeds crime and violence. We’d hear some pundits proclaim some putative natural tendency among blacks toward violence. Someone would likely even blame feminism for causing girls to become violent in a vain imitation of boys.

There have been times during my life when I have wish to be a boy again, not to have the energy and perfect health of youth, but know once more the innocence and the delight in even the smallest of things that we often fail to feel full strength as the years drift by. What is easy to forget, however, until you apply yourself to the task of memory, is that childhood is a time of fear, as well; some of those fears are reasonable, others irrational and inspired by a sense of powerlessness in a world where often power over others seems to be what drives so many of our fellow human beings. In the swoon of childhood, the possibility of werewolves is as real as the school yard shooter, the idea of vampires as credible as the idea of a terrorist attack, the neighbor possessing paranormal talents as believable as a psychopath.

ref·u·gee noun: a person who flees for refuge or safety We are, each of us, refugees when we flee from burning buildings into the arms of loving families. When we flee from floods and earthquakes to sleep on blue mats in community centres. We are, each of us, refugees when we flee from abusive relationships, and shooters in cinemas and shopping centres. Sometimes it takes only a day for our countries to persecute us because of our creed, race, or sexual orientation. Sometimes it takes only a minute for the missiles to rain down and leave our towns in ruin and destitution. We are, each of us, refugees longing for that amniotic tranquillity dreaming of freedom and safety when fences and barbed wires spring into walled gardens. Lebanese, Sudanese, Libyan and Syrian, Yemeni, Somali, Palestinian, and Ethiopian, like our brothers and sisters, we are, each of us, refugees. The bombs fell in their cafés and squares where once poetry, dancing, and laughter prevailed. Only their olive trees remember music and merriment now as their cities wail for departed children without a funeral. We are, each of us, refugees. Don’t let stamped paper tell you differently. We’ve been fleeing for centuries because to stay means getting bullets in our heads because to stay means being hanged by our necks because to stay means being jailed, raped and left for dead. But we can, each of us, serve as one another’s refuge so we don't board dinghies when we can’t swim so we don’t climb walls with snipers aimed at our chest so we don’t choose to remain and die instead. When home turns into hell, you, too, will run with tears in your eyes screaming rescue me! and then you’ll know for certain: you've always been a refugee.

Let me first establish—on your behalf—feelings of animosity and disgust at the mendacity inherent in this concept of "cartoon." Whenever someone hits you with a conversational shot that is crude or is intended to hurt, and you bristle, the shooter quickly throws up his/her hands and tries to get you to believe, "I was only kidding. It was all in fun. Boy, are you overreacting. You musn't take it seriously, it was just a joke." Well, we know it wasn't any such thing. It was a snippet of truth slipping past the cultural safeguards that keep us dealing with one another with civility. It was for real. Similarly, when such films as Streets of Fire and Gremlins and Temple of Doom are made, we are expected to take them seriously enough to plonk down five bucks for a ticket. When they fail to deliver what they've promised in all those tv clips, and we express our anger at having been fleeced, the shooters tell us we're overreacting and we should feel a lot better about losing our five or ten or whatever amount they got out of us, because it was all a gag. I wonder how well they'd take the gag if we paid for the tickets with counterfeit bills. Or pried open the firedoor at the theater and sneaked in with the entire Duke University Marching Band. "It was all a joke, fellahs; don't take it so seriously; gawd, are you overreacting!" No, they cannot have that cake and eat it, too.

Finally he must have noticed his vice grip on Austin, because he made a disgusted face and threw Austin’s arms down. “I am the Dom here. I am in charge,” he insisted, but then all the anger left his voice. “And being in charge means controlling myself—my own urges—too. Maybe more so than I ever try to control you.” He petted Austin’s hair. Leaned in to press their foreheads together briefly, the way he always did when he was overcome with one of those emotions he refused to tell Austin about.

When the members of the Frontiers of Science discussed physics, they often used the abbreviation “SF.” They didn’t mean “science fiction,” but the two words “shooter” and “farmer.” This was a reference to two hypotheses, both involving the fundamental nature of the laws of the universe. In the shooter hypothesis, a good marksman shoots at a target, creating a hole every ten centimeters. Now suppose the surface of the target is inhabited by intelligent, two-dimensional creatures. Their scientists, after observing the universe, discover a great law: “There exists a hole in the universe every ten centimeters.” They have mistaken the result of the marksman’s momentary whim for an unalterable law of the universe. The farmer hypothesis, on the other hand, has the flavor of a horror story: Every morning on a turkey farm, the farmer comes to feed the turkeys. A scientist turkey, having observed this pattern to hold without change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: “Every morning at eleven, food arrives.” On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at eleven, food doesn’t arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock. Wang

If you talk to these extraordinary people, you find that they all understand this at one level or another. They may be unfamiliar with the concept of cognitive adaptability, but they seldom buy into the idea that they have reached the peak of their fields because they were the lucky winners of some genetic lottery. They know what is required to develop the extraordinary skills that they possess because they have experienced it firsthand. One of my favorite testimonies on this topic came from Ray Allen, a ten-time All-Star in the National Basketball Association and the greatest three-point shooter in the history of that league. Some years back, ESPN columnist Jackie MacMullan wrote an article about Allen as he was approaching his record for most three-point shots made. In talking with Allen for that story, MacMullan mentioned that another basketball commentator had said that Allen was born with a shooting touch—in other words, an innate gift for three-pointers. Allen did not agree. “I’ve argued this with a lot of people in my life,” he told MacMullan. “When people say God blessed me with a beautiful jump shot, it really pisses me off. I tell those people, ‘Don’t undermine the work I’ve put in every day.’ Not some days. Every day. Ask anyone who has been on a team with me who shoots the most. Go back to Seattle and Milwaukee, and ask them. The answer is me.” And, indeed, as MacMullan noted, if you talk to Allen’s high school basketball coach you will find that Allen’s jump shot was not noticeably better than his teammates’ jump shots back then; in fact, it was poor. But Allen took control, and over time, with hard work and dedication, he transformed his jump shot into one so graceful and natural that people assumed he was born with it. He took advantage of his gift—his real gift.   ABOUT