Hero

VERSE 1

Screaming into a phone doesn’t make you a hero

Saying otherwise means your IQ is a solid zero

Any coward can offend from miles away

Any moron can change his face and name

But in order to have a solid steel spinal cord

You’ve got to be prepared for a fistfight war

You hide behind lawyers and sympathetic judges

And wonder why the public holds violent grudges

CHORUS 1

I see no bravery among you criminals

Your valor is at the very best minimal

Lock your asses up and throw away the key

Even heroes know when it’s time to flee

VERSE 2

Blasting a sound cannon at a crowd of protesters

Ensures your status as the corporate protectors

You represent the evil you’re trying to fight

You make the streets dangerous to walk at night

The irony is killing me like a rubber bullet

We’re buried underneath mountains of bullshit

Karma is a bitch and she’ll smack you like a pimp

Until your Burger King body is broken and limp

CHORUS 1

I see no bravery among you criminals

Your valor is at the very best minimal

Lock your asses up and throw away the key

Even heroes know when it’s time to flee

VERSE 3

It’s the same old shit, but on a different day

The power hungry don’t know when to pay

They don’t know when to shut their mouths

They hide from justice like a frightened mouse

Prison is a bitch and so are you, my friend

You’ll one day know what it’s like to bend

If it takes forever, we’ll fight forever

We’ll bring the thunder and stormy weather

CHORUS 2

I see no bravery among you thieves

I see no end for the ones who greave

You steal life like a home invader

And turn the innocent into gladiators

You want a battle? Here’s a war

Justice and honor are what we fight for

We don’t need machineguns and tanks

To our strongest voices, we give our thanks

Take It Back

***TAKE IT BACK***

There seem to be a lot of stories in the news lately about environmental disasters, the most prominent one being about the North Dakota pipeline that the Standing Rock Indian Nation is protesting. Not only would the pipeline poison their water supply, but it would desecrate sacred burial sites. During these protests, the oil company’s private security beat the protesters and unleashed attack dogs on them. And still the Indian Nation remains stronger than ever. Instead of inserting my own political dialogue into this matter, I’m going to have Pink Floyd do it for me with their 1994 hit “Take It Back”. And no, it’s not about an overly emotional chick. It’s about Mother Nature, an even more emotional chick with the power of geomancy. Look the song up on You Tube. Or you can read these lyrics, one of the two.

VERSE 1

Her love rains down on me as easy as the breeze

I listen to her breathing it, sounds like the waves on the sea

I was thinking all about her, burning with rage and desire

We were spinning into darkness, the earth was on fire

CHORUS

She could take it back, she might take it back some day

VERSE 2

So I spy on her, I lie to her, I make promises I cannot keep

Then I hear her laughter rising, rising from the deep

And I make her prove her love for me, I take all that I can take

And I push her to the limit to see if she will break

CHORUS

She might take it back, she could take it back some day

VERSE 3

Now I have seen the warnings, screaming from all sides

It's easy to ignore them and God knows I've tried

All of this temptation, it turned my faith to lies

Until I couldn't see the danger or hear the rising tide

CHORUS X3

She can take it back, she will take it back some day

***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTESTS AND COMPANY***

Once again, the WSS admins use a prompt suggestion of mine (Eagle Eye) and I am eternally grateful. But before I can do my official happy dance, I have to write “Emoticon Artist”, which goes like this:

CHARACTERS:

Colin McCain, Authoritative Dungeon Master

Cody Knox, D&D Warrior

Brenda Christopher, D&D Rogue

Beth Bradshaw, D&D Cleric and Texter

PROMPT CONFORMITY: The D&D characters are searching for a magical gem known as The Eagle Eye of Aragon.

SYNOPSIS: An exciting game of Dungeons & Dragons is taking place in Colin’s kitchen and involves the three players trying to defeat a metallic dragon at a robotic junkyard. Just when the climax of the battle is drawing near, Beth’s phone goes off and she gets in a text-messaging war with one of her relatives. As the Dungeon Master, Colin strictly forbids text messaging and/or crying at his table, but Beth isn’t so easy to comply. This angers Colin to where he dives across the table in an attempt to pry the phone away from Beth while Cody and Brenda are restraining him.

***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***

If Cain Gutwrench wasn’t scary enough for you, hopefully G-Pac will be. No, G-Pac doesn’t have much fighting experience beyond barroom brawls, but he’s a Dark Fantasy Warrior anyways due to his uniqueness. It’s not every day you see a hooded monk in a clown mask drumming away to a heavy metal tune. You kind of see that with Slipknot’s Shawn Crahan, but I don’t think Mr. Crahan would appreciate me using his likeness in Demon Axe. Thus, we have G-Pac. Before you ask, yes, G-Pac was named after me, Garrison Kelly, even though I don’t play the drums.

***DEMON AXE***

Now that we’re on the topic of Demon Axe, the torment is far from over for Daniel Mercer a.k.a. the Lord of the Pit. It’s bad enough Detective Shawn Henry asks him a bunch of stupid questions for the sake of fulfilling his “bureaucratic nightmare”. Now he gets a visit in the night from Raven Triscloud, an elf warrior who tries to warn Daniel that Roger Zee is far from finished with him. Of course, being the drugged out dunderhead that he is, Daniel thinks that Raven is full of crap and is just another traumatic hallucination. Is she?

***FACE BOOK STATUS OF THE DAY***

“If you ever get bitten by the world travel bug, it won’t be because you used to play Final Fight 2 for the Super Nintendo. It doesn’t matter what country Haggar, Carlos, and Maki do all of their street fighting in, because the stages look just as ghettoized and impoverished as the first level of the original Final Fight. For Christ’s sake, Holland looks like it had a nuclear bomb dropped on it. If the Mad Gear gang has the funds to travel overseas, you’d think they could get some nicer digs. Then again, getting a spinning piledriver from the top of Big Ben isn’t appealing no matter what your gang’s budget is.”

-Me-

"Open Season" by CJ Box

BOOK TITLE: Open Season

AUTHOR: CJ Box

YEAR: 2001

GENRE: Fiction

SUBGENRE: Crime Thriller

GRADE: Pass

As the new Game Warden for Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, Joe Pickett hasn’t made a whole lot of friends. Whenever he needs to write a ticket or make an arrest, he does it without a second thought. It wasn’t anything personal until a former suspect of his wound up dead in a woodpile in his backyard. Three other hunters ended up dead in what would appear to be an open and shut case. Joe wasn’t satisfied with such an easy ending. He looked further into this case and uncovered a conspiracy involving an endangered species and plans to build an oil pipeline from Wyoming to California. The danger even goes deep enough to involve his family, the same family he vowed to protect throughout all of this.

Joe Pickett is far from a perfect character, which is actually a compliment and not an insult. As readers, we identify more with flawed characters than we do Gary-Stu’s. Joe tries to be the by-the-books, no-nonsense good guy, but occasionally he makes mistakes that cost him dearly. For example, in the opening moments of the book, Ote Keeley, the dead suspect I mentioned earlier, steals Joe’s gun right out from under his nose and could have killed him right there. Instead of dying, Joe took a huge hit to his pride. He constantly berates himself for not being a good enough husband to his wife or a father to his children. He fears that one of these blunders could cost him his entire family. And then what? What would he do with himself then?

Joe’s moral compass is one of the things that make this novel such a fascinating read. The other thing of course is how the mystery and the action is put together. Everybody knows that a happy ending is almost always on the horizon. The question then becomes, how? With all of these obstacles and unanswered questions in Joe Pickett’s way, how exactly does he go through hell and earn the ending he so rightly deserves? If I revealed the how’s, then I would need to post a spoiler alert. All you need to know is that Joe Pickett is the standup guy he so desperately wants to be. He puts his family first and himself second. With that kind of mentality, do you honestly believe he would settle for anything less than a shut case?

And then of course, there’s the political side to CJ Box’s Joe Pickett series, to which Open Season is the first one. As a hardcore liberal, commonsense would dictate that I would be irritated with the conservative views shown on this book. But I’m not. In fact, I don’t mind at all. As long as CJ Box continues to put out instant classic after instant classic, I’ll continue to read them like the devoted fan I am. Did I also mention that I’m a liberal who listens to Five Finger Death Punch and an atheist who listens to Skillet? The point I’m trying to make is that politics don’t dictate enjoyment. CJ Box sounds like a conservative, but he’s not overly preachy when it comes to his views. Open Season is not the first CJ Box book I’ve read and it sure as hell won’t be the last.

All in all, not only did CJ Box kick down the doors with his first Joe Pickett novel, but he also won so many awards and all of those victories were completely justified. This novel is fast-paced, emotional, and well-orchestrated. What more could you possibly want out of a mystery novel than that?