#out of all the cars in the world he chose a British car to transform into

[elreyrata]

I just found out knock out is a fucking British car…ewwwwwwwwwww🤢

[szalacsi]

history

“I’m from Malaysia. 

China has traded with Malaysia for 2000 years. In those years, they had been the world’s biggest powers many times. Never once they sent troops to take our land. 

Admiral Zhenghe came to Malacca five times, in gigantic fleets, and a flagship eight times the size of Christopher Columbus’ flagship, Santa Maria. He could have seized Malacca easily, but he did not. 

In 1511, the Portuguese came. 

In 1642, the Dutch came. 

In the 18th century the British came. 

We were colonised by each, one after another. 

When China wanted spices from India, they traded with the Indians. When they wanted gems, they traded with the Persian. They didn’t take lands. The only time China expanded beyond their current borders was in Yuan Dynasty, when Genghis and his descendants Ogedei Khan, Guyuk Khan & Kublai Khan concurred China, Mid Asia and Eastern Europe. Yuan Dynasty, although being based in China, was a part of the Mongolian Empire. 

Then came the Century of Humiliation. Britain smuggled opium into China to dope the population, a strategy to turn the trade deficit around, after the British could not find enough silver to pay the Qing Dynasty in their tea and porcelain trades. 

After the opium warehouses were burned down and ports were closed by the Chinese in ordered to curb opium, the British started the Opium War I, which China lost. Hong Kong was forced to be surrendered to the British in a peace talk (Nanjing Treaty). 

The British owned 90% of the opium market in China, during that time, Queen Victoria was the world’s biggest drug baron. The remaining 10% was owned by American merchants from Boston. Many of Boston’s institutions were built with profit from opium. 

After 12 years of Nanjing Treaty, the West started getting really really greedy. The British wanted the Qing government: 

 1. To open the borders of China to allow goods coming in and out freely, and tax free. 

 2. Make opium legal in China. Insane requests, Qing government said no. 

The British and French (with supports from the US), started Opium War II with China, which again, China lost. 

The Anglo-French military raided the Summer Palace, and threatened to burn down the Imperial Palace, the Qing government was forced to pay with ports, free business zones, 300,000 kilograms of silver and Kowloon was taken. 

Since then, China’s resources flew out freely through these business zones and ports. In the subsequent amendment to the treaties, Chinese people were sold overseas to serve as labor. 

In 1900, China suffered attacks by the 8-National Alliance (Empire of Japan, Russian Empire, British Empire (including India), France, USA, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary). 

Innocent Chinese civilians in Peking (Beijing now) were murdered, buildings were destroyed & women were raped. The Imperial Palace was raided, and treasures ended up in museums like the British Museum in London and the Louvre in Paris. 

In late 1930s China was occupied by the Japanese in WWII. Millions of Chinese died during the occupancy. 300,000 Chinese died in Nanjing Massacre alone. Mao brought China together again from the shambles. There were peace and unity for some time. But Mao’s later reign saw sufferings and deaths from famine and power struggles. 

Then came Deng Xiao Ping and his infamous 'black-cat and white-cat' story. His preference in pragmatism than ideologies has transformed China. This thinking allowed China to evolve all the time to adapt to the actual needs in the country, instead of rigidly bounded to ideologies. It also signified the death of Communism in actually practice in China. 

The current Socialism+Meritocracy+Market Economy model fits the Chinese like gloves, and it propels the uprise of China. Singapore has a similar model, and has been arguably more successful than Hong Kong, because Hong Kong being gateway to China, was riding on the economic boom in China, while Singapore had no one to gain from. 

In just 30 years, the CPC have moved 800 millions of people out from poverty. The rate of growth is unprecedented in human history. They have built the biggest mobile network, by far the biggest high speed rail network in the world, and they have become a behemoth in infrastructure. They made a fishing village called Shenzhen into the world’s second largest technological centre after the Silicon Valley. 

They are growing into a technological power house. It has the most elaborate e-commerce and cashless payment system in the world. They have launched exploration to Mars. The Chinese are living a good life and China has become one of the safest countries in the world. 

The level of patriotism in the country has reached an unprecedented height. For all of the achievements, the West has nothing good to say about it. China suffers from intense anti-China propagandas from the West. Western Media used the keyword “Communist” to instil fear and hatred towards China.

Everything China does is negatively reported. They claimed China used slave labor in making iPhones. The truth was, Apple was the most profitable company in the world, it took most of the profit, leave some to Foxconn (a Taiwanese company) and little to the labor. 

They claimed China was inhuman with one-child policy. At the same time, they accused China of polluting the earth with its huge population. The fact is the Chinese consume just 30% of energy per capita compared to the US. 

They claimed China underwent ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang. The fact is China has a policy which priorities ethnic minorities. For a long time, the ethnic minorities were allowed to have two children and the majority Han only allowed one. The minorities are allowed a lower score for university intakes. There are 39,000 mosque in China, and 2100 in the US. 

China has about 3 times more mosque per muslim than the US. When terrorist attacks happened in Xinjiang, China had two choices: 

1. Re-educate the Uighur (CENSUDED by Youtube) before they turned (CENSUDED by Youtube). (**Here I could not copy the exact word, since today it is censored by YouTube if I write it next to the indicated ethnicity. It is the one used to identify those crazy people who are killing people thinking that by doing this they will be able to go to paradise**). 

2. Let them be, after they launch attacks and killed innocent people, bomb their homes. China chose 1 to solve problem from the root and not to do killing. 

How the US solve terrorism? Fire missiles from battleships, drop bombs from the sky. 

During the pandemic, When China took extreme measures to lockdown the people, they were accused of being inhuman. 

When China recovered swiftly because of the extreme measures, they were accused of lying about the actual numbers. 

When China’s cases became so low that they could provide medical support to other countries, they were accused of politically motivated. Western Media always have reasons to bash China. Just like any country, there are irresponsible individuals from China which do bad things, but the China government overall has done very well. 

But I hear this comment over and over by people from the West: I like Chinese people, but the CPC is evil. What they really want is the Chinese to change the government, because the current one is too good. 

Fortunately China is not a multi-party democratic country, otherwise the opposition party in China will be supported by notorious NGOs (Non-Government Organization) of the USA, like the NED (National Endowment for Democracy), to topple the ruling party. 

The US and the British couldn’t crack Mainland China, so they work on Hong Kong. Of all the ex-British colonial countries, only the Hong Kongers were offered BNOs by the British. Because the UK would like the Hong Kongers to think they are British citizens, not Chinese. 

A divide-and-conquer strategy, which they often used in Color Revolutions around the world. They resort to low dirty tricks like detaining Huawei’s CFO & banning Huawei. They raised a silly trade war which benefits no one. Trade deficit always exist between a developing and a developed country. 

USA is like a luxury car seller who ask a farmer: why am I always buying your vegetables and you haven’t bought any of my cars? When the Chinese were making socks for the world 30 years ago, the world let it be. 

But when Chinese started to make high technology products, like Huawei and DJI, it caused red-alert. Because when Western and Japanese products are equal to Chinese in technologies, they could never match the Chinese in prices. 

First world countries want China to continue in making socks. Instead of stepping up themselves, they want to pull China down. The recent movement by the US against China has a very important background. 

When Libya, Iran, and China decided to ditch the US dollar in oil trades, Gaddafi’s was killed by the US, Iran was being sanctioned by the US, and now it’s China’s turn. The US has been printing money out of nothing. The only reason why the US Dollar is still widely accepted, is because it’s the only currency which oil is allowed to be traded with. 

The US has an agreement with Saudi that oil must be traded in US dollar ONLY. Without the petrol-dollar status, the US dollars will sink, and America will fall. 

Therefore anyone trying to disobey this order will be eliminated. China will soon use a gold-backed crypto-currency, the alarms in the White House go off like mad. 

 China’s achievement has been by hard work. Not by looting the world. I have deep sympathy for China for all the suffering, but now I feel happy for them. China is not rising, they are going back to where they belong. Good luck China.”

[didanawisgi]

Anatomy of a Sheepdog

Book Excerpt; Grossman, D., with Christensen, L., On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace, WSG Research Publications, 2004.

​Reprinted countless times. Feel free to distribute as long as you attribute Lt. Col. Dave Grossman as the author and that it is an excerpt from his book, On Combat.

On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs (From the book, On Combat, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman)

“Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always, even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for?” - William J. Bennett In a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997

“One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: “Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident.” This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another. Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million. Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep. I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin’s egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful. For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators. “Then there are the wolves,” the old war veteran said, “and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy.” Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial. “Then there are sheepdogs,” he went on, “and I’m a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.” Or, as a sign in one California law enforcement agency put it, “We intimidate those who intimidate others.” If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath–a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed. The gift of aggression

“What goes on around you… compares little with what goes on inside you.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everyone has been given a gift in life. Some people have a gift for science and some have a flair for art. And warriors have been given the gift of aggression. They would no more misuse this gift than a doctor would misuse his healing arts, but they yearn for the opportunity to use their gift to help others. These people, the ones who have been blessed with the gift of aggression and a love for others, are our sheepdogs. These are our warriors. One career police officer wrote to me about this after attending one of my Bulletproof Mind training sessions: “I want to say thank you for finally shedding some light on why it is that I can do what I do. I always knew why I did it. I love my [citizens], even the bad ones, and had a talent that I could return to my community. I just couldn’t put my finger on why I could wade through the chaos, the gore, the sadness, if given a chance try to make it all better, and walk right out the other side.” Let me expand on this old soldier’s excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial; that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids’ schools. But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid’s school. Our children are dozens of times more likely to be killed, and thousands of times more likely to be seriously injured, by school violence than by school fires, but the sheep’s only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their children is just too hard, so they choose the path of denial. The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheepdog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours. Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn’t tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, “Baa.” Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog. As Kipling said in his poem about “Tommy” the British soldier:

While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be'ind,” But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind, There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind, O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind.

The students, the victims, at Columbine High School were big, tough high school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have had the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they just had nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack, however, and SWAT teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the officers had to physically peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of them. This is how the little lambs feel about their sheepdog when the wolf is at the door. Look at what happened after September 11, 2001, when the wolf pounded hard on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt differently about their law enforcement officers and military personnel? Remember how many times you heard the word hero? Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed right along with the young ones. Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, “Thank God I wasn’t on one of those planes.” The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, “Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference.” When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into warriorhood, you want to be there. You want to be able to make a difference. While there is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, he does have one real advantage. Only one. He is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population. There was research conducted a few years ago with individuals convicted of violent crimes. These cons were in prison for serious, predatory acts of violence: assaults, murders and killing law enforcement officers. The vast majority said that they specifically targeted victims by body language: slumped walk, passive behavior and lack of awareness. They chose their victims like big cats do in Africa, when they select one out of the herd that is least able to protect itself. However, when there were cues given by potential victims that indicated they would not go easily, the cons said that they would walk away. If the cons sensed that the target was a “counter-predator,” that is, a sheepdog, they would leave him alone unless there was no other choice but to engage. One police officer told me that he rode a commuter train to work each day. One day, as was his usual, he was standing in the crowded car, dressed in blue jeans, T-shirt and jacket, holding onto a pole and reading a paperback. At one of the stops, two street toughs boarded, shouting and cursing and doing every obnoxious thing possible to intimidate the other riders. The officer continued to read his book, though he kept a watchful eye on the two punks as they strolled along the aisle making comments to female passengers, and banging shoulders with men as they passed. As they approached the officer, he lowered his novel and made eye contact with them. “You got a problem, man?” one of the IQ-challenged punks asked. “You think you’re tough, or somethin’?” the other asked, obviously offended that this one was not shirking away from them. “As a matter of fact, I am tough,” the officer said, calmly and with a steady gaze. The two looked at him for a long moment, and then without saying a word, turned and moved back down the aisle to continue their taunting of the other passengers, the sheep. Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can choose which one they want to be, and I’m proud to say that more and more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs. Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall, was the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone to alert an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he learned of the other three passenger planes that had been used as weapons, Todd dropped his phone and uttered the words, “Let’s roll,” which authorities believe was a signal to the other passengers to confront the terrorist hijackers. In one hour, a transformation occurred among the passengers–athletes, business people and parents–from sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the wolves, ultimately saving an unknown number of lives on the ground. “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?”

“There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.” - Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France

Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep, real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn’t have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision.

If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior’s path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door. For example, many officers carry their weapons in church. They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs. Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to slaughter you and your loved ones. I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, “I will never be caught without my gun in church.” I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a police officer he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas, in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down 14 people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy’s body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye and said, “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?” Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for “heads to roll” if they found out that the airbags in their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids’ school did not work. They can accept the fact that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them. Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks himself, “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if your loved ones were attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?” The warrior must cleanse denial from his thinking. Coach Bob Lindsey, a renowned law enforcement trainer, says that warriors must practice “when/then” thinking, not “if/when.” Instead of saying,“If it happens then I will take action,” the warrior says, “When it happens then I will be ready.” It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and horror when the wolf shows up. Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you are not physically prepared: You didn’t bring your gun; you didn’t train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by fear, helplessness, horror and shame at your moment of truth. Chuck Yeager, the famous test pilot and first man to fly faster than the speed of sound, says that he knew he could die. There was no denial for him. He did not allow himself the luxury of denial. This acceptance of reality can cause fear, but it is a healthy, controlled fear that will keep you alive:

“I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit.” - Brigadier General Chuck Yeager Yeager, An Autobiography

Gavin de Becker puts it like this in Fear Less, his superb post-9/11 book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our current world situation:

“..denial can be seductive, but it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by saying it isn’t so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all the more unsettling. Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some level.”

And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes. If you are a warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be “on” 24/7 for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself… “Baa.” This business of being a sheep or a sheepdog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-grass sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other. Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.”

[humboldtfog]

Years of depression has prepared me very well for the current state of affairs which is weird but whatever here’s a list of my faves on netflix, if I’m missing something let me know cause now’s the time, right?

I'm kinda embarrassed by how long this list is but also kinda like fuck that, there have been very long periods of time where it was either sit and watch shows all day or lie down and stare at the wall in silence all day so I chose the former and it adds up and there's nothing wrong with that.

Glow (Badass ladies learn to wrestle, great 80s aesthetics and grrrrl power.)

Our Planet (Netflix version of Planet Earth, beautiful, cute, terrifying that we aren’t doing more to save us all.)

Bojack Horseman (Hilarious and “deep” critique of LA and celebrity culture for people who don’t care about LA or celebrity culture. Also very funny visual jokes about how if animals were also kinda humans, and lots of great jokes about cliches and tropes, puns, and weirdly rhyming and alliteration? I don’t know how to explain it just watch it.)

Father Brown (BBC, based on mystery novels about a priest who always meddles in police business and solves murders in his small English countryside town.)

Pose (The Ball scene in NY in the 80s, poc queer and trans writers and actors bringing their people’s stories to life. So much joy, so much beauty, but also NYC in the 80s so you will cry.)

Paris is Burning (Documentary made during the Ball scene Pose is based on.)

Sex Education (Such empowering representations of all walks of gender and sexuality, and actually very educational, like I would straight up show this in schools because everyone would be very entertained and would learn a lot more than they teach in a lot of schools.)

What Happened Miss Simone (Documentary about Nina Simone’s life, music and the activism the establishment/ government worked to suppress and used to blacklist her.)

Night on Earth (Low light camera technology has gotten hella good and they’re starting to learn stuff about animals’ behaviors at night that they’ve never been able to study before.)

Call the Midwife (Follows stories from the midwives that worked in the East End of London after the war, based on memoirs. Interesting look at the kind of life of poverty people led before there were many large hospitals or birth control, right as the British were implementing their universal healthcare program.)

The Great British Baking Show (Everyone’s so nice and everything looks so good!)

Atypical (Dramady about a high schooler with autism and his family, very funny and great representations of autism and how to be a good dude.)

Parks and Recreation (Just very funny and everyone knows it. Amazing ensemble cast, and they still keeps in touch through a group chat awww doesn’t that say something!)

Kim’s Convenience (Canadian comedy about family of first and second gen Korean immigrants that’s just a really solid funny modern day sitcom.)

Queer Eye (I feel like if everyone in this world could get a life makeover from these guys we just wouldn’t be here right now.)

Obvious Child (Jenny Slate accidentally gets pregnant and gets an abortion. It’s funny and it’s realistic, we’re not all Juno.)

Maria Bamford: the Special Special Special (Rad lady comedian not afraid to talk about her mental health and lack thereof and very vocal about the stigma surrounding mental health problems and I very much relate to. My favorite standup probably ever. I could make a list just for standup so message me if you’d like more suggestions.)

Monty Python (Flying Circus, movies, doc, ect. “The Beatles of comedy” is the cliche but it's true.)

Easy (Very unconventional non-narrative structure and editing, following random people in Chicago in a very real life feeling way. Different story each episode, but sometimes characters show up briefly in each other’s lives or return for a second episode.)

Everything Sucks! (High school nerds and lesbians and theater geeks in the 90s! I’m so sad this only got one season I rewatched it recently and it’s just so solid.)

She’s Gotta Have It (Revival of Spike Lee’s first movie, black girl magic, art world, gentrified New York, lots of sex.)

The Office (Classic, holds up very well, totally solid throughout, worth a rewatch. Also if you're a fan Jenna Ficher and Angela Davis are doing a rewatch podcast jsyk.)

Billy on the Street (Mindless game show for laughs, amazing gay comedian runs around New York yelling questions at them. I watch this with my dad and he can’t help but snort even when it’s “inappropriate” or “juvenile” so you know it’s good.)

Good Girls (Some lower middle class family ladies that are all about to be broke decide to rob the grocery store one of them works at, but they accidentally cross a gang that stored their cash there, so they gotta pay it back, and of course can’t help but get deeper and deeper into it. Very suspenseful like your heart rate will go up and stay up. )

Arrested Development (It’s just funny, as you've probably heard, but I'm telling you it just really is.)

The Laundromat (Tells the stories of a few of the people involved in the panama papers in different ways, explains in an entertaining way how money laundering works in a way that made it mostly make sense even to me. The rich get richer, and Meryl Streep is here to tell them to fuck off and pay their taxes.)

Russian Doll (She keeps dying and coming back to the same moment over and over and can’t figure out how to stop the cycle or why so kinda sci fi, very suspenseful, big cliff hanger ending, or rather no ending, and just found out season two filming is delayed because virus which is very annoying!!)

Dear White People (Show picking up where the movie left off, after a frat hosts a black face party and the ivy league college is forced to deal with racism.)

Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings (Stories based on Dolly songs. Very Hallmark channel, you will cry.)

Episodes (Show about two British writers making a version of their BBC show for American tv. Kind of meta, very funny, Matt LaBlanc plays himself and it's great.)

Dumplin’ (Fat girl grows up with a beauty pageant winning mom and enters one herself with the help of her late aunt’s Dolly Parton drag queen friends.)

Lunatics (Chris Lilley is the best character actor ever, all his shows are just him playing different parts and you seriously forget it’s all one actor, even when he’s playing teenage girls.)

Jane the Virgin (Prime time soap opera about a girl who is engaged and waiting until marrige and is accidentally inseminated with the only sperm sample of a man who’s had cancer so decides to keep the baby, very heavy on the soap opera cliches in a meta way but also that’s what it is. So good at first but after the first three or so seasons it gets too much tbh though.)

Zumbo’s Just Desserts (Australian Bake show but with just sweet stuff and pressure to be avant garde.)

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (Jerry Sienfeld goes out with funny people to coffee and lunch in fancy cars and they have funny conversations.)

One Day at a Time (Very very cheesy laugh track sitcom, like the kind of thing my grandma would watch, but it makes me so happy it’s doing a great job eplaining really woke concepts like queer pronouns and ptsd and addiction and white privilege to people like my grandma!)

Orange is the New Black (Good stories about very diverse characters, I’d say by starting it off about a upper middle class white girl it tricks privileged white people into watching and then encountering the more realistic stories of women who go to prison and how the system treats prisoners. Ending of season two is super solid and you can stop it there, season three is a really great critique of the privatization of prisons. I admit it goes on and on to the point that it’s stressful and after watching it spread out over years I can’t remember/ keep up with all the different story lines, though they’re all good stories to tell.)

Space Jam (Just saw while scrolling for more ideas this was added! One of the greatest sports movies of all time obviously.)

Bonus amazon prime shows, I try to avoid Amazon in general but these are just too good if you know a prime member who you can't convince not to give their money to amazon so they might as well give you their login (like yer dad).

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (A 1950s New York upper class Jewish house wife gets dumped and starts doing stand up, so funny, great actors, and they seriously transform NY back into another era.)

Good Omens (Mini series based off Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s satirical novel about the biblical apocalypse, very funny, very smart, very British, does the book pretty solid justice.)

There are other decent things that aren’t included, I’d say these are solid recs for a general list of genres all over the map without letting it get to a ridiculously unhelpful length. I feel like I’d be good at the “if you like this then you’ll also like…” so let me know if some of these are your favorites too and want personal recs for what to watch next based on a brain instead of an algorithm.

If you want to have a remote date and watch things together on video chat or one of those watch party sites or just tell me what to watch next here’s some stuff on my list I’ve been curious about or not sure about or don’t want to watch alone or have been putting off, and now’s the time right?: Strangers Things, I Am Not Okay With This, Black Panther, The Betty White doc, John Mulaney Snack Lunch Bunch, Dead to Me, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, A Wrinkle in Time, The Little Prince, Maniac, Wet Hot American Summer reboots, and a bunch of different standup specials from comedians I like.

[crazy4tank]

Everything There Is To Know About Prince Philips Custom Land Rover Hearse

New Post has been published on https://coolcarsnews.com/everything-there-is-to-know-about-prince-philips-custom-land-rover-hearse/

Everything There Is To Know About Prince Philips Custom Land Rover Hearse

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh died a little over a week back. His presence will be skipped not only in the castle yet around the United Kingdom and the remaining world. For those of you who viewed his funeral might have realized that this was not your typical Royal funeral. The casket was not carried to St George's Chapel in a standard hearse that we have seen in yesteryear.

The Fight it out wanted something that was a lot more personal. His wish had been to be carried to the Church on a modified Land Rover that he designed and transformed over the years. It has been reported which he stated:

“Just stick me at the back of a Land Rover plus drive me to Windsor. ”

Everything there is to understand the custom Land Rover Hears that Prince Philip designed himself over the years.

RELATED: Here is The Coolest Features Of The Property Rover Defender

Based on Buckingham Palace, Prince Philip decided that the Land Rover Defender TD5 130 would definitely be the vehicle that transported his coffin 18 in years past. He went on to design the particular chassis cab to their specifications.

Knight in shining armor Philip added an open-top rear section to the vehicle so that his coffin might be carried on it. He had the vehicle painted dark bronze-green as well as the original color of the car is at fact Belize green. He or she chose this color since it was used for Military Property Rovers and it was a commitment to the Military background the fact that Duke had.

The palace has actually noted that the car remained at Land Rover them selves since it was built in the year 2003. Land Rover collaborated with all the Royal household to prepare for that funeral since then. The final modifications on the vehicle were produced back in 2019.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that will :

“He was above all the practical man, who can take something very conventional, whether a machine or even indeed a great national organization, and find a way by their own ingenuity to improve it, in order to adapt it for the twentieth and the 21st century, "

He furthermore stated that the Land Rover was:

“unique and idiosyncratic figure, " perfectly sums in the kind of person Prince Philip was.

RELATED: Here's What Makes The Property Rover Defender Iconic

It is no secret which the Royal family love Property Rover but the Palace reports that the Duke had years of affinity for Property Rover. He used american presto of car for most associated with his adult life as well as granted Land Rover the Royal Warrant about 4 decades ago.

End up, that Prince Philip produced several visits to the production facilities with the queen whenever she opened the company's motor manufacturing center in Wolverhampton, England, back in 2014.

The particular Guardian documented back in 2016, that the Fight it out drove a Land Rover and chauffeured the Chief executive and first lady, Barack and Michelle Obama in order to lunch at Windsor Fortress. The Queen even followed them on the drive with the Duke.

Jaguar Land Rover’s chief executive, Thierry Bolloré said:

“We are seriously privileged to have enjoyed an extremely long and happy organization with The Duke of Edinburgh over many decades... The particular Duke was a truly outstanding man and will be greatly skipped. ”

RELATED: 2022 Land Rover Defender V8: Cost, Specifics, & Figures

Knight in shining armor Philip drove for longer compared to most people expected him in order to. He gave up his permit when he was ninety-seven years old. He was involved with a car accident in 2019. The accident remaining his Land Rover overturned, a woman who was driving the Kia, suffered a damaged wrist. The lady’s buddy only has minor slashes and the child was still left unharmed.

This particular accident happened near the Regal Sandringham Estate.

RELATED: 10 Cheapest Vehicles Driven By Rich Celebrities (5 Most Expensive)

Seems like the only cars how the Royal Family owns are usually Land Rovers but this is simply not the case.

A few of the cars that they own including official and unofficial automobiles are:

-Rolls Royce Phantom VI

-Land Rover Breakthrough

-Land Rover Freelander

-Aston Martin DB6

-Audi A8 limousine

-Jaguar XJ

-Bentley Continental Traveling Spur

Once the Queen travels to established affairs, she has a state associated with cars which include: 3 Progresses Royce’s, 3 Daimler's plus 2 Bentley's. The California king has been seen driving about her holiday home frequently in one of her perfect favorite cars which is a Property Rover Defender. Fun truth, The Queen is the just person in the country that is permitted to drive without a driving license!

One of the most famous vehicles that Prince Charles is the owner of and has been seen generating in is his Aston Martin DB6. This vehicle was given to him simply by his parents on his twenty-first birthday.

NEXT: 15 Sickest Classic Vehicles Restored By Celebs

[atlantatorchnews]

“With Talent On Loan from God…” — A Thanksgiving Celebration (Worldwide Evangelistic Outreach)

Click here to listen in 100 languages. On this Thanksgiving, I thank God for the talents and gifts that He has bestowed upon my family and me and that is no doubt the reason why I love to see people do what they are truly talented and gifted by God to do. It is a blessing to see singers, musicians, actors, actresses, athletes in all sports, writers, speakers, business people, doctors, cooks, auto mechanics, lawyers, and leaders of all types seemingly without effort and almost flawlessly doing what they were given by God the talents and the gifts to do. Their talents (or gifts) come from God, and He has blessed the world with an abundance of and an array of talents. Every time we see these talents on display, we ought to be thankful to God for them and for the way in which many people use them to benefit and bless society. Many years ago, I heard a popular secular radio talk show host begin his radio broadcasts with the phrase ‘with talent on loan from God…' Even though I have not listened to him in years, that phrase stuck with me. It was good for him to know that whatever talents and gifts he has they came from God, and it is good for all of us to know that, and we all should give God thanks. God is the source of each of the gifts and talents that people have received. First Peter 4:10-11 says, "As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever." These verses tell us that every person has received talents from God and that it is their responsibility to use those talents for the good of others. Every time someone uses the talents God has given them, they bring glory to their Creator, and we should offer thanksgiving to God for the talents that He gives to us to use for His glory, praise, and honor. Many people do not hesitate to honor God as the source of their great talent, and they seek to honor and glorify God by the use of their talents. Many have also spoken of their faith in God and in Jesus Christ as the foundation of their success in life. Listen to these words from some people whom you might recognize. Oscar-award winning actor, Matthew McConaughey, said, "First off I want to thank God, because that’s who I look up to. He’s graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human hand. He has shown me that it’s a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late (British actor) Charlie Laughton, who said, ‘When you got God you got a friend…’” Super-bowl winning quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks, Russell Wilson, "First of all, God is so good. He brought me here a mighty long way. My dad used to always tell me, ‘Russ, why not you?’ And what that meant was believe in yourself, believe in the talent God has given you even though you are 5 foot 11, and you can go a long way." NBA star, Kevin Durant, said, "When I'm talking in front of people or when people tell me I'm great, I remind myself that I can always be better. I've just got to be thankful to the Lord for the gifts He's given me. My gift back to Him is to always be humble and to work as hard as I can." Peyton Manning, a Super Bowl-winning quarterback, said, "At age 13, I committed my life to Christ, and that faith has been most important to me ever since... My faith doesn’t make me perfect, it makes me forgiven, and provides me the assurance I once looked for. I’ve been blessed [to] have so little go wrong in my life, and [have been] given so much." Political analyst and columnist, Kirsten Powers, said, “I don't really feel like I had any courage when I became a Christian, I just gave in. I wasn't courageous; I didn't have any choice. I kept trying to not believe but I just couldn't avoid [accepting Christ]. If I could have avoided it, I would have. There is nothing convenient about it in my life or in the world I live in. It's not like living in the South where everybody is a Christian. I live in a world where nobody is a believer. But God pursued me.” Olympic gold medalist, Allyson Felix, said, "My faith is the reason I run – it calms my heart and makes everything feel like a lift. My speed is definitely a gift from [God], and I run for His glory. " Truett Cathy, the late, great businessman and founder of Chick-fil-A, said, the main purpose of his business is "to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us; and, to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A." Odell Beckham, Jr., of the New York Giants, who recently made what many are calling the greatest catch in NFL history, is also a believer. On the night of the now famous catch, he gave God the glory by saying, “God gave me this talent.” The day after making his amazing catch, he said, "I wanna thank God for everything he's doing in my life." He also said, "God is good. That's an understatement. He's always on time, maybe not when you want him to be but always when the time is right! God puts people and obstacles in our lives not for us to fail, but to bless us in mysterious ways that our own understanding can't imagine... If you don't know God, my advice? Get to know him! And If you do know God, get closer to Him!" Madison Bumgarner, the pitcher for the World Series-winning San Francisco Giants, said, “If it weren't for my faith, there is no way I would be where I am at today. My faith is a really big part of my career and my life... The biggest thing I want people to know about me is that I am a believer, I'm a Christian, not just that I'm a baseball player or any of the other stuff I like to do... Jesus Christ means everything to me. He is my Saviour and I live for Him. I don't want to live for myself; I want to live for Him.” Actress and author, Candace Cameron Bure, said, “God has changed me in ways that words can't describe. He has transformed the way I think and live my life. Things that were once important to me are no longer. I can't help but share the Good News with everyone! I know there is nothing more important. I know that without Christ, the eternal consequences are devastating. I urge you to surrender your whole life to Jesus, turn from your sin and trust in Him with all your heart.” Denzel Washington said, "I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I've been filled with the Holy Spirit. I know it's real... I've always understood why I've been blessed to be put in this situation [acting and directing]. And I'm more than happy to take advantage of it and to preach, if you will, about what God has done in my life." American musician, Sheila E., said, "[After a period of difficulty in my life] I decided, 'You know what, Lord? If you just give me another chance, I'll do whatever you want me to do.' I got the Bible and I started reading and I kept it on my chest. I slept with it and never took it out of my hand for weeks." Bobby Bowden, the second-winningest coach in college football, said, "If you love [God] and serve Him and try to be loyal to Him and obedient to Him, He's not going to let you fail. That's the thing that has happened to me." Albert Pujols (Pu-holz) of the St. Louis Cardinals said, "My life's goal is to bring glory to Jesus. My life is not mostly dedicated to the Lord, it is 100% committed to Jesus Christ and His will. God has given me the ability to succeed in the game of baseball. But baseball is not the end; baseball is the means by which my wife and I glorify God. Baseball is simply my platform to elevate Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior." Country singing star, Carrie Underwood said, “I grew up going to church camp and reading my Bible and having different faith books and movies in my life...My songs are sometimes focused on God, Jesus and faith, and that is a part of my "Bible Beltness," where such themes are popular. I was not the first, nor will I be the last, to sing about God.” Tim Howard, the U.S. soccer goalkeeper, who also has Tourette's syndrome said, "Living with Tourette's is not easy. But God has blessed me with the gift of athleticism as well. He has done some powerful things in my life through the combination of these two gifts. He also has shown me ways to use my position as a professional athlete to encourage others with Tourette's syndrome. Today, I am blessed to be living a dream. And yet, if it all went away tomorrow, I know I would still have peace. That probably sounds crazy to most people, but that's the kind of peace Christ gives. It is rooted in His love, and it surpasses all understanding. You can experience this same sense of love and peace, too. All you have to do is ask for it." Award-winning actor and director, Blair Underwood, said, “I am a Christian. I believe God has a plan. I believe he is not going to leave us hanging. As a man, in our society, I don't have all the answers. Being able to turn matters over to a higher power works for me.” Super Bowl-winning coach Tony Dungy said, “You are never going to get anywhere in sports or in life until you become convinced of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You may become a professional athlete or have fame and nice cars and nice houses and a lot of money, but what you’ll find is that all of that stuff goes away pretty quickly. You have to understand that Christ died for our sins, and that He died not just to be our Savior but so that He could be the center of our lives.” Michelle Williams, one third of the popular group, Destiny's Child, said, "[Despite some criticism that I have received for doing both secular and Gospel music,] I believe that I am doing my part to be a witness for Jesus Christ. Some people will do gospel when their career fails, but I chose to do it at the height of the popularity of Destiny's Child. And I didn't want to do it because it was a fad. I wanted to do it because it's in me. It's in my heart. God places people in different parts (areas) for different reasons. We know Jesus is coming back soon and I am doing my part to make sure that people know about him as well.” Famed neurosurgeon, Ben Carson, said, "If your priority is to look good in front of people, your life will take a different direction than if your priority is to use the talents that God has given you to make a positive difference in the world. I believe God has a specific purpose for me – and for every other person to whom he gives the gift of life. If there is a God and you believe in him, you know the best is yet to come. I always pray before any operation. I think God helps me know what to do....We'll always be safe in Jesus Christ if we place our faith in the Lord. Oprah Winfrey said, "I am a Christian. That is my faith. I'm not asking you to be a Christian. If you want to be one I can show you how. But it is not required. I have respect for all faiths... My favorite Bible verse, because I am a Christian, is Acts 17:28. It says, 'In God I live, and move, and have my being.' And you want to know why I'm so successful? Because I knew that at four-years-old, I wouldn't be who I am today without that." I could go on with the testimonies of many other people who have become successful through the use of their God-given gifts and talents. But, as we close this celebration of the talents that God has given, I want to let you know that you, too, have talents from God, and you can be a success through the talents that He has given you. Pastor Rick Warren said, "Whether you are a musician or an accountant, a teacher or a cook, God gave you those abilities to serve others. You are a manager of the gifts God has given to you. They may be great or small in your eyes, but they matter to God. When God made you, He made an investment in you, and He expects a return on that investment.” I tell people all the time, God did not put you here to do nothing. God wants you to use the talents and gifts He has given you for His glory and for the benefit of others. And when He uses you, you ought to give God thanks. The main way you can begin to give God a return on His investment in you is to give your heart and life to Him today. You see, not only, did God invest in you by giving you unique talents and abilities, but He made a major investment in You when He sacrificed His only Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross so that you would not have to suffer eternal punishment for your sins. Allow me to explain: No matter how talented and gifted you are, and no matter how much you may have accomplished in life, you are still a sinner just like everyone else, and if you do not accept God’s gift of salvation through Jesus Christ, then you will spend eternity in hell. Allow me to show you how you can accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour today. 1. Accept the fact that you are a sinner, and that you have broken God's law. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 7:20: "For there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good, and sinneth not." Romans 3:23 reads: "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." In fact, I am the chief of sinners, so don't think that you're alone. 2. Accept the fact that there is a penalty for sin. The Bible states in Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death…" 3. Accept the fact that you are on the road to hell. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 10:28: "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." The Bible says in Revelation 21:8: "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." 4. Accept the fact that you cannot do anything to save yourself! The Bible states in Ephesians 2: 8, 9: "For by grace are ye saved through faith: and that not of yourselves: it is a gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast." 5. Accept the fact that God loves you more than you love yourself, and that He wants to save you from hell. Jesus Christ said in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." 6. With these facts in mind, please repent of your sins, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and pray and ask Him to come into your heart and save you this very moment. The Bible states in the book of Romans 10:9, 13: "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Dear friend, if you are willing to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, please pray with me this simple prayer: Heavenly Father, I realize that I am a sinner and that I have done some bad things in my life. For Jesus Christ sake, please forgive me of my sins. I now believe with all of my heart that Jesus Christ died for me, was buried, and rose again. Lord Jesus, please come into my heart and save my soul and change my life today. Amen. If you believed in your heart that Jesus Christ died on the cross, was buried, and rose again, allow me to say, congratulations on doing the most important thing in life and that is accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour! For more information to help you grow in your newfound faith in Christ, go to Gospel Light Society.com and read "What To Do After You Enter Through the Door". Jesus Christ said in John 10:9, "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." God loves you! We love you! May God bless you! And Happy Thanksgiving!

[youllneverknowmysecretidentity]

Chapter 3- a memoir

Hell, fuckin hell. My childhood I spent hoping for adventure, hoping for a journey, or my mark on the world. This, is just shit. Why did I have to ask for this again? Don’t get me wrong Mullen is enjoyable, hot, and gentle. I just don’t particularly enjoy being a target, after last night I realized that if he was chased out of his home by a god of darkness, how long would it be until they sensed he set his sights on a weak mortal? Hence my excessive internal cursing. Waking up today was the hardest it’s been in a year or so, on days I didn’t want to be existent I just sat and stared at the wall until my mom yelled at me, now I can’t even seem to find the motivation then. My mother’s footsteps echoed through the halls and into my room. “Hannah! Are you still asleep??” I looked over to her with apathy, “yeah, I just have a skull splitting migraine.” I wasn’t lying, the amount of information spinning in my head about Mullen was killing me emotionally. “I’m sorry Hannah, I don’t think you should miss school though, take some aspirin with you and don’t go to practice later.” She walked out and began her day. I got dressed as well as I could and made my way downstairs to already see coffee and breakfast, dad must have left a little later. Eating was hard, drinking was even harder. The feeling of apathy was washing through my veins and into my spirit. When I finally finished my morning routine and was ready to go, I dreaded seeing people I knew, blasting music might help. “You look exhausted dove, are you alright?” I jumped and looked over to see Mullen, he wasn’t wearing his trademark hide trench coat or his feather necklace, I then realized that I completely missed them laying in my back seat as I was packing my car. “Did you sleep in my car?” He blushed and shrugged, “I was afraid someone would notice me if I slept on the roof and I wanted to bid you a good school day before I went hunting.” “Hunting?” He nodded, “yes, although I’m a god I cannot go without food, the beast part of me prefers wild kill, plus, I picked up a foreign presence in the woods here in town, I need to check it out.” I nodded, so he’s becoming a guardian of the town too, that actually pretty cool. “Well good luck on your hunting then, don’t get killed.” He chuckled, “I should be bidding you good luck, you’re uneasy. People are stressing you out.” I widened my eyes and stared at the parking lot entrance, I sped into a parking space and aggressively put my car into park. “I’m not just stressed about that!” He looked taken back but lowered his head for me to continue so I did. “Everything has been so stressful recently, people abandoning me for some dumb ass rumor, a coach who barely goes to me for advice anymore, my teammates who barely speak to me, and now a god who’s attached his soul to me and I feel exposed again, like an open wound! I never wanted romance again and now the scar is fresher and I’m tense!” He curved his eyebrows in concern, and then lowered them in frustration, “I know people have been cruel, i cannot kill them, that would put me on Qions radar, but I can assure you that I’m here to protect you, I care for you and my soul is yours. I promise not to hurt you.” I lowered my head, “I’m not worried about you hurting me, I’m worried about me hurting you, I shouldn’t lash out on people but I’m always so angry.” He put a hand on my shoulder and I relaxed. “Dove, I vow to calm you.” I looked at him with watery eyes, then to the clock. “Don’t worry you still have 20 minutes, let me tell you a funny story.” He then proceeded to hand me a small amulet with a tiny wooden lion on the end, the size of a dime. He put it around my neck and smiled. “Well the story starts about 1,000 years ago....” The headache went away after lunch, my TA block was quieter this time. I stared out the library window, it had started raining about an hour ago, I toyed with the lion around my fingertips. So distracted by it I never sensed someone behind me, “hey you doing okay?” I looked over to see Grady, I smiled and motioned for him to sit down. “I guess, just a little stressed after everything.” He nodded,” people are dicks, no one likes when you speak your mind and maryville trusts a rumor more than the person itself.” “I guess so, can I tell you something? And you promise not to tell anyone?” He nodded and smiled, “even if you were hiding a dead body in your car I would still not talk.” I smiled, “I met someone.” “Woah, do I know him?” “That’s the hard part, it’s a really long story....” “HES A WHAT?!?!” I shushed Lauren as people headed to their cars began to stare, “he’s gotta be lying Hannah there’s no way he’s some ‘protection god’ he’s gotta be some pedo or something of the sort.” “She’s got a point Hannah, your story was good and all but there’s something he’s hiding.” I nodded feeling defeated but I knew this reaction would come, “fine, let me show you then.” “How?” I looked at Lauren and smiled, “Friday after school, clear your schedules and come hike with me on a trail not too far from here, he likes to reside in those parts.” Lauren squinted at me and smiled, “you’ve gone crazy, but you’re still the chaotic Hannah we remember. I’m in.” Grady spun his head and looked at her, “what if she’s planning on leading us to that killer?” “Cmon, Hannah doesn’t have an evil bone in her body, plus I trust her.” I smiled and hugged them both, “you’ll both be in for the shock of your life!” Grady groaned and muttered something about being in his grave. I didn’t listen and instead chose to drive home and get ready for Friday. Wednesday- “So what does he look like?” Lauren slid into a chair beside me at the lunch table. I rolled my eyes and thought for a moment. “Well, he’s got blue green eyes that are just beautiful, he’s not short but he’s not tall, very muscular build, brownish blonde hair, a nice beard, he’s got a deep British accent.” She smiled, “He a bad boy?” “Nah, he’s a gentle soul but I definitely feel like he’d get his hands dirty if it was necessary.” Grady stared us down before piping in,”getting his hands dirty like killing us in the woods?” “Oh please give it a break, he’s not gonna kill us.” “He does transform into a lion though.” Lauren and Grady looked at me before I smiled and continued,”big lion with shiny black fur, he’s the size of a grizzly bear and almost has the build of one while still keeping a lion shape, and the most beautiful eagle wings you could lay your eyes upon, it’s truly a sight to behold.” Lauren smiled, “yep, definitely gone crazy.” Friday- The day of was hectic, Lauren constantly reminded me of the hiking trip and Grady was too busy making a mental list of any weapon he needed to bring, I told him his best weapon was going to be a smile. The final bell rung and our group rushed out the door and into our respective cars, shooting a quick text to my mom letting her know I was going to the trail, I sped through the parking lot, a lion with Golden heavenly wings on my mind. We finally arrived to the trail and started to make our way to the trail head, “stop.” Grady said suddenly, “you’re sure that this is safe and we’re not going into some formulated death trap?” I smirked, “if I wanted to kill you so badly, I would have done it already.” Lauren laughed and continued walking into the trail Grady following closely behind. We stayed on the trail for a good mile or so. I began to get nervous that I would not see him, I had told him the night before that I wanted him to see my friends and that he could trust them. I hope he’s not hiding. “So does he disguise himself as a tree?” I looked back at Grady and raised an eyebrow, “no, he just hasn’t shown himself yet. MULLEN!!! MULLEN!!!” “Mullen is an odd name.” Lauren pinched him, “it’s Irish Gaelic for warrior.” She retorted. I stopped when I smelled it, the coppery flowery smell of him, over time he gained more musk but he was still unmistakable. It was getting stronger, I looked back at the distracted couple and stared for a few seconds at their banter, the air shifted and I felt a presence behind me. “Do couples always have to banter like that?” I chuckled, “we do too Mullen.” Lauren stopped mid sentence and whipped around to see Mullen, her jaw dropped and she stared very obviously at him. Grady studied his frame and wardrobe, “you were right about the crazy coat.” Lauren snapped out of her trance and pinched him again. “It’s nice to meet you Grady and Lauren, Hannah has spoken endlessly about you.” Lauren stepped up to Mullen and shook his hand and offered and kind smile, “I’m glad to finally meet you, you don’t look like a murderer at all.” She said pointedly at Grady. Grady rolled his eyes and weakly shook Mullen’s hand. “You must have questions and concerns?” “Do you change into some beast?” Grady said suddenly, Mullen winced at the word beast. He had never enjoyed other people calling him and beast although he called himself one often. “Yes I do, would you like to see?” Grady nodded hesitating slightly, Mullen smirked and turned around before erupting into a cloud of smoke and golden glitters, his eagle feather necklace floating up before popping into a cloud of feathers that took shape into two wings before flapping powerful gusts of air that knocked us off our feet, plowing away the smoke. A lion approached, his eyes still the same but his body changed. Grady exhaled and stood. “Jesus you were right Hannah.” The lion tilted his head and then turned to me and offered his mane for affection, I gladly gave him what he craved before grabbing my friends hands and letting them touch the mane. “We have so many questions, please change back and explain everything.” Lauren said almost in a begging tone. Mullen shifted quickly back into his man form and adjusted the feather on his neck and motioning us to sit on some logs and rocks. He guided me to sit on the same rock as him leaned against a tree and wrapped his arm around me protectively. “Well first, I’m a protection god. In the land of old there were 4 different classes of gods: the elites which ruled and shaped the land with their mighty powers, the mages which much like the elites kept a ruler ship on the land but on much more specific subjects, the protectors which is where I fall we fought all forms of monsters, killers, and evil, we were highly respected but often were left out due to our common lack of powers; and finally the halflings these were caused by the elites abusing their powers on humans and taking part in.....humanly pleasures. They were powerful enough to take down an elite as they had the will and emotion of a human but the strength and power of a god. Many halflings took down their parents, but in the social system they still were considered lesser than, later on however the world changed and more cultures were created, our godly kingdom expanded and we soon found more gods out there. A war broke out 5,000 years ago and 80% of the gods were killed. We only had four elites left. Huron, the god of weather, Iransha, the goddess of light, arayma, the goddess of the sea, and Qion, the god of darkness and the dead. Most mages were dead but the few who remained were the mages of war, wisdom, the arts, and fauna. Us protection gods soon became quite popular for protection of the mages as only 20 remained, Huron soon forbade gods to mate with humans as halflings caused the Great War that killed so many brothers and sisters. But soon, Qion grew bitter over Hurons rule, Huron was a wise ruler but was still boisterous and arrogant. He hid away monsters and let humans fight amongst themselves and even forget the gods existence, the mages no longer did their work and protection gods became greedy of temples and treasures. Qion was bitter, he knew protection gods were powerful enough to take down an elite. We protectors did not know that however. He began to kill us off slowly then gained speed after accidentally killing a mage. Once most of us were dead and the rest in hiding. He killed the mages, then the two elite goddesses, he battled Huron for 100 years until.....” Mullen choked on his words slightly. “I froze them in stone......I didn’t know I possessed the power to do it, but, I blasted them with something I honestly cannot remember. They froze and stayed in stone. Qions plans for the world were to turn the underworld into its own god system with monsters ruling the people and to return people to what he believed was the rightful state, slavery.” He lowered his head, I felt his arm go tense over my shoulder, “they unfroze recently and I had to flee, three mages are still alive. They helped trap Huron in a cage in the underworld, Qion will be looking for me. His monsters will find me eventually. I attached my soul to Hannah’s. Now my only purpose is to care for Hannah in any way she sees fit.” He looked up at us, he had tears in his eyes. Lauren covered her mouth slightly trying to hold back tears. “You’re going to protect her to the bitter end aren’t you?” He nodded and began to rub his thumb reassuringly into my shoulder. “So, can humans kill a god?” Grady said. Mullen chuckled, “I’ve seen it before, takes a special type of metal, and weapon with holy runes. You can’t put the runes on their without a ceremony though” Grady nodded, “you know the ceremony?” “Yes I do, but you’re not going to be able to kill Qion, or the mages, maybe a monster or two but I know if you two start fighting Hannah will want to join and I cannot allow that.” I sagged slightly, feeling defeated that he would not allow any adventure. He must have noticed my sadness and piped up. “I can however offer you three something better than fighting.” We leaned in to hear his answer, “flight.” I smiled, this would be the first time I rode him while he was a lion, Lauren got up excitedly and Grady followed hesitating. “So were gonna let you fly us around?” Mullen nodded before shifting into his beast form, he lowered himself for me and let the trio of us hop on. He began to trot and pick up speed until we were air born. I could hear Grady screaming in the back and Lauren whooping. The ride was exhilarating, looking down we saw the fiery colors of Tennessee autumn lining the forests and roads converging like river veins or roots in a plant. The sky was a blue with pink hue and the clouds smelled of crisp air and water. He flew higher until we collided with clouds and felt the cool comfort of heavens mattresses. The ride was short, the smell of rotting flesh invaded my sinuses and tainted the crisp smells. I looked over and gasped, flying beside us, was a dead bird. A raven, with rotting meat adorning its pale and dried bones, red eyes glowing, piercing into my soul. Mullen noticed it and growled while leaning us away from the raven. The raven stuttered and shook before turning and following us, “zombie bird is following us!” Grady yelled. Mullen picked up speed and roared, the raven shook and spurred away seeming scared by the deafening roar of Mullen. We landed shortly after and Mullen shifted into man, frustrated he paced the forest floor before stopping and looking at us. “You all need to go home now, it was stupid of me to expose you like that. That was a scout, Lauren and Grady, go home. I promise no danger to you if you leave as soon as possible. Try not to go into any forests for a while and if anything happens please call Hannah. Hannah, I am taking you home and keeping watch on you.” He stared me down with authority before we all headed to our vehicles. The ride home was tense, looking over to Mullen every few minutes, I could sense his anger. His jaw tensions obvious underneath his beard. My hands began to quiver slightly. He must have noticed as the wheel of the car shifted from my shaking. He put his hand slowly over the wheel to steady my hands. “Hannah, let me drive.” I shook my head and continued on the road, already a few minutes from home. “I’m concerned.” I looked at him and breathed a sigh. “I know you are.” I pulled into my drive way and went inside without sparing him another glance. My mom was sat where she usually was just writing away in her notebook. I said a quick hello and made up a story about hiking with Lauren and Grady and then made my way to my room to distract myself with homework.

[travelworldnetwork]

By Breena Kerr

4 December 2018

I was walking through a centuries-old village in northern Tuscany with not another human in sight. To my right, a few horses grazed in a large paddock. To my left, beyond an old stone house that looked as though it had stood for hundreds of years, a thick copse expanded into a forest of oak, chestnut, holly and ash trees. There was no sound except the buzzing of insects and the drumbeat of my feet hitting the path – a path that, I realised, had become harder underfoot. I stopped and bent down, my pack weighing heavily on my back. Peering through the dirt and moss, I could see bits of stone, like hundreds of disjointed puzzle pieces leading me ahead. I had stumbled upon an ancient Roman road.

I was on day two of walking the Via Francigena, a 1,000-year-old pilgrimage route that extends around 2,000km from the English city of Canterbury all the way to Rome. Its name is a nod to the fact that it travels through France, but during its history the route was also known as the Via Romea for the city where it ends.

Walking over long distances, sometimes as far as 24km a day, was new to me. Like many people I met walking the Via Francigena, I’d never backpacked or taken a multi-day hike (the route’s spiritual and cultural aspects seemed to attract those more inclined toward historical immersion and personal transformation than fitness). But the knowledge that people have trodden the same path for centuries made walking it seem somewhat plausible, like something anyone could accomplish if they had thick enough socks and a little too much self-confidence.

View image of The Via Francigena is a 1,000-year-old pilgrimage route from Canterbury, England, all the way to Rome (Credit: Credit: EmmeEffe/Alamy)

You may also be interested in: • An epic hike of biblical proportions • A 30,000km road to a lost world • A perilous walkway fit for kings

The saying ‘all roads lead to Rome’ has become a quaint and somewhat clichéd turn-of-phrase these days. But when the Roman Empire ruled over places such as England, present-day Spain, North Africa, and even modern-day Israel and Turkey, it was true. As the Romans expanded their dominion, they built roads to connect the conquered cities back to heart of the empire. And after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th Century, Roman denizens had new, religious reasons to visit the capital city – such as seeing the resting places of the biblical apostles St Peter and St Paul, according to author Carla Mackey who is writing a guide to the Via Francigena and has walked multiple sections of it.

Pilgrimages have been undertaken by people of varying spiritual and religious traditions for thousands of years, from Tibetan Buddhists prostrating their way to Lhasa to Muslims journeying to the holy city of Mecca. The Via Francigena was a route endorsed by the Catholic Church, according to Mackey, with Pope Boniface VIII declaring that the first jubilee would be in 1300AD, when anyone who made the pilgrimage to Rome could have their sins wiped clean. If pilgrims were especially devoted, they could also continue the pilgrimage through southern Italy and onward to Jerusalem.

All roads lead to Rome

In 990AD, the Archbishop of Canterbury named Sigeric the Serious had a more practical reason to walk to Rome. Having risen into his prestigious office, he needed to visit the Vatican to be ordained and collect his official garments. At the time he made the journey, there were many different paths to Rome. But Sigeric, who’d left from Canterbury, wrote down his route home through Italy, Switzerland, France and into the UK, cataloguing the towns he stayed in on his journey. The route he took now makes up the official Via Francigena. The only part that cannot be completed on foot is the English Channel, which medieval pilgrims crossed by boat (and modern pilgrims on the Dover-to-Calais ferry).

As the Renaissance blossomed in Europe, the Via Francigena began to decline in popularity. Trading routes multiplied and shifted to pass through Florence, one of Italy’s most significant intellectual, artistic and mercantile cities at the time.

View image of As the Romans expanded their dominion, they built roads to connect the conquered cities back to heart of the empire (Credit: Credit: Breena Kerr)

The Via Francigena became, for the most part, forgotten, although sections remained in use as local roads and footpaths. Things remained that way until 1985. That year, a Tuscan anthropologist, writer and adventurer named Giovanni Caselli was looking for new topics to write travel books about. As an enthusiastic hiker who had also walked the old Silk Road through China, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, Caselli decided to walk the Via Francigena after learning about Sigeric’s route.

“I would go into a town and ask the local people, ‘What’s the oldest route from here to there’,” he said. “And it worked, because the local memory of these paths still exists.” Caselli walked all the way from Canterbury to Rome, crossing the British countryside, the English Channel (by ferry), French Champagne country, the Swiss Alps and the rolling hills of Tuscany.

After Caselli published his book about the Via Francigena in 1990, the route started gaining attention. In 1994, the Via Francigena became one of the Council of Europe’s designated Cultural Routes. Then in 2006, the organisations that oversee the Via Francigena decided on the official route that pilgrims walk today. Many pilgrims see it as an alternative or follow-up to Spain’s better known – and much busier ­– Camino de Santiago.

View image of The official Via Francigena follows the journey taken by Archbishop of Canterbury Sigeric the Serious in 990AD (Credit: Credit: Breena Kerr)

Walking the Italian portion of the Via Francigena, it’s common to see a handful of other walkers, as well as cyclists, along the route. But the northern stretches, like those through England, France and Switzerland, are usually fairly empty. British couple Nell Sleet and Luke Smith walked the entire Via Francigena in 2017, but said they only saw six fellow pilgrims during their first month walking.

Like me, Sleet and Smith, who write a blog about the Via Francigena and other walks, experienced some serious nerves as they began their journey. At first, they said, doing a three-month walk seemed crazy. But the route exerted a kind of magnetic pull, and before they knew it, they were on the road.

We felt like it was calling us

“What ordinary person even walks that far?” they told me in an email. “But it’s funny, we felt like it was calling us.”

On the morning they set out from Canterbury, the pair was apparently so nervous that they couldn’t even finish their breakfast. “Walking all day, then having to put up a tent, then take it down, pack it up, and do it all over again [the next day] is a bit overwhelming,” they said.

I felt the same way, even though I only covered a short portion of the route, from Lucca to San Gimignano (about 75km) and stayed in pilgrim hostels and hotels along the way. I was horrified by the anticipation that had built up around this grand adventure. I was, I had hoped, a person who could fearlessly book a ticket, fly 13,000km from my Hawaii home and walk an ancient route alone, with no training. But what if I was wrong?

View image of After trading routes shifted to pass through Florence, the Via Francigena was all but forgotten (Credit: Credit: calix/Alamy)

As I trudged through the streets of Lucca on my first day, the sun shone hot on my skin and the wind brushed my face. Without the protection of a car or bus, I smelled every rubbish bin and felt the whoosh of passing cyclists. I heard the gentle thud of my feet and noticed how the texture of the ground – whether earth, grass, cobblestone or cement – changed my stride.

I stopped to get a stamp in my pilgrim passport (as I would do at regular intervals throughout the route) at Lucca Cathedral, then continued out into the suburbs, passing cats perched on fences, overgrown lots and backyard streams until the neighbourhoods became more rural. At every intersection, I looked for the tiny image of a pilgrim – whether on a lamp post, small sign or spray painted on the pavement – to guide my way.

Eventually, the lull of my footsteps slowed my thoughts. My heartbeat matched my pace for the first time in a long while. My feet started to hurt, so I told myself, “just a little further”.

Somewhere around hour five, I walked off the road and threw my backpack down under the canopy of a sprawling oak tree. I plopped onto the ground and laid back, feeling the prickle of thorns and burrs; the dry caking of sweat, dirt and sunscreen on my face; the hard rocks underneath me. The last things I saw before I closed my eyes were the leaves, dancing in the afternoon breeze, outlined by the blue sky.

View image of Today, the Via Francigena is one of the Council of Europe’s designated Cultural Routes (Credit: Credit: Realy Easy Star/Toni Spagone/Alamy)

Like many moments of my five days on the Via Francigena, it was dusty and quiet. Lucca had faded into semi-rural, semi-industrial outskirts that will likely never be on any tour itinerary. It was not particularly impressive or photo-worthy – it was a moment that would be hard to justify to someone else, to explain why, out of all the things I could have done, I had chosen to be there.

But, the truth is that beneath that tree, I was doing more than ‘seeing’ Italy, or Tuscany, or the Via Francigena. I was a part of them, the way countless pilgrims before me had been.

I think about nothing, too. It’s wonderful. Isn’t it?

On my third night, I was eating dinner with other pilgrims in a hostel outside the vertiginous hill town of Gambassi Terme (I chose the small hotel because when I arrived, my feet riddled with crippling blisters, I knew that if I stayed there I would not have to climb the steep slope before I could rest). As we dug into plates of pasta al pomodoro (pasta with tomato sauce), the man next to me – an Italian in his 60s who had completed a week of the Via Francigena so far – furrowed his brow and posed a question, as though he’d been thinking about it for a long time.

“What do you think about when you’re walking?” he asked me.

“Honestly?” I said, “When I walk I mostly think about nothing.”

He laughed softly and smiled.

“I think about nothing, too. It’s wonderful. Isn’t it?”

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BBC Travel – Adventure Experience

[todaynewsstories]

Commentary: Stressful and rushed but the daily commute is no waste of time

MELBOURNE: Few activities that bead our everyday lives have earned such dubious notoriety as commuting. 

That the words “hell” and “nightmare” are sometimes invoked to describe journeys to and from work indicates just how disparaged this part of our lives often is. 

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The commute has often been depicted in dystopian terms, standing for all that is stressful and wearying about our contemporary daily routines. These journeys are often so deeply routinised that we rarely stop to think about them. 

Researchers have explored topics such as the link between commuting and our well-being – with the former significantly compromising the latter.

And there are statistics, such as journey times between cities. A survey in London, for instance, reported that on average British workers spend one year and 35 days commuting 308,607 kilometres in their lifetimes. 

Other studies indicate the average worker in Britain spends 139 hours a year commuting, the equivalent of 19 standard working days.

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This information provides a bird’s eye view of our commutes. Aside from such high-level diagnoses, little is known about how commuting is transforming urban life. 

Zoom in, and we can begin to appreciate how the journey to and from work is a strange sphere of everyday life, fizzing with all manner of events and encounters that, for good or ill, make a difference to who we are.

SILENT ENCOUNTERS

Overhearing a strange conversation in hushed tones. Seeing the first rays of early morning sun while listening to a favourite singer. Momentarily catching the eye of the person sitting over there, again. Half-noticing the person in the car pulled up next to us at the lights has tears running down their cheeks.

READ: Fewer commuters is taking the London tube, creating a headache for transport authorities, a commentary

READ: London Tube reduces congestion by changing small commuter behaviours, a commentary

Commuters look at their smartphones on a crowded train during morning rush hour in Bangkok. (Photo: AFP/Nicolas Asfouri)

These seemingly inconsequential encounters are significant because they can transform us in subtle but powerful ways. 

They might take us out of ourselves, looping our own dramas into the lives of others, intensifying our sense of connectedness to worlds beyond our own.

All the encounters we experience on our commutes, all the places we move through, impress on us and leave their mark, even if we are not conscious of how an event has affected us at the time.

In the mid-20th century, when city suburbs were growing rapidly, philosopher Henri Lefebvre was worried that the corresponding lengthening of commutes was a sign our free time was being taken away by the demands of work. 

Yet far from a work-induced zone of “dead time”, as has often been the assumption of economists, commuting is a time when we engage in all manner of activities, for work and play, that shape who we are.

Our commutes are crammed full of activities both enabled and constrained by the environments we move in. 

Scratching beneath the surface of these activities reveals a myriad of motivations, from the stubborn bargains we might make with ourselves to put our commute to productive work, to the less volitional and more happenchance sense of being lulled into swiping through a carousel of social media feeds on our phone yet again.

File picture of people queuing to board a bus in Singapore. (Photo: Joey Liew)

COMMUTING CHANGES US

A woman I interviewed told me her new commute was much shorter than her old one, so she would have to sit for a few minutes in her car once she arrived at work. She felt she had got there too quickly and craved more transition time.

Another woman told me she’d grown tired of the sensory bombardment of driving to work. She chose to switch to the train, which extended her commute by an hour and ten minutes. But this gave her time to plough through novels.

Then there was the man who did a commuter cycling course to reduce the profound anxiety he felt about biking to work in perilous traffic. This ended up being the catalyst for his choice to pursue a new career helping other would-be cycle commuters navigate traffic.

Another woman bemoaned how her lengthy commute by car and then train took away time she could otherwise be spending at home. Yet she spoke very affectionately about the sense of community that had built up over years in her train carriage, and how people looked out for each other, making sure they hadn’t slept beyond their stop.

To claim commuting is either a negative or positive activity belies its fundamentally indeterminate nature. Commuting can tire, deplete and cost, but it can also enliven, excite and energise. Both poison and cure, the commute is a zone in which the tensions and contradictions, the diverse influences and desires that are our lives, come to the fore.

A motorcyclist in Singapore. (File photo: Francine Lim)

The multitude of events and encounters experienced in our own commutes might prompt us to ask questions of ourselves that strike our core. Why did that person’s actions agitate me? What was it about today’s journey that made me feel at peace?

Our commutes makes us rethink just what it is that matters to us, and allows us to re-evaluate what our work, relationships and communities might mean to us. 

Stuck in traffic, it might only be when we are feeling at our most constrained, or at our lowest ebb, that a new way of going on in life might present itself.

David Bissell is associate professor and Australian Research Council future fellow at the School of Geography at the University of Melbourne. A version of this commentary first appeared on The Conversation.

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[glsthanksgiving]

“With Talent On Loan from God…” — A Thanksgiving Celebration

On this Thanksgiving, I thank God for the talents and gifts that He has bestowed upon my family and me and that is no doubt the reason why I love to see people do what they are truly talented and gifted by God to do. It is a blessing to see singers, musicians, actors, actresses, athletes in all sports, writers, speakers, business people, doctors, cooks, auto mechanics, lawyers, and leaders of all types seemingly without effort and almost flawlessly doing what they were given by God the talents and the gifts to do. Their talents (or gifts) come from God, and He has blessed the world with an abundance of and an array of talents. Every time we see these talents on display, we ought to be thankful to God for them and for the way in which many people use them to benefit and bless society. Many years ago, I heard a popular secular radio talk show host begin his radio broadcasts with the phrase ‘with talent on loan from God…’ Even though I have not listened to him in years, that phrase stuck with me. It was good for him to know that whatever talents and gifts he has they came from God, and it is good for all of us to know that, and we all should give God thanks. God is the source of each of the gifts and talents that people have received. First Peter 4:10-11 says, “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever.” These verses tell us that every person has received talents from God and that it is their responsibility to use those talents for the good of others. Every time someone uses the talents God has given them, they bring glory to their Creator, and we should offer thanksgiving to God for the talents that He gives to us to use for His glory, praise, and honor. Many people do not hesitate to honor God as the source of their great talent, and they seek to honor and glorify God by the use of their talents. Many have also spoken of their faith in God and in Jesus Christ as the foundation of their success in life. Listen to these words from some people whom you might recognize. Oscar-award winning actor, Matthew McConaughey, said, “First off I want to thank God, because that’s who I look up to. He’s graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human hand. He has shown me that it’s a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late (British actor) Charlie Laughton, who said, ‘When you got God you got a friend…’” Super-bowl winning quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks, Russell Wilson, “First of all, God is so good. He brought me here a mighty long way. My dad used to always tell me, ‘Russ, why not you?’ And what that meant was believe in yourself, believe in the talent God has given you even though you are 5 foot 11, and you can go a long way.” NBA star, Kevin Durant, said, “When I’m talking in front of people or when people tell me I’m great, I remind myself that I can always be better. I’ve just got to be thankful to the Lord for the gifts He’s given me. My gift back to Him is to always be humble and to work as hard as I can.” Peyton Manning, a Super Bowl-winning quarterback, said, “At age 13, I committed my life to Christ, and that faith has been most important to me ever since… My faith doesn’t make me perfect, it makes me forgiven, and provides me the assurance I once looked for. I’ve been blessed [to] have so little go wrong in my life, and [have been] given so much.” Political analyst and columnist, Kirsten Powers, said, “I don’t really feel like I had any courage when I became a Christian, I just gave in. I wasn’t courageous; I didn’t have any choice. I kept trying to not believe but I just couldn’t avoid [accepting Christ]. If I could have avoided it, I would have. There is nothing convenient about it in my life or in the world I live in. It’s not like living in the South where everybody is a Christian. I live in a world where nobody is a believer. But God pursued me.” Olympic gold medalist, Allyson Felix, said, “My faith is the reason I run – it calms my heart and makes everything feel like a lift. My speed is definitely a gift from [God], and I run for His glory. ” Truett Cathy, the late, great businessman and founder of Chick-fil-A, said, the main purpose of his business is “to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us; and, to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A.” Odell Beckham, Jr., of the New York Giants, who recently made what many are calling the greatest catch in NFL history, is also a believer. On the night of the now famous catch, he gave God the glory by saying, “God gave me this talent.” The day after making his amazing catch, he said, “I wanna thank God for everything he’s doing in my life.” He also said, “God is good. That’s an understatement. He’s always on time, maybe not when you want him to be but always when the time is right! God puts people and obstacles in our lives not for us to fail, but to bless us in mysterious ways that our own understanding can’t imagine… If you don’t know God, my advice? Get to know him! And If you do know God, get closer to Him!” Madison Bumgarner, the pitcher for the World Series-winning San Francisco Giants, said, “If it weren’t for my faith, there is no way I would be where I am at today. My faith is a really big part of my career and my life… The biggest thing I want people to know about me is that I am a believer, I’m a Christian, not just that I’m a baseball player or any of the other stuff I like to do… Jesus Christ means everything to me. He is my Saviour and I live for Him. I don’t want to live for myself; I want to live for Him.” Actress and author, Candace Cameron Bure, said, “God has changed me in ways that words can’t describe. He has transformed the way I think and live my life. Things that were once important to me are no longer. I can’t help but share the Good News with everyone! I know there is nothing more important. I know that without Christ, the eternal consequences are devastating. I urge you to surrender your whole life to Jesus, turn from your sin and trust in Him with all your heart.” Denzel Washington said, “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I’ve been filled with the Holy Spirit. I know it’s real… I’ve always understood why I’ve been blessed to be put in this situation [acting and directing]. And I’m more than happy to take advantage of it and to preach, if you will, about what God has done in my life.” American musician, Sheila E., said, “[After a period of difficulty in my life] I decided, ‘You know what, Lord? If you just give me another chance, I’ll do whatever you want me to do.’ I got the Bible and I started reading and I kept it on my chest. I slept with it and never took it out of my hand for weeks.” Bobby Bowden, the second-winningest coach in college football, said, “If you love [God] and serve Him and try to be loyal to Him and obedient to Him, He’s not going to let you fail. That’s the thing that has happened to me.” Albert Pujols (Pu-holz) of the St. Louis Cardinals said, “My life’s goal is to bring glory to Jesus. My life is not mostly dedicated to the Lord, it is 100% committed to Jesus Christ and His will. God has given me the ability to succeed in the game of baseball. But baseball is not the end; baseball is the means by which my wife and I glorify God. Baseball is simply my platform to elevate Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.” Country singing star, Carrie Underwood said, “I grew up going to church camp and reading my Bible and having different faith books and movies in my life…My songs are sometimes focused on God, Jesus and faith, and that is a part of my “Bible Beltness,” where such themes are popular. I was not the first, nor will I be the last, to sing about God.” Tim Howard, the U.S. soccer goalkeeper, who also has Tourette’s syndrome said, “Living with Tourette’s is not easy. But God has blessed me with the gift of athleticism as well. He has done some powerful things in my life through the combination of these two gifts. He also has shown me ways to use my position as a professional athlete to encourage others with Tourette’s syndrome. Today, I am blessed to be living a dream. And yet, if it all went away tomorrow, I know I would still have peace. That probably sounds crazy to most people, but that’s the kind of peace Christ gives. It is rooted in His love, and it surpasses all understanding. You can experience this same sense of love and peace, too. All you have to do is ask for it.” Award-winning actor and director, Blair Underwood, said, “I am a Christian. I believe God has a plan. I believe he is not going to leave us hanging. As a man, in our society, I don’t have all the answers. Being able to turn matters over to a higher power works for me.” Super Bowl-winning coach Tony Dungy said, “You are never going to get anywhere in sports or in life until you become convinced of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You may become a professional athlete or have fame and nice cars and nice houses and a lot of money, but what you’ll find is that all of that stuff goes away pretty quickly. You have to understand that Christ died for our sins, and that He died not just to be our Savior but so that He could be the center of our lives.” Michelle Williams, one third of the popular group, Destiny’s Child, said, “[Despite some criticism that I have received for doing both secular and Gospel music,] I believe that I am doing my part to be a witness for Jesus Christ. Some people will do gospel when their career fails, but I chose to do it at the height of the popularity of Destiny’s Child. And I didn’t want to do it because it was a fad. I wanted to do it because it’s in me. It’s in my heart. God places people in different parts (areas) for different reasons. We know Jesus is coming back soon and I am doing my part to make sure that people know about him as well.” Famed neurosurgeon, Ben Carson, said, “If your priority is to look good in front of people, your life will take a different direction than if your priority is to use the talents that God has given you to make a positive difference in the world. I believe God has a specific purpose for me – and for every other person to whom he gives the gift of life. If there is a God and you believe in him, you know the best is yet to come. I always pray before any operation. I think God helps me know what to do….We’ll always be safe in Jesus Christ if we place our faith in the Lord. Oprah Winfrey said, “I am a Christian. That is my faith. I’m not asking you to be a Christian. If you want to be one I can show you how. But it is not required. I have respect for all faiths… My favorite Bible verse, because I am a Christian, is Acts 17:28. It says, ‘In God I live, and move, and have my being.’ And you want to know why I’m so successful? Because I knew that at four-years-old, I wouldn’t be who I am today without that.” I could go on with the testimonies of many other people who have become successful through the use of their God-given gifts and talents. But, as we close this celebration of the talents that God has given, I want to let you know that you, too, have talents from God, and you can be a success through the talents that He has given you. Pastor Rick Warren said, “Whether you are a musician or an accountant, a teacher or a cook, God gave you those abilities to serve others. You are a manager of the gifts God has given to you. They may be great or small in your eyes, but they matter to God. When God made you, He made an investment in you, and He expects a return on that investment.” I tell people all the time, God did not put you here to do nothing. God wants you to use the talents and gifts He has given you for His glory and for the benefit of others. And when He uses you, you ought to give God thanks. The main way you can begin to give God a return on His investment in you is to give your heart and life to Him today. You see, not only, did God invest in you by giving you unique talents and abilities, but He made a major investment in You when He sacrificed His only Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross so that you would not have to suffer eternal punishment for your sins. Allow me to explain: No matter how talented and gifted you are, and no matter how much you may have accomplished in life, you are still a sinner just like everyone else, and if you do not accept God’s gift of salvation through Jesus Christ, then you will spend eternity in hell. Allow me to show you how you can accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour today. 1. Accept the fact that you are a sinner, and that you have broken God’s law. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 7:20: “For there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good, and sinneth not.” Romans 3:23 reads: “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” In fact, I am the chief of sinners, so don’t think that you’re alone. 2. Accept the fact that there is a penalty for sin. The Bible states in Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death…” 3. Accept the fact that you are on the road to hell. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 10:28: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” The Bible says in Revelation 21:8: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” 4. Accept the fact that you cannot do anything to save yourself! The Bible states in Ephesians 2: 8, 9: “For by grace are ye saved through faith: and that not of yourselves: it is a gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast.” 5. Accept the fact that God loves you more than you love yourself, and that He wants to save you from hell. Jesus Christ said in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” 6. With these facts in mind, please repent of your sins, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and pray and ask Him to come into your heart and save you this very moment. The Bible states in the book of Romans 10:9, 13: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Dear friend, if you are willing to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, please pray with me this simple prayer: Heavenly Father, I realize that I am a sinner and that I have done some bad things in my life. For Jesus Christ sake, please forgive me of my sins. I now believe with all of my heart that Jesus Christ died for me, was buried, and rose again. Lord Jesus, please come into my heart and save my soul and change my life today. Amen. If you believed in your heart that Jesus Christ died on the cross, was buried, and rose again, allow me to say, congratulations on doing the most important thing in life and that is accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour! For more information to help you grow in your newfound faith in Christ, go to Gospel Light Society.com and read “What To Do After You Enter Through the Door“. Jesus Christ said in John 10:9, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” God loves you! We love you! May God bless you! And Happy Thanksgiving!

[didanawisgi]

On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs

Context:

Book Excerpt; Grossman, D., with Christensen, L., On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace, WSG Research Publications, 2004.

​Reprinted countless times. Feel free to distribute as long as you attribute Lt. Col. Dave Grossman as the author and that it is an excerpt from his book, On Combat.

On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs (From the book, On Combat, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman)

“Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always, even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for?” - William J. Bennett In a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997

“One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: “Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident.” This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another. Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million. Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep. I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin’s egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful. For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators. “Then there are the wolves,” the old war veteran said, “and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy.” Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial. “Then there are sheepdogs,” he went on, “and I’m a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.” Or, as a sign in one California law enforcement agency put it, “We intimidate those who intimidate others.” If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath–a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed. The gift of aggression

“What goes on around you… compares little with what goes on inside you.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everyone has been given a gift in life. Some people have a gift for science and some have a flair for art. And warriors have been given the gift of aggression. They would no more misuse this gift than a doctor would misuse his healing arts, but they yearn for the opportunity to use their gift to help others. These people, the ones who have been blessed with the gift of aggression and a love for others, are our sheepdogs. These are our warriors. One career police officer wrote to me about this after attending one of my Bulletproof Mind training sessions: “I want to say thank you for finally shedding some light on why it is that I can do what I do. I always knew why I did it. I love my [citizens], even the bad ones, and had a talent that I could return to my community. I just couldn’t put my finger on why I could wade through the chaos, the gore, the sadness, if given a chance try to make it all better, and walk right out the other side.” Let me expand on this old soldier’s excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial; that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids’ schools. But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid’s school. Our children are dozens of times more likely to be killed, and thousands of times more likely to be seriously injured, by school violence than by school fires, but the sheep’s only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their children is just too hard, so they choose the path of denial. The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheepdog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours. Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn’t tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, “Baa.” Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog. As Kipling said in his poem about “Tommy” the British soldier:

While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be'ind,” But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind, There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind, O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind.

The students, the victims, at Columbine High School were big, tough high school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have had the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they just had nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack, however, and SWAT teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the officers had to physically peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of them. This is how the little lambs feel about their sheepdog when the wolf is at the door. Look at what happened after September 11, 2001, when the wolf pounded hard on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt differently about their law enforcement officers and military personnel? Remember how many times you heard the word hero? Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed right along with the young ones. Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, “Thank God I wasn’t on one of those planes.” The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, “Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference.” When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into warriorhood, you want to be there. You want to be able to make a difference. While there is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, he does have one real advantage. Only one. He is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population. There was research conducted a few years ago with individuals convicted of violent crimes. These cons were in prison for serious, predatory acts of violence: assaults, murders and killing law enforcement officers. The vast majority said that they specifically targeted victims by body language: slumped walk, passive behavior and lack of awareness. They chose their victims like big cats do in Africa, when they select one out of the herd that is least able to protect itself. However, when there were cues given by potential victims that indicated they would not go easily, the cons said that they would walk away. If the cons sensed that the target was a “counter-predator,” that is, a sheepdog, they would leave him alone unless there was no other choice but to engage. One police officer told me that he rode a commuter train to work each day. One day, as was his usual, he was standing in the crowded car, dressed in blue jeans, T-shirt and jacket, holding onto a pole and reading a paperback. At one of the stops, two street toughs boarded, shouting and cursing and doing every obnoxious thing possible to intimidate the other riders. The officer continued to read his book, though he kept a watchful eye on the two punks as they strolled along the aisle making comments to female passengers, and banging shoulders with men as they passed. As they approached the officer, he lowered his novel and made eye contact with them. “You got a problem, man?” one of the IQ-challenged punks asked. “You think you’re tough, or somethin’?” the other asked, obviously offended that this one was not shirking away from them. “As a matter of fact, I am tough,” the officer said, calmly and with a steady gaze. The two looked at him for a long moment, and then without saying a word, turned and moved back down the aisle to continue their taunting of the other passengers, the sheep. Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can choose which one they want to be, and I’m proud to say that more and more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs. Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall, was the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone to alert an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he learned of the other three passenger planes that had been used as weapons, Todd dropped his phone and uttered the words, “Let’s roll,” which authorities believe was a signal to the other passengers to confront the terrorist hijackers. In one hour, a transformation occurred among the passengers–athletes, business people and parents–from sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the wolves, ultimately saving an unknown number of lives on the ground. “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?”

“There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.” - Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France

Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep, real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn’t have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision.

If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior’s path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door. For example, many officers carry their weapons in church. They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs. Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to slaughter you and your loved ones. I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, “I will never be caught without my gun in church.” I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a police officer he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas, in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down 14 people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy’s body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye and said, “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?” Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for “heads to roll” if they found out that the airbags in their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids’ school did not work. They can accept the fact that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them. Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks himself, “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if your loved ones were attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?” The warrior must cleanse denial from his thinking. Coach Bob Lindsey, a renowned law enforcement trainer, says that warriors must practice “when/then” thinking, not “if/when.” Instead of saying,“If it happens then I will take action,” the warrior says, “When it happens then I will be ready.” It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and horror when the wolf shows up. Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you are not physically prepared: You didn’t bring your gun; you didn’t train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by fear, helplessness, horror and shame at your moment of truth. Chuck Yeager, the famous test pilot and first man to fly faster than the speed of sound, says that he knew he could die. There was no denial for him. He did not allow himself the luxury of denial. This acceptance of reality can cause fear, but it is a healthy, controlled fear that will keep you alive:

“I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit.” - Brigadier General Chuck Yeager Yeager, An Autobiography

Gavin de Becker puts it like this in Fear Less, his superb post-9/11 book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our current world situation:

“..denial can be seductive, but it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by saying it isn’t so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all the more unsettling. Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some level.”

And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes. If you are a warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be “on” 24/7 for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself… “Baa.” This business of being a sheep or a sheepdog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-grass sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other. Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.”

[crazy4tank]

Everything There Is To Know About Prince Philips Custom Land Rover Hearse

New Post has been published on https://coolcarsnews.com/everything-there-is-to-know-about-prince-philips-custom-land-rover-hearse/

Everything There Is To Know About Prince Philips Custom Land Rover Hearse

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh died a little over a week back. His presence will be skipped not only in the castle yet around the United Kingdom and the remaining world. For those of you who viewed his funeral might have realized that this was not your typical Royal funeral. The casket was not carried to St George's Chapel in a standard hearse that we have seen in yesteryear.

The Fight it out wanted something that was a lot more personal. His wish had been to be carried to the Church on a modified Land Rover that he designed and transformed over the years. It has been reported which he stated:

“Just stick me at the back of a Land Rover plus drive me to Windsor. ”

Everything there is to understand the custom Land Rover Hears that Prince Philip designed himself over the years.

RELATED: Here is The Coolest Features Of The Property Rover Defender

Based on Buckingham Palace, Prince Philip decided that the Land Rover Defender TD5 130 would definitely be the vehicle that transported his coffin 18 in years past. He went on to design the particular chassis cab to their specifications.

Knight in shining armor Philip added an open-top rear section to the vehicle so that his coffin might be carried on it. He had the vehicle painted dark bronze-green as well as the original color of the car is at fact Belize green. He or she chose this color since it was used for Military Property Rovers and it was a commitment to the Military background the fact that Duke had.

The palace has actually noted that the car remained at Land Rover them selves since it was built in the year 2003. Land Rover collaborated with all the Royal household to prepare for that funeral since then. The final modifications on the vehicle were produced back in 2019.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that will :

“He was above all the practical man, who can take something very conventional, whether a machine or even indeed a great national organization, and find a way by their own ingenuity to improve it, in order to adapt it for the twentieth and the 21st century, "

He furthermore stated that the Land Rover was:

“unique and idiosyncratic figure, " perfectly sums in the kind of person Prince Philip was.

RELATED: Here's What Makes The Property Rover Defender Iconic

It is no secret which the Royal family love Property Rover but the Palace reports that the Duke had years of affinity for Property Rover. He used american presto of car for most associated with his adult life as well as granted Land Rover the Royal Warrant about 4 decades ago.

End up, that Prince Philip produced several visits to the production facilities with the queen whenever she opened the company's motor manufacturing center in Wolverhampton, England, back in 2014.

The particular Guardian documented back in 2016, that the Fight it out drove a Land Rover and chauffeured the Chief executive and first lady, Barack and Michelle Obama in order to lunch at Windsor Fortress. The Queen even followed them on the drive with the Duke.

Jaguar Land Rover’s chief executive, Thierry Bolloré said:

“We are seriously privileged to have enjoyed an extremely long and happy organization with The Duke of Edinburgh over many decades... The particular Duke was a truly outstanding man and will be greatly skipped. ”

RELATED: 2022 Land Rover Defender V8: Cost, Specifics, & Figures

Knight in shining armor Philip drove for longer compared to most people expected him in order to. He gave up his permit when he was ninety-seven years old. He was involved with a car accident in 2019. The accident remaining his Land Rover overturned, a woman who was driving the Kia, suffered a damaged wrist. The lady’s buddy only has minor slashes and the child was still left unharmed.

This particular accident happened near the Regal Sandringham Estate.

RELATED: 10 Cheapest Vehicles Driven By Rich Celebrities (5 Most Expensive)

Seems like the only cars how the Royal Family owns are usually Land Rovers but this is simply not the case.

A few of the cars that they own including official and unofficial automobiles are:

-Rolls Royce Phantom VI

-Land Rover Breakthrough

-Land Rover Freelander

-Aston Martin DB6

-Audi A8 limousine

-Jaguar XJ

-Bentley Continental Traveling Spur

Once the Queen travels to established affairs, she has a state associated with cars which include: 3 Progresses Royce’s, 3 Daimler's plus 2 Bentley's. The California king has been seen driving about her holiday home frequently in one of her perfect favorite cars which is a Property Rover Defender. Fun truth, The Queen is the just person in the country that is permitted to drive without a driving license!

One of the most famous vehicles that Prince Charles is the owner of and has been seen generating in is his Aston Martin DB6. This vehicle was given to him simply by his parents on his twenty-first birthday.

NEXT: 15 Sickest Classic Vehicles Restored By Celebs

[mhargreaves98-blog]

Digital Billboard Evaluation

For this part of my blog I shall be evaluating my process of designing a Digital Billboard. My initial ideas were to design a billboard on a passion of mine which is the Famous British Spitfire. I also have a massive passion for cars and the car industry and thought about combing these two ideas to produce a digital billboard advertisement, which advertises cars but also the history of the Spitfire. 

I brain stormed some ideas to start with and had to take multiple things into consideration. I firstly proposed that I use Jaguar Land Rover for my car manufacture because in the Second World War Spitfires were made in the Castle Bromwich Factory, not far away from me, but now they produce the new top of the range luxury cars. I thought about combing those two factors and having an advert which showcases both.

First idea that I had is the one above, not exactly that one but that is the best way of showing my idea as it has never been done before. My idea was to have half of the billboard with this archive image of the spitfires being made back in 1940, and then one the adjacent side having a picture of the same place today with the jaguars lined up, to show that the world has evolved from making the best planes in the world to making what some may say the best cars in the world. I also had the same idea but this time instead of in the factory it would be outside of the factory shown underneath. Also underneath is my final idea and that was too take the front side of a Spitfire and the rear end of an iconic Jaguar such as the new F-type and the famous E-type, this was the only idea I had which would not need to be done in the Castle Bromwich factory, however would still be a difficult task under the circumstances that I had to acquire footage of both and the time frame I had to it in.

 To do what I wanted to be as authentic as possible. I wanted the real Castle Bromwich factory where those spitfires were being made. I used multiple factual websites to give me information on the Castle Bromwich  factories such as [1]‘The Spitfire site’ and the [2]‘BirminghamPost’ With this I have the massive issue of actually being able to film there, I thought this was highly unlikely but decided to get in contact with jaguar Land Rovers Media Enquires team. I sent them this email, however the never got back to me unfortunately.

“I am contacting you regarding a certain project I have on my University Course which I’m studying at Solihull Colleges University centre. I have had to design a Digital billboard for my project and need to generate a short form of advertisement which I want to intertwine my love of cars and Spitfires. Due to my passion for cars and spitfires I feel that Jaguar Land Rover would be the ideal place for me to conduct my project. My Initial idea was that because the Spitfires were made in the Castle Bromwich Factory and that factory is still being used to this day producing the brand new Jaguars that I could incorporate both of those ideas together and have a product where half of the screen is an archive picture of the factory line with the spitfires down the one side for as far as the eye could see, and on the adjacent side a line of the new Jaguar cars being built showing that over nearly 80 years have passed and that the factory and innovation of new technology is still transforming ”.

I waited two and half weeks for them to get back to me in regards to me email but I received nothing unfortunately, which I was very much disappointment about as my idea was my passion and I couldn’t fulfil it, I did however think that It was a massive task that I had given myself, I took from it ideas and inspiration and a thought that in the future I may get another chance. I decided to have to rapidly brainstorm an idea. I wanted to stick with my idea of a Jaguar and thought of an advertisement for one of their cars which a close friend’s father owned. I prepared myself on what I was doing felt confident in this, however agreeing on a time of meet at the location of his own home did not live up to expectation. He unfortunately cancelled on me due to miss calculating dates and meetings so I was then back to square one with time slowly running out and my deadline approaching.  I was to stick with the same idea I had planned but with a different car, sadly not a jaguar but still a vehicle.

What I have learned from the first stage and the later stage of planning is that preparation is key, and when I have a project like this in the future I will plan even more ahead of time and I will have already produced a backup product if the first one doesn’t come through, as what has happened with my first project. However, I did predict that it would happen and did begin to brainstorm other ideas while waiting for Jaguar to contact me back, and then once I had not heard back from them I commenced with my back up. In the prospect of undertaking another project much like this one, I will have a backup in place from the beginning, definitely if I feel something like this could happen again. Because I had to change ideas, even from the manufacture of car, I had to change the Mise en Scene. Because I was using a luxury car such as a Jaguar I wanted the background of the video to fit the same criteria with a historic and impressive feel to match the history of Jaguar. Jaguar use large space and have a targeted audience at more upper class and an age range from 30 plus. I had to change from that idea to a car with a more urban feel. I needed to construct a background that matched the car; the lighting and colour scheme also had to match so I chose the urban environment of Birmingham.

My plan was too use a series of photos in a clockwise motion going around the vehicle to seemingly look as if it a video, and give them affect to how the lighting and weather was on that specific day. I had chosen a black fiat 500 and thought because of the urban nature of the car a multi-story car park would be perfect. I thought a skyline background would also contrast well with the car. I found a car park that would do this well and did a risk assessment on site to deem it was safe to film. I firstly positioned the car where I thought looked well and took the photos; I used a variety of low angle shots, medium shots and one or two long shots. I used the low angle shots to give the car a powerful presence, I then used the medium shot to have the main focus being the car, but with the background clearly visible to give a contrasting effect and to set the scene, which brings me onto the long shot which is too show the setting but also the main source from a distance. I was pleased with of my images that I had taken, I feel however with more time, because of the pushed deadline I felt I was rushed on what I wanted to do, but in the final product I was more than pleased with the outcome. On the way to the shoot I had found a landscape billboard that I thought this advertisement

Because I had used a mobile device for the images I decided to stay with the device for editing and choose to use an app called ‘Inshot video editor music, cut’. I found this application easy to use and professional in the outcome. It had everything I needed to produce my Digital Billboard and had everything I was familiar with on editing software which are usually considerable amounts of money but this being free easy to get your hands onto but also professional in the tools it offered me. It was easier to get to grips too than Premier Pro and the top selling editing software’s. The obvious downsides being that it would more complicated if you was filming on a DLSR and you wanted to edit on there, there would be ways but not as easy as filming on the mobile device and editing on it as well. Phones are becoming cameras and computers combined, with superb megapixel cameras and fast editing applications, it is what I thought to be an ideal tool for a project which was behind d on time and brought me up to speed.

When I was brainstorming ideas for the Fiat Billboard advertisement I looked into advertisements they have previously done. I found that Fiat in there advertisements for Fiat 500s use a variety of bright and attractive colours to draw the audience in such as reds and yellows. 

I compared this to Jaguar advertisements and the colours were a lot less vibrant, the colours of the cars were darker shades such as different shades of grey, darker shades of white and black. However they did contrast this with the Union Jack which made the Union Jack stand out. Jaguar uses the heritage of the name and brands it in that way, with examples being the poster advertisements, but also television adverts with iconic British actors. [3]They did this to entice followers of these actors to interact more with the advert which advertised the UK for its famous actors but also there automobiles. 

Fiat on the other hand tries to connect more with the younger audience, which is Fiats main target audience in the 21st Century. In their advertisements the actors they use are in the age range from around 17 -30, all aimed at the target audience. In my billboard I didn’t want an actor and want it to be focusing on the car for a short advertisement and the background and lighting.

In the editing part because It was a free application I did not have a massive amount of options, however the options I had I thought were the main factors of editing. I placed all the shots together that I had taken which then added up to 25 seconds of footage in a video; however I want it to be much shorter. I wanted it to have a large number of shots together showing the car in a montage effect so made the shots all 0.5 seconds long. Once I had done this, I dimed the lighting on all of them and gave them a grey look to emphasise the Urbaneness of the car and surroundings. The main edit is the ‘glitch’ used which I wanted to add to draw the audience in as it is an unusual edit to have in a advert and emphases the urban meaning of the advert and the car. Once I felt my billboard advert looked complete I then exported it and saved it onto my computer.

Overall I felt I had achieved a professional Digital billboard that I was proud of. I did have a large amount of problems in the time I was planning and creating my billboard, but I overcame them all and made sure at all times my billboard looked professional and I met deadlines. I will ensure on further projects my planning is made weeks in advance and that I have ideas that I can see becoming a reality.

[1] Spitfiresite.com. (2017). Castle Bromwich Spitfire and Lancaster Factory in Pictures — Historic Photographs | 1943 | 1944 | 1945 | history | Lancaster | Spitfire Mk. II | Spitfire Mk. IX | Spitfire Mk. V | Spitfire Mk. XVI. [online] Available at: http://spitfiresite.com/2012/07/castle-bromwich-spitfire-and-lancaster-factory-photos.html [Accessed 4 Dec. 2017].

[2] Post, B. (2017). A 70-year history of the Castle Bromwich assembly plant. [online] BirminghamPost. Available at: http://www.birminghampost.co.uk/business/manufacturing/70-year-history-castle-bromwich-assembly-3940359 [Accessed 4 Dec. 2017].

[3] British Villains - 2015 One Show Automobile Advertising of the Year Finalist. (2014). [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7gR7EYjcP8 [Accessed 4 Dec. 2017].

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Hybrid Dance Works That Get Intimate with the Audience

From Fabian Barba and Esteban Donoso’s slug’s garden/cultivo de babosas (© Koen Broos; all images courtesy of KDFA)

BRUSSELS — Founded in 1994, Kunstenfestivaldesarts (KDFA) is one of Europe’s leading art events. Over three weeks each May, it features close to 40 works, many of them world premieres. Though the program includes film and visual art, it’s primarily a festival of performance, specifically dance. This should be no surprise: While Belgium turns out plenty of painters, sculptors, fashion designers, and architects, the country (particularly the Flemish side) is known at least as well for choreographers as it is for chocolate and beer.

KDFA has always been a launching pad for contemporary choreographers and significant dance works. In recent years, the festival seems to be making an effort to stretch its own boundaries, offering a handful of exhibitions and interventions along with the standard dance fare. And within the dance program, more hybrid works are also being offered: projects that stand at the boundaries of dance, with one foot resting in installation or relational performance. Three such pieces this year came from Mette Edvardsen, Begüm Erciyas and Matthias Meppelink, and Fabián Barba and Esteban Donoso.

From Mette Edvardsen, Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine (© Titanne Bregentzer)

Norwegian artist Mette Edvardsen is most often referred to as a choreographer, but many of her works, particularly in the last decade, haven’t involved much dancing. Her piece for this year’s KDFA, Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine, was inspired by Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, in which a group of people each memorize the contents of a book that is going to be burned. Time has 24 performers, each of whom has committed an entire book to memory.

When you arrive at the performance, you’re greeted by a “librarian” who provides a list of available “books” (the performers are themselves referred to as “books” in the context of the work). Once you’ve made your selection, the performer is invited over to meet you. Together, you chose a spot in the room to sit, and they recite a specific section of the book. The texts on offer are in English, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, and a host of other languages, and include works as diverse as Goethe’s Faust, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Chris Kraus’s I Love Dick.

From Mette Edvardsen, Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine (© Titanne Bregentzer)

The show has been presented close to 40 times since 2010, primarily at dance festivals. For the 2017 incarnation, the performers have an added task: Over the course of each day of the performance, in between reciting the books to audience members, they are also going through a process of transcribing the memorized books to print by hand, producing new versions of existing works, rewritten through a process of learning and forgetting, incorporating all the mistakes and transformations that occur along the way into the final products.

From Mette Edvardsen, Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine (© Titanne Bregentzer)

After perusing the available catalogue, I settle on J. G. Ballard’s Crash, the 1973 novel about car-crash fetishists adapted for the screen in 1996 by David Cronenberg. I’m greeted by an amiable bespectacled British guy in his mid-30s. He shakes my hand and introduces himself (“Hi. My name’s Crash.”) We retire to one of the benches on the periphery of the room. He recites roughly 30 minutes of the book and then stops, announcing that we’ve reached the end of Chapter One.

He doesn’t immediately dismiss me; instead, I hang out to ask him some questions. He’s been working on the project for a few years and specifically selected this book (each performer gets their choice from the available texts). That choice, he says, is important. As you begin the memorization process, the book starts to live inside you. He’ll find passages floating through his head in odd moments or catch himself reciting them under his breath. The even end up wafting through his dreams — a scary thought, considering how violent Crash is.

From Mette Edvardsen, Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine (© Titanne Bregentzer)

The conversation gradually veers into our own lives: our taste in art, our jobs (he’s the financial manager of a theater company in Birmingham), and our romantic entanglements. Like many relational works, the performance uses a specific format as a way to produce an open interaction. This could also be the argument for considering it to still have one foot in the dance field: Edvardsen has choreographed a series of interactions between performers and strangers by providing a score that creates intimacy between them. This in turn produces a space for a conversation between two people that would probably never have happened otherwise.

Like Edvardsen, Turkish artist Begüm Erciyas is sometimes referred to as a choreographer, though her oeuvre has nearly always been more expansive. Her current KDFA offering, Voicing Pieces, is also a performance for a single audience member. Unlike Edvardsen’s show, the work has no additional performers. The audience member simultaneously creates and experiences the performance themselves.

The project began more than three years ago, with the idea of exploring intimacy in public. Erciyas and her collaborator, German sound artist and DJ Matthias Meppelink, first came up with the concept of creating a private space for a performance experience on the street. The result was a theatre so small it only had room for the head of a single audience member — literally a kind of tent. Fixated on the spatial concept, they began tossing around ideas for what could happen in such an environment. The answer was ultimately that each audience member would create the performance using their own voice.

From Begüm Erciyas’s Voicing Pieces (© Begüm Erciyas)

The resulting work places the viewer into a kind of bubble sculpture on stilts, where they are invited to read a text into a microphone. As they read, their voice is captured and played back to them with a variety of live manipulations applied, scattering and swirling it like light refracted from a mirror ball. The explosion of auto-tune in pop music means that many of the voices we hear on a daily basis are somewhat if not highly modulated — a fact not lost on the creators of this piece. The project works with the subject’s voice by modifying it in such a way that it becomes increasingly unrecognizable.

Voicing Piece confronts us with the sound of our own voice, something most people hate to hear. It also asks important questions about authorship. Co-implicated in the production of the work along with the two makers, we share in both its result and the responsibility for creation. The experience provides an opportunity for meditation on artistic judgement, collaborative creation, and the power of speech, ultimately offering a deeply intimate piece of performance, in the most literal sense.

Ecuador-born, Brussels-based duo Fabián Barba and Esteban Donoso trace their creative trajectories through dance and have a history of more conventional dance works. Their collaboration, slugs’ garden/cultivo de babosas, does involve performers moving in space, but the experience they offer the audience bears little relation to what we might expect of conventional choreography.

Upon arrival, you’re led into a ramshackle-looking structure whose shape hints at a circus tent. Inside, you’re greeted with a floor piled with fabrics in all different colors and textures, mingled with sheets of transparent plastic and numerous large pillows. You’re invited to sit within the mess.

Among the audience members are a group of eight performers, laying with their eyes closed, slithering very slowly through the heaps of material, their movement suggestive of slugs. As you continue to sit, the performers may gradually move towards you, making slight contact or perhaps crawling over your legs. They move, for the most part, silently. However, when one of their bodies crosses some of the plastic that’s mixed in with the fabric, it causes different sorts of crackling, translating their movement into sound.

From Fabián Barba and Esteban Donoso’s slug’s garden/cultivo de babosas (© Koen Broos)

It’s a challenging piece to critique, because of both its simplicity and its hybrid nature. Could this work properly be considered dance? Is it relational performance? Is it a form of theatre? Is it bullshit? I encountered plenty of audience members after the fact who considered it a lazy, overly simplistic excuse for people to roll around on the floor and maybe touch a stranger. But I think the core issue the creators are hitting on — exploring the sensation of touch within an interactive performance model — may be something we see more of soon.

From Fabián Barba and Esteban Donoso’s slug’s garden/cultivo de babosas (© Koen Broos)

Around 10 years ago, the first inklings of what might be called “post-internet performance” — works of dance, theater, and performance art that sought to address and perhaps mend the growing distraction and divide that digital technologies and handheld devices were introducing — began to appear. Since then, artists have started to incorporate elements of both computing and networking, such as surfing the web or exploring their own hard drive while an image of their screen is projected for an audience. We’ve also seen an opposing approach of creating performances that address how technologies designed to bring us closer (Facebook, instant messaging, etc.) actually produce distance — interactive works that ask us to rethink what it means to be face-to-face with a person during a cultural moment when 95 percent of our interactions are mediated by technology.

It may be that the next step in the evolution of this specific line of inquiry is about sensation — physical, auditory, or tactile — as we’re beginning to see with artists like Christian Bakalov, who creates guided tracks where audience members are manipulated by the performers and experience a strange combination of visual and auditory inputs, and Peter De Cupere, who creates scent installations.

KFDA’s shift from being primarily a festival of dance to one featuring hybrid works may be partially a matter of the curatorial team’s own interests, but it also shows us something about where performance is going. As the concept of “genre” becomes more unreliable and less interesting to creators, we can expect more artists to nestle themselves in between different forms — not as an act of rebellion or critique, but simply because that’s the way we need to be confronted by art in the world today.

Kunstenfestivaldesarts continues at various locations in Brussels through May 27.

The post Hybrid Dance Works That Get Intimate with the Audience appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[touristguidebuzz]

Flight Review: Garuda Indonesia First Class (777-300ER) from London to Jakarta

TO THE POINT: Flying in Garuda Indonesia’s first class was an unbelievably posh experience from start to finish. The pros: outstanding service, complimentary transportation to and from the airport and a swanky arrivals lounge in Jakarta. The cons: disappointing low-quality headphones and not-so-impressive check-in counters in LHR’s ancient Terminal 3.

“You’re doing WHAT?!” was the response I got from most people when I told them I was going to be flying around the world over the course of four days just to experience a few first class cabins. Of course, #AvGeeks and TPG readers everywhere understand why a perfectly sane person would want to do such a thing.

The idea for my RTW adventure started when Garuda Indonesia posted very attractive first-class fares last summer from London (LHR) to Jakarta (CGK). This is an airline I’ve wanted to try out for so long but it’s been hard since it doesn’t fly to North America yet. My wife wanted nothing to do with this crazy itinerary, so I emailed back and forth with a fellow travel enthusiast I know who lives in California and devised an itinerary that would allow us to fly Garuda Indonesia’s first class along with that of Lufthansa, Korean Air and Cathay Pacific. Since I live in Minnesota, we decided to meet in London and go from there. Using the tips I learned from reading this website, I was able to book the other three airlines with points and miles — thanks, TPG!

Eight flights, four days and lots of fun.

Booking 

As I mentioned before, booking this flight was done the conventional way: with cash. I found this particular fare on the UK version of Expedia.com for 2,086 British pounds (~$2,540), so I used my Chase Sapphire Reserve card in order to get 3x points for my travel purchase. At the time, the Platinum Card from American Express was not yet offering 5x points on airline bookings, otherwise I would have used that instead. Unfortunately this was also long before Garuda’s incredible 90% off promo, so I wasn’t able to take advantage of that on this trip.

Not a bad fare for 14 hours in first class, but prices have dropped even more lately.

With the intent of achieving elite status with Air France in order to try out La Premiere on the 777-300ER, I credited the flight to my Flying Blue account, which gave me 12,731 miles and helped me toward that goal immensely.

Check-In and Lounge

I arrived at Terminal 2 in London-Heathrow (LHR) from Frankfurt (FRA) around 4:00pm and my colleague met me there since he was flying in from Munich (MUC). After taking the bus to Terminal 3, we checked in at a counter that was shared by many airlines. Note that Garuda Indonesia does offer complimentary car service to the airport for first class passengers.

The transfers check-in area in Terminal 3 at LHR.

After sifting through all the screens and signs, we finally spotted the tiny Garuda logo — the friendly gentleman working at the counter seemed to be contracted by several airlines to check passengers in. The process itself was a breeze since we were only traveling with carry-on bags.

You have to look hard to find Garuda Indonesia’s check-in counter at LHR.

We were then directed to the No.1 Lounge, which is shared by many airlines in Terminal 3.

You’ll find yourself at this lounge if you’re flying one of these airlines at LHR.

The lounge had an attractive entrance with friendly staff to help check you in.

The entrance of the No.1 Lounge at LHR.

Since this lounge is shared by both business- and first-class passengers, we were directed to an area reserved just for those traveling in first which was a cozy environment with a den-like motif.

A warm and cozy atmosphere in the first-class section of the No. 1 Lounge.

We set up shop at a table so we could edit our photos and catch up on emails. The Wi-Fi here was free and quite fast in this part of the lounge.

A comfy spot to spend a few hours between flights.

The lounge featured a spa, which offered manicures, pedicures, facials and massages but for a fee, unlike similar services offered gratis in other lounges when you’re flying in first class.

A peek at the spa at the No. 1 Lounge.

Around the corner, there was a small area for little ones to play in.

This little play area is sure to keep the little tikes busy.

If the kids get bored with the play area, there was also a cinema room in the lounge that played movies and had comfortable-looking seats.

There’s even a movie room, great for passing the time at LHR.

As for the food and beverage options, I didn’t partake since I’d already indulged in a delicious lunch with a Scotch tasting at the Lufthansa First Class Terminal when I was in Frankfurt earlier that afternoon. I also wanted to be hungry enough to test out all the food on this flight. For business-class passengers in the lounge, there was a small spread of items displayed in a buffet style, while first-class passengers could choose from the buffet as well as a special made-to-order menu.

Buffet offerings at the No. 1 Lounge.

Shortly after we arrived in the lounge, our friendly Garuda representative, Luke, greeted us, handed us our boarding passes and said he would come find us when boarding was ready so he could escort us to the plane. He showed up right on time for boarding and insisted that he take our bags so we wouldn’t even have to lift a finger — talk about exceptional ground service!

With a personal escort to the plane, you’re definitely getting the first-class treatment.

We arrived at the tired-looking boarding area after a short walk.

It’s time to update Terminal 3 at LHR.

Luke escorted us right to the jetway, where we were handed off to one of the best flight crews in the skies. Overall, the lounge experience was a pleasant one. My standards are definitely lower when I’m not flying out of an airline’s hub, but with the cozy lounge and personal escort to the plane, I was impressed with the Garuda first-class experience so far.

Cabin and Seat

Garuda Indonesia operates Boeing 777-300ERs on its longest routes, and the first-class cabin has eight seats arranged in a 1-2-1 configuration. We hit the jackpot since we were the only two passengers in first class for the night — we chose seats 1A and 2A and the crew was nice enough to set up seats 1D and 1G so we could dine together. It truly felt like we were on a personal charter to Jakarta. I settled into seat 1A on the left side of the cabin.

Beautiful color scheme in Garuda First.

The two middle seats would be ideal if you were traveling as a couple, or in our case, perfect for kindling a bromance while eating dinner. What a treat it was for us to have separate seats for dining and sleeping.

Seats 1D and 1G would be ideal for couples.

With a seat width of 22 inches and 82 inches of pitch, there’s plenty of room to stretch out. What stood out to me was the cool pop of orange in the cabin and the gorgeous polished wood on the arm rests and tray tables.

Talk about a comfortable space to spend 14 hours.

After dinner, the crew transformed seat 1A into my own little bedroom. The bed was so comfortable that I almost got a full night’s sleep! It also didn’t hurt that we didn’t hit any bumps along the way and the cabin temperature was kept cool throughout the flight.

I slept soundly for almost eight hours in this cozy bed.

These seats offered a great amount of privacy with doors that completely enclosed each suite.

Enclosed suites on the 777-300ER.

The seat controls were incredibly easy to use via this HD touchpad.

I loved the technology in this suite.

There was also plenty of storage around each seat. On the aisle side of the IFE screen, there was even a place to hang your clothes after you changed into the pajamas that were provided.

There was ample storage space in the suite.

On the window side, there was another storage bin that housed the IFE remote. This was also a convenient place to store some of my smaller belongings.

I liked the extra storage space in the bin that housed the remote.

Also along the window side of the seat are enough newspapers and magazines to get you through the long-haul flight. How did Garuda know National Geographic was my favorite magazine?

Neatly placed reading material awaits you in your suite.

On the back wall of the first-class cabin, Garuda proudly displays the fact that they are now a Skytrax Five Star Airline. And after my experience on this flight, I can see why.

Very few airlines get Skytrax’s Five Star designation.

Behind the first-class cabin were two business-class cabins with 42 seats total. These seats look quite nice with 73 inches of pitch and 19 inches of width. Like the first-class seats, seats had a 180-degree recline in bed mode. (For more on Garuda’s business class on this aircraft, check out TPG Editor-in-Chief Zach Honig’s review.)

Rows 6 and 7 would be the best business class seats since they are part of a mini-cabin behind first class.

Behind business class are 268 economy seats arranged in a 3-3-3 configuration. These seats are approximately 17 inches wide with 32 inches of pitch. The economy section was pretty empty on our flight so these passengers had plenty of room to spread out as well.

It was eerily empty in economy class that night.

Overall, the suites in first class are phenomenal — a stunning combination of design, comfort and technology. Of course, it never hurts when you basically have the whole cabin to yourself.

Amenities and In-flight Entertainment

There was only one restroom for first-class passengers on this 777-300ER, which on our flight was not an issue since there were only two of us in the cabin. However I can see this possibly being a problem if the cabin was full. I think the cloth hand towels were a nice touch.

A look at the standard lav on the 777-300ER.

The lavatory was kept spotless throughout our entire 14-hour flight.

I always appreciate a spotless lav on the plane.

The soft product in lavatory is what impressed me the most — there was a full-size bottle of Loewe eau de toilette available for our use.

Might as well smell nice on a long-haul flight!

In addition, we were provided with L’Occitane cleansing cloths and mini-dental/shaving kits. As a dentist, I’m always interested in what airlines provide as far as toothbrushes and toothpaste.

High-end toiletries help distinguish this lavatory from a business-class lav.

The Loewe amenity kit actually contained items I could use, and the eau de toilette and body balm were especially nice.

The amenity kit was definitely worthy of first class.

The pajamas provided were not branded and were of pretty average quality. To me, they felt exactly like the ones that are provided in first class on British Airways. There’s a subtle Garuda Indonesia logo located on the upper left corner of the pajama top. I normally wear a small or medium in the US so, naturally, I asked for an XL and it fit perfectly.

The pajamas were fine but not quite as nice as the ones offered in Emirates or Cathay Pacific first class.

If there was one thing I was disappointed with, it was the headphones, which were some of the lowest-quality I’ve seen in any premium cabin.

C’mon Garuda, you can do better with the headphones.

The disappointing headphones were soon forgotten when my comfy slippers were presented by a flight attendant who slipped them on for you Cinderella-style to make sure they were a perfect fit.

An over-the-top slipper presentation makes you feel like royalty.

The super responsive in-flight entertainment system had plenty of features to keep you busy. I love it when you can watch live TV from 37,000 feet in the air.

You can stay busy for hours thanks to Garuda’s in-flight entertainment options.

There was a wide selection of international TV shows to keep us busy.

It’s great when you can actually watch a whole season of TV show versus random episodes.

A fine selection of movies were also at our disposal. I watched The Secret Life of Pets, since my six-year-old twin boys had been raving about it.

A wide selection of movies was available.

As boring as it sounds, sometimes I just like watching the airshow since it still amazes me that you can fly this far around the globe in just a matter of hours.

I loved watching the plane’s movement on the Garuda Indonesia airshow.

As it should be, the Wi-Fi was complimentary for all first-class passengers. I didn’t log on but thought this was indicative of how well-rounded Garuda’s first-class experience was.

Gotta love it when Wi-Fi is on the house.

With the combination of a high-end amenity kit, a modern IFE system, complimentary Wi-Fi and a super-luxe comfy slipper presentation, Garuda hits a home run in this part of the first-class experience.

Food and Beverage

The food and beverage area is another area where Garuda shines. The menu is simple but has plenty of options to choose from. Dinner is served shortly after takeoff and consists of six courses. Breakfast is served a few hours before landing — even though we landed in Jakarta around 5:00 pm — and consists of both Indonesian and Western food choices. The wine and spirits menu didn’t disappoint with two excellent Champagnes from which to choose. The white and red wine list was also impressive with a 2011 Chassagne-Montrachet leading the charge. The rest of the bar menu consisted of some of the usual suspects you would see in the air. Coffee is taken very seriously in Indonesia and Garuda’s two-page coffee menu, pictured below, exemplifies that.

You’re not seeing things… there are in fact two pages dedicated to nothing but coffee.

To start my gastronomic experience, I went with the delicious Billecart-Salmon Cuvée, a powerful Champagne that has more of a goldish hue than a glass of Dom Pérignon would have. You can find it on the ground for about $90 per bottle.

No arm twisting needed here to have a glass of Champagne.

The Champagne was served before takeoff along with warm macadamia nuts.

Always a stellar way to start a long-haul flight.

The two of us were spoiled, too, because we ended up with our own onboard chef, who made recommendations and put together a stunning multi-course dinner for the two of us.

Very few airlines have an onboard chef.

Once in the air, I started with the caviar which was served with prawn crackers, blinis (thin pancakes) and crème fraîche. This paired beautifully with a glass of Laurent-Perrier Cuvée Rosé, which you can find for about $70 per bottle on the ground. Bonus points to Garuda for the unique caviar presentation that came along with it.

I’ve never had caviar presented like this.

After the caviar course, we moved to seats 1D and 1G for the rest of the meal. We both had the outstanding 2011 Chassagne-Montrachet (~$80 per bottle on the ground) with our first two courses.

I’m normally not a white wine fan, but this was delicious.

For my appetizer, I had the smoked chicken terrine with fig relish, tomato and a crouton. And it was great.

The smoky chicken was a party in your mouth.

After that, I had the chicken noodle soup with a meatball, pak choy and spring onion. It was absolutely sensational and I could have easily had three more bowls.

The soup was an umami bomb with excellent presentation.

For my main course, it was a tough choice between so many amazing dishes, but ultimately, I decided on the roasted lamb loin with garlic and parmesan risotto. I obliged with the recommended pairing of the 2009 Château Margaux Durfort-Vivens and it was a great match.

The roasted lamb was tender and paired perfectly with a robust red.

At this point, I was starting to get pretty full, but I’m a team player so I kept going. The chef’s cheese board of blue, cheddar and camembert was a nice way to end the savory portion of the meal. Strong cheeses like this work better in the air than delicate cheeses, in my opinion.

I never have and never will pass on a cheese plate.

Mercifully, I finished with the walnut and dark chocolate tart with vanilla ice cream. The dark chocolate was an easy match with my 18-year-old Glenfiddich whisky.

The sweet end to a flawless meal.

After a solid night of sleep, it was time for breakfast. I typically skip breakfast on planes in order to maximize sleep, but that’s not really an issue on a 14-hour flight. I started with a made-to-order cappuccino.

Rise and shine with a cappuccino somewhere over Southeast Asia.

Then I moved to the Toraja roast, which was presented elegantly with my own French press.

Getting your own French press on a plane is a treat.

For my main course, I had scrambled eggs with chicken sausage and hash browns. Clearly the eggs were freshly scrambled on board to create yet another spectacular dish on this flight.

It’s worth waking up for a breakfast like this.

I haven’t flown on every international first-class product in the sky but I can say that this was the best food I have ever had on a plane. The service by our two flight attendants and onboard chef was equally outstanding.

Arrival Lounge

We had a smooth landing around 5:00pm local time in Jakarta. Since our connecting flight was with Korean Air, this is when most airlines would bid you adieu. However, that’s not Garuda Indonesia’s culture and we were met at the gate by a friendly Garuda agent along with two other representatives. The agent escorted us to the lounge while the two other reps insisted on rolling our suitcases for the 10-minute walk.

The warm ground service continued once we got to CGK.

We arrived at Garuda Indonesia’s lounge after a short, 10-minute walk.

What a bonus to get lounge access upon arrival.

The main level of the lounge is the business-class section. We hung out there for a few minutes while the agent verified that we could access the first-class section. I was happy we didn’t spend too much time on the main level as it was uncomfortably warm and muggy.

A peek at the business-class section of Garuda’s CGK lounge.

The lounge offered a buffet-style food selection along with complimentary beverages.

I was tempted to grab a samosa but was still pretty full from the flight.

After a few minutes, we were escorted downstairs to the first-class section of the lounge. Conversely, it was quite chilly down there and we both put on an extra layer of clothes. The lounge featured semi-private suites to relax and watch TV and we had our pick of spaces since we basically had the whole lounge to ourselves for the three hours we were there.

It’s an easy place to spend a few hours.

The other side of the lounge had a piano and even more seating.

It was a quiet night in the Garuda first class lounge.

There was also an area to properly sit and have a meal. We elected to just hang out in the suites since we recently had breakfast.

The dining area in the lounge.

After getting off such a long flight, I thought a shower was in order.

The shower stalls were huge and had excellent water pressure.

The shower rooms were absolutely gorgeous.

A peek at the immaculately clean shower rooms.

The toiletries were also impressive with Garuda continuing to use L’Occitane products in the showers.

Keeping it classy in the shower.

Even though I didn’t eat anything in lounge, the menu looked tempting and I almost got the nachos & cinnamon tortilla out of sheer curiosity. I couldn’t resist have a couple of Bintang’s during this short Indonesian visit. I grew a huge liking to this brand of beer when I was in Bali the month before with my wife — it’s a crisp, clean, flavorful lager that’s made to go with spicy and savory traditional Indonesian dishes.

Everybody “Bintang” tonight?

As if this arrival service wasn’t generous enough, we were later driven to our Korean Air gate by the warm Garuda Indonesia staff.

Over the top ground services at CGK airport.

Overall Impression

As far as I’m concerned, the only problem with Garuda Indonesia first class is that it isn’t available on flights to North America yet, although there have been rumors about the carrier possibly starting service between Jakarta and the US (nothing has been verified yet). The Garuda first-class product specializes in service in the sky along with exceptional personal service on the ground. If and when the airline comes to North America, I would argue that this would be the best way to get to Asia, which is saying a lot since Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Korean Air and Cathay Pacific all have fantastic products. I’m already looking forward to flying with Garuda Indonesia again.

Have you flown on Garuda? Tell us about your experience below.

All photos courtesy of the author.

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[didanawisgi]

Context:

Book Excerpt; Grossman, D., with Christensen, L., On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace, WSG Research Publications, 2004.

​Reprinted countless times. Feel free to distribute as long as you attribute Lt. Col. Dave Grossman as the author and that it is an excerpt from his book, On Combat.

On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs (From the book, On Combat, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman)

"Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always, even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for?" - William J. Bennett  In a lecture to the United States Naval Academy  November 24, 1997

“One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: “Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident.” This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another. Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million. Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep. I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin’s egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful. For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators. “Then there are the wolves,” the old war veteran said, “and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy.” Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial. “Then there are sheepdogs,” he went on, “and I’m a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.” Or, as a sign in one California law enforcement agency put it, “We intimidate those who intimidate others.” If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath--a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed. The gift of aggression

"What goes on around you... compares little with what goes on inside you." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everyone has been given a gift in life. Some people have a gift for science and some have a flair for art. And warriors have been given the gift of aggression. They would no more misuse this gift than a doctor would misuse his healing arts, but they yearn for the opportunity to use their gift to help others. These people, the ones who have been blessed with the gift of aggression and a love for others, are our sheepdogs. These are our warriors. One career police officer wrote to me about this after attending one of my Bulletproof Mind training sessions: "I want to say thank you for finally shedding some light on why it is that I can do what I do. I always knew why I did it. I love my [citizens], even the bad ones, and had a talent that I could return to my community. I just couldn’t put my finger on why I could wade through the chaos, the gore, the sadness, if given a chance try to make it all better, and walk right out the other side." Let me expand on this old soldier’s excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial; that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids’ schools. But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid’s school. Our children are dozens of times more likely to be killed, and thousands of times more likely to be seriously injured, by school violence than by school fires, but the sheep’s only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their children is just too hard, so they choose the path of denial. The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheepdog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours. Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn’t tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, “Baa.” Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog. As Kipling said in his poem about “Tommy” the British soldier:

While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind," But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind, There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind, O it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind.

The students, the victims, at Columbine High School were big, tough high school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have had the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they just had nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack, however, and SWAT teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the officers had to physically peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of them. This is how the little lambs feel about their sheepdog when the wolf is at the door. Look at what happened after September 11, 2001, when the wolf pounded hard on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt differently about their law enforcement officers and military personnel? Remember how many times you heard the word hero? Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed right along with the young ones. Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, “Thank God I wasn’t on one of those planes.” The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, “Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference.” When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into warriorhood, you want to be there. You want to be able to make a difference. While there is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, he does have one real advantage. Only one. He is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population. There was research conducted a few years ago with individuals convicted of violent crimes. These cons were in prison for serious, predatory acts of violence: assaults, murders and killing law enforcement officers. The vast majority said that they specifically targeted victims by body language: slumped walk, passive behavior and lack of awareness. They chose their victims like big cats do in Africa, when they select one out of the herd that is least able to protect itself. However, when there were cues given by potential victims that indicated they would not go easily, the cons said that they would walk away. If the cons sensed that the target was a "counter-predator," that is, a sheepdog, they would leave him alone unless there was no other choice but to engage. One police officer told me that he rode a commuter train to work each day. One day, as was his usual, he was standing in the crowded car, dressed in blue jeans, T-shirt and jacket, holding onto a pole and reading a paperback. At one of the stops, two street toughs boarded, shouting and cursing and doing every obnoxious thing possible to intimidate the other riders. The officer continued to read his book, though he kept a watchful eye on the two punks as they strolled along the aisle making comments to female passengers, and banging shoulders with men as they passed. As they approached the officer, he lowered his novel and made eye contact with them. “You got a problem, man?” one of the IQ-challenged punks asked. “You think you’re tough, or somethin’?” the other asked, obviously offended that this one was not shirking away from them. “As a matter of fact, I am tough,” the officer said, calmly and with a steady gaze. The two looked at him for a long moment, and then without saying a word, turned and moved back down the aisle to continue their taunting of the other passengers, the sheep. Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can choose which one they want to be, and I’m proud to say that more and more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs. Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall, was the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone to alert an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he learned of the other three passenger planes that had been used as weapons, Todd dropped his phone and uttered the words, “Let’s roll,” which authorities believe was a signal to the other passengers to confront the terrorist hijackers. In one hour, a transformation occurred among the passengers--athletes, business people and parents--from sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the wolves, ultimately saving an unknown number of lives on the ground. “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?”

"There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." - Edmund Burke  Reflections on the Revolution in France

Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep, real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn’t have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision.

If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior’s path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door. For example, many officers carry their weapons in church. They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs. Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to slaughter you and your loved ones. I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, “I will never be caught without my gun in church.” I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a police officer he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas, in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down 14 people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy’s body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye and said, “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?” Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for “heads to roll” if they found out that the airbags in their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids’ school did not work. They can accept the fact that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them. Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks himself, “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if your loved ones were attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?” The warrior must cleanse denial from his thinking. Coach Bob Lindsey, a renowned law enforcement trainer, says that warriors must practice “when/then” thinking, not “if/when.” Instead of saying,“If it happens then I will take action,” the warrior says, “When it happens then I will be ready.” It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and horror when the wolf shows up. Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you are not physically prepared: You didn’t bring your gun; you didn’t train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by fear, helplessness, horror and shame at your moment of truth. Chuck Yeager, the famous test pilot and first man to fly faster than the speed of sound, says that he knew he could die. There was no denial for him. He did not allow himself the luxury of denial. This acceptance of reality can cause fear, but it is a healthy, controlled fear that will keep you alive:

"I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit." - Brigadier General Chuck Yeager  Yeager, An Autobiography

Gavin de Becker puts it like this in Fear Less, his superb post-9/11 book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our current world situation:

"..denial can be seductive, but it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by saying it isn’t so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all the more unsettling. Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some level."

And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes. If you are a warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be “on” 24/7 for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself... “Baa.” This business of being a sheep or a sheepdog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-grass sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other. Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.”