Catherine O’Hara has passed. She was the most talented woman working in showbiz the past 40+ years, and if you disagree with me about that, by any measure whatsoever, I will unfriend you for life
Asked for relationship advice, Catherine had this to say
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“People always say, ‘Communicate,’ right? ‘Tell them how you’re feeling.’ We do a lot of it with jokes,” she told PEOPLE in 2024 of her marriage. “We’ll make fun of each other instead of yelling at each other. Sarcasm helps!”
Beautiful
Over fifty Nibblets were mailed this year! This marks the seventeenth consecutive year (except 2024) that we (HW & I) have artfully crafted this missive, stuffed it in an envelope and then licked, stamped and mailed it to our many friends and family who, on the evidence of feedback received from them over the years, continue to have a perplexed curiosity in our shared, annual experiences. For me, composing the Nibblet is kind of like that one amusing thing your friends will say only you can do justice to, such that at some mixed party together they cajole you into performing it again and again, and so for their sake you keep it up. Actually, that’s not quite fair; this annual Christmas letter, by now more a New Year’s letter given we seem to be mailing it later and later with each passing year, at least for me (and I suppose HW as well), has become a labor of love. Because let’s be honest, HW and I (and our pup(s)) are as ordinary an American family as there is. So to know that certain people on the mailing list make a point of asking us as early as Q4 each year: “When is my Nibblet arriving this year!” well, it tickles us pink. One year, in fact, an alarmed recipient emailed me to say her Nibblet arrived in her mailbox soaking wet, unreadable, and could she please get a replacement
New friends here invited us to a New Year’s Eve party at their house, for which the ever radiant HW had prepared a fondue to be shared by all, shown here in our house prior to departure, the dipping components packaged and co-mingled in a shallow ceramic dish ready for transport, while the crock pot containing a melange of gooey cheeses was coddled and transported ever so carefully by yours truly. Not so carefully, however, as to prevent the basket inside which the crock pot had been placed from listing a bit during the carry out to the car, causing the glass lid on the pot to shift, enough that a small portion of cheese escaped and found its way onto my pant leg. HW to the rescue: she quickly deployed a Wet Ones from the car’s console and restored my appearance to eye candy worthiness. “Ugh, men.”
Not a lick of pretension or braggadocio was evidenced by any of our fellow partygoers, never mind that many of them, I’m quite certain, had impressive professional back stories to share. Some of the people in attendance we knew from prior interactions in and around the community. Catered food appeared on tables distributed throughout rooms in the house, intermixed with items others had brought (e.g. HW’s fondue), and the drinks were flowing but to a one everybody there was chill and genuinely festive, behaving without airs. I like that. Somebody said to me, Your wife is beautiful. I liked that, too. I rechecked my pant leg, the cheese stain was completely gone
It’s not only Generative AI that tends to sycophancy, and as disturbingly good as it is creating deep fakes, it’s not too shabby at exposing shallow fakes either, if you follow me
Dear Mr. President
I trust you are well, sir
For many years I was not well. You see, at the start of your first term in office, I was diagnosed with early onset TDS. Over time the symptoms became increasingly more severe, to the point where, most recently, certain friends and colleagues have noted concerning changes in my behavior, most notably a feverishly contemptuous tone whenever I spoke and wrote about you. But that has changed, and I must say, rather suddenly, and unexpectedly. Which brings me to the purpose of my letter to you, sir: It regards your recent act of American adventurism in South America. Cynics with nothing better to do than criticize you, sir, have referred to this as another obscene example of American Jingoism, when instead, for me, it has served as a literal wake-up call, an awakening to you, sir, to your character and moral fiber. It’s as if all those years I was battling the symptoms of TDS, I was in a kind of coma, until one day, inexplicably, I sat up in bed, my eyes, which had been shut tight, were suddenly wide open! Many of my erstwhile friends and colleagues are calling this a miracle. Some of them are God-fearing, as I understand you are as well, sir, and so that analogy makes sense to me. What I’m trying to say, sir, is I’m over my TDS, I’m feeling much better now – I am, finally, able to see and think clearly again
Chief among the symptoms of a TDS pathophysiology is a long solar eclipse. Imagine yourself as the Sun, sir, and we here on earth, your subjects, needing your power and force of will, and the dark object that passes between us represents the Leftists and related Garbage. Further, imagine if you will, sir, in the case of the TDS sufferer, unlike the passing moon in an actual solar eclipse, the dark object in the afflicted mind inexplicably halts its orbit; it gets stuck, leaving the mind in the dark. That’s what happens to the TDS sufferer. What I’m trying to say, sir, is something in my mind “restarted” the orbit of that dark object, it has moved out of the way, I no longer hear the voices of your naysayers, to the point where I now feel reborn in your light
You have a gift, it is for certain, sir, reducing to digestible, bite-sized chunks Byzantine foreign policy. Mr President, what I’m getting at is, who knew, prior to Einstein, the relationship between energy – energy! – and mass was linear; indeed, who knew, prior to Jesus of Nazareth, He was the way, the truth and the light. Who knew your second term in office would feel to so many of us like The Second Coming. What I want to say to you, sir, is that I’m out of the dark now, and I love you
Some say, sir, the true measure of a man may be found in the dimension of his humility. I say the mark of a Great man may be found in his readiness to dismiss humility to the dustbin of pointless moral virtues. Men like you, sir, who enter this world with the correct morality already baked in, don’t come along very often. And thank God, we should, sir, that you just keep coming! I nearly suffered a relapse of TDS this morning when I heard the news from some garbage reporter on some garbage news network mocking your appointed Homeland Security warrior, who had concluded that the woman killed in Minneapolis was a terrorist (or worse, a nasty Leftist, as your VP later assured us she was). For a moment there, I teetered on relapse and wondered if the shooting might, in fact, have been a murder. But then – relapse avoided! – I heard you tell the truth, sir. The driver had viciously weaponized her vehicle to run over a federal warrior (who you said was recovering in the hospital – big Phew there, amirite, sir!) who, of course, defending himself and acting as he’d been trained to act, raised his sidearm and point-blankedly shot her three times, dispersing her brains into the back seat of the vehicle. As your duly appointed Secretary of War might say, sometimes in the fog of war it can be hard to see things as they really are, and I get that now
And not to dwell in the past, sir, but that website the Whitehouse put up recently, where the record was set straight on what really happened on Jan 6th, that was a longtime coming. I mean, c’mon, one would have to have their head buried in Leftist agitprop (and/or be afflicted with TDS) to not know by now that a DNA test confirmed the poop deposited that day in Nancy Pelosi’s desk drawer was in fact her own poop! She pooped it herself then claimed the perps did it, as a final, desperate act of a failed smear campaign against you. What I’m trying to say, sir, is I would have pardoned all those overly enthusiastic protesters, too, if I were you and had come to know this truth
Sir, even after the great strides your admin has made this past year to make us all great again (Bravo! btw), too many people, I’m afraid, continue to suffer from TDS. And I heard the Great Oz posit on some new and fresh podcast recently that the likely cause of TDS was a bio-engineered, loss-of-function virus leaked from a Leftist lab. Assuming that’s true, sir – and why wouldn’t we assume it to be true, after all, The Oz is a real doctor – perhaps you can find it in yourself to forgive TDS sufferers, for they know not what they do, sir. Some modern sufferers claim your hands don’t look so good, sir. “Well,” they say, “if the unsightly problem arose from all the hand-shaking the POTUS supposedly does,” as your pretty spokesmodel clearly explained on TV it had, “then the problem should be confined to his right hand,” they said – “gotchya, pretty girl!” Stupid Lefties, they don’t understand your greatness knows no bounds, sir; they should know your many gifts include being ambidextrous, as have been so many other great world leaders (less great than you, sir, but still). Obviously, you can shake with either hand!
World order, I now understand, sir, doesn’t emerge from the collective goodwill or “best practices” of namby-pamby, sissy world leaders. It isn’t something stumbled into. I mean, did the embarrassing failures of negotiators revealed in WikiLeaks mean nothing to the people of this country? (And btw, would you please pardon Assange). No! The new hemispheric order is going to have to be the product of the force of a single man’s will. You are that Man, sir. Have not your most ardent detractors, as I once was, read and understood the parable of John Galt? Their envy of you and your achievements, sir, is masqueraded as contempt for you. Sad!
People used to say the President “runs” the country. Laughable! libertarians chortled. Until you came along. Now even libertarians understand you really do run this soon-to-be-great-again country, sir, and all that prattle about “sovereignty of the individual” is only that. What this country has so badly needed for a very long time is an Übermensch, like you, sir. As a recovering TDS survivor, I get that now
And not only that, evidently, you’ve enough hours left in your day to run another country! And possibly even more (looking at you Greenland nyuk nyuk). Sir, what I want to leave you with is this: If your unequaled prowess as a world leader, combined with the sheer force of your moral will, sticking the landing as it were, hasn’t by now cured the afflicted of their TDS, well, I’m not sure what I can say about that, other than you are their (and my) Dear Leader, sir, not their psychiatrist!
My regards to the first lady, sir
In propitiation,
-Russ
The night before he departed he was inside his own head, seated in that high-back swivel desk chair in his office, hands unfolded and staring into space, feeling betrayed by his inner voice that would not let the past go. Rumination drowns out equanimity and Russ knew it. And yet he also knew the inner voice, and, for that matter, his outer voice, came unbidden. Rumination is not talking to yourself so much as it is an illness. If equanimity was the experiential goal of a human life then the brain would have to be trained to want it. Then, unexpectedly, another thought budded in Russ’ brain, a memory, maybe, of something someone had said: Nothing is probable without it first being possible. Possibly that person was Russ’ dad, so probably it was. Russ himself would not ever become a dad although as the son of one he wanted to do what he could to keep dad’s spirits high and reduce, though probably not avoid entirely, the bad feelings that sometimes came between them that could, if left unresolved, accumulate like small cosmetic insults to a cherished car which if put off too long can add up, sneak up on you, until one day you feel overwhelmed by the scale of disrepair leading to an irretrievable depreciation of affection for that something you once valued.
It was early September and years since Russ had returned home to visit with dad, and for sure mom as well, though it was dad who’d suggested he come north to get out of the heat and maybe enjoy a day of kayaking together. He’d had both Eddyline’s repainted, new seals installed on the hatches, the cockpit seats replaced, and he’d personally re-cabled both boats bow to stern and purchased two new carbon fiber paddles. The boats were now sturdy enough for a Lake Superior paddle that Dad’d been scouting for some time. What do you say, Russ, Dad had asked, all you have to do is show up.
Russ merged onto Interstate 35 in north Texas where he and Jill, his wife, lived and worked and he stayed on it pretty much the whole way to Wisconsin where mom and dad lived – the landscape along the route was devoid of topography having been scraped flat by ice, though that’s not the way dad saw it, through Kansas City, Des Moines, then veering northeast slightly up through Minneapolis, on to Duluth and then east on Hwy 2 to Ironwood where dad and mom had retired wanting to remain in Wisconsin, yes, though moving as far away as practical from the black blight of the city of Milwaukee that had done well by both of them for all their working years but anymore as far as dad was concerned – and possibly mom as well, although it was harder to tell from just talking on the phone once a week with her as he and Jill had striven to do ever since moving away from Wisconsin – had become a filthy crime-ridden mess; take for example the blacks who called in phony three-alarm fires in order to empty the firehouse so they could loot it. Dad, blacks? Really? It’s gotten worse down there since you left, Russ, a lot worse. Dad had a way with words the way pastor did delivering homilies from the lectern at the Lake of the Woods Lutheran church that he and mom religiously attended, and his metaphors were unsurprisingly drawn from the natural world which he was fond of so long as he felt he had a measure of dominion over it. ‘You can’t let nature run wild!’ he’d once parroted. Russ might have inherited his own love of nature from dad though his was more of an unconditional love. When Russ was a young boy, a budding nine year old, standing inside the house peering out the front screen door studying dad as he edged the lawn to keep it in bounds, or shaping the adjacent Boxwoods into globes with the Sunbeam hedge trimmer, the orange extension cord snaked between his work boots and his mouth clamped around a saliva-soaked cigar, Russ felt he didn’t want to grow up and ever try to tame the natural world like that. True, the lawn and the Boxwoods were no more natural than Rusty the family terrier was wild, but these were living things worthy of their own flourish. Surely they were. To Russ they were.
Russ turned into the driveway at mom and dad’s modest lake home at about 6:30 PM, came to a stop and cut the engine. Early evening light slanted through the canopy of birch and evergreen trees surrounding the property. Against the advice of the builder dad had insisted on a blacktop driveway which, this time of year, had a thin veneer of yellow-orange pine duff on it so neatly demarcated by the edged green lawn on either side it appeared to have been dusted by hand. The few select trees that’d survived clear-cut when the property was developed had been appropriately bottom-limbed, a proud cord of pine wood split into sixteen inch quarters had been neatly cross-stacked near the garage, the concrete path to the front door had been recently swept and power-washed. A pretty path made of non-native stones wound along the side of the house ending just above the steps that dad had fashioned of treated 4x4s and knocked into the slope, which descended gently to the pier on the lake. Russ recalled the day, must’ve been ten years ago now, on the phone with dad – he was peeved that he’d needed to get a variance from the DNR just to knock in three stupid steps on his own property. Maybe they want to protect the natural habitat of the waterfront, dad? Protect it from what? I don’t know, from destruction? But I constructed those steps, I improved the shore, dad shot back, a voice imprinted with indignation not readily disguised on a phone call – I didn’t destruct anything. Russ said, I’m not defending their decision, Dad, just trying to understand their motivation. He stepped out of his car now, he was stiff and sore from the long drive. He was looking to the lake shore where he spotted dad’s 16′ Alumacraft covered with a spotless canvas stretched tight over the length of the boat with a custom-stitched extension that covered the Evinrude outboard as well; then he got caught up in a stare, the distant boat bobbing hypnotically on the rippled lake, now and then gently bumping against the pier. A sand fly lighted on his neck. He instinctively swatted it and watched it fall into a puddle of pine duff, where it writhed for a second, then died. Nobody appeared to be home.
Russ steadied himself against the man door into the garage and peered through the window. There were the kayaks, each one upside down on two sawhorses. A light had been left on in the far corner so he could make out the Workmate with a Milwaukee power drill on it with the chamois attachment that dad had used to buff out those gleaming white hulls. The garage floor was shiny, gray, probably dad had it repainted recently. Unsurprisingly, everything in dad’s garage was in its place, always, the Shop Vac on casters at the ready, zero entropy.
Perfunctory hugs all around when mom and dad arrived back home. In the only guest bedroom Russ heaved his travel bag onto the foot of the bed. It left a crater in the bedspread, the surface wave propagated to the headboard disturbing three ornamental pillows mom had arranged in a chevron pattern and set lightly atop the sleeping pillows. Diagonal vacuum tracks were impressed in the plush carpet, not a spec of visible dust on the nightstand, the dresser, or the deep windowsill. A pleated shade was half drawn on the only sliding window, which was closed tight and locked. Russ sat on the bed, elbows on his knees he cupped his head in his hands and stared at the floor. He wanted the long drive to be worth it. He pulled his phone from a coat pocket and texted Jill that he’d arrived safely, then added: so far so good wit dad
The three of them enjoyed a late supper around the table, mom made spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread. Or might there now be four around the table after come lord Jesus be our guest was intoned with hands in laps. Russ mused, then he let it go because, equanimity Russ, remember? After supper, dishes were hand-washed and put away, the cord wrapped three times around the toaster, secured, and a custom-knitted thingy mom had had for over thirty years was placed over the toaster and then it was stowed in its proper place in a lower cabinet until next time. They played a few rounds of Skip-Bo and then turned in for the night. Dad said to Russ we’ll need to be up early and leaving the driveway to get to Chequamegon Bay before 10:00 am. He estimated the paddle might take them six hours to complete, including a stop for a sack lunch at a spectacular viewpoint on Madeline Island, if all went as he’d planned, that is.
So much for escaping the heat of the south. It was eighty-nine degrees at 9:30 in the morning where they stood on the shore of Chequamegon Bay, September 4th. The wind had picked up, though it was out of the northeast so they would enjoy following seas on the paddle back from the Island. Dad and Russ slithered into their cockpits, secured their spray skirts, tapped their paddles together for good fortune and pushed off. Russ struggled, but not awfully, to keep up with dad who had the benefit of many paddles behind him this season. About an hour and a half later they approached the shore of Madeline Island, not the spot dad had in mind for lunch but with an unexpectedly tempestuous sky taking on a suspicious orange-gray color, and rising waves all around dad thought it wise to make for an overhung, hollowed-out notch in the granite rocks instead, a shelter from the weather, to wait out what appeared to be a freak storm he was sure would pass soon. The notch was small, but both kayaks would fit if their approach was right and it was overhung in such a way as to permit both of them to get out of the worst of the rain that had by now drenched them. Dad entered first and then a powerful wave surge threw him hard against the rear granite wall. Russ entered next, battling one wave pulse after another cresting the beam of his boat – it took all he had to stay upright and then he too was swooshed inside the notch and pinned hard against dad’s boat. Sounds of wind and waves bellowed inside the notch and then it seemed the wind changed again and like bath toys in a washing machine they were battered relentlessly. Russ saw dad’s spray skirt had torn, his cockpit was flooding. Dad used his paddle to push against the granite wall, to free them, but it proved futile, his paddle snapped in two. Water gushed into Dad’s mouth as he shouted to Russ we need to get out of here, now! This bad idea! We’ll drowned! Then dad’s kayak heaved again and listed hard, his head slammed up against the rocks. Russ! dad shouted at him with all he had left, I’m not going to make it out of here, son, save yourself, go now! And with that dad’s kayak capsized entirely, its gleaming white hull face up in the water. Russ had witnessed his dad take his last breath. With all he had left in him, in the brief seconds between wave pulses Russ pushed against the hull of dad’s boat upside down and still wedged hard against the rocks, first with his hands to gain some separation, then with his paddle he somehow manged to free himself entirely and point his kayak toward the opening in the notch and then an adrenaline-addled Russ was back in the fury of open water, free of dad’s grave. Wind-battered and bobbing chaotically in high waves Russ swiveled his head to look back but there no was sign of dad or his kayak. In fact he couldn’t make out the notch at all, shrouded now by a gauze of rain and fog. As if it didn’t exist. Dad was right, to save himself Russ had get out of there less it become his grave too, and nothing but grief ever came from arguing with dad.
Just a note to say we’re traveling to a foreign land for the holiday weekend and my sister will be joining us. She’s flying here from far away and without getting into any detail no one I can think of presently is more deserving of a full week of focused R&R. When we return home I hope to resume story telling here as usual. I know that lately it’s been a dry spell in that regard but I would write more and more often if you paid me. I’d even write what you want me to write if you paid me. Short of that I will write when and what I want and never will I so much as surface a tip jar. The glam Nest we’re staying at (Chloe as well) is very near here
Enjoy your thanksgiving wherever it finds you
The not so great Borgification of the Internet. Roughly three decades ago I was an active participant on an incipient subweb. To think and write and breathe and fuck up with only your conspecifics to praise and criticize your thought represented a kind of baptism in fire for the brain except the purpose wasn’t to cleanse the brain but to plunge it into learning. This was very much analogous to a kindergarten recess without any adult supervision whatsoever. Anarchic interactions among mates in real time. The Internet arrived without an instruction manual. Like a new phone today. Unbox it, boot it, show your face, find a network. That’s it. You’re connected, you’re in, you’re enthralled, and there is no way out. The greatest trial of the capitalists, conceived and executed by them on a planet-wide cohort of the unwary met its endpoint. If you were on the control arm, a human alive today anywhere on this planet and not connected then extinction is all you have to look forward to. Be it due to old age or deep impoverishment or extreme remoteness, you’re done. E.g. the dinosaurs were not on the Internet and only a dim estimate of their story remains. ~1.2 billion humans alive right now will never, ever send a text, a tweet, or money. The disconnected have no money, have no use for money. What the jungle giveth the jungle taketh. They will never be surveilled or recorded in a database or experience that one life hack or download the great works or stream insipid photos of grandchildren on a connected device. The connected may never learn the ways of the disconnected who know nothing of this artificial intelligence born of sand. It is profoundly unsettling for me to know I exist on the crust of an otherwise molten rock along with the disconnected, hurtling away from other planetary bodies until one day the night sky will be devoid of any visible light whatsoever, the end of the Steliferous Era. I want to ask the disconnected now if they believe there is really only one person in existence in the universe where each of us is but one tiny insignificant part of the whole and if so what does that even mean to them. What I’m saying is time is running out.
The house speaker has the arrangement backwards. Mr Johnson is the employee. We (TheAmericanPpl™) are the employer. He works for Us. We pay his salary. Dig? We NoKingers are taxpayers, Johnson. If you’d step outside your own head and look around you’d soon find that the protesters you so cavalierly dismissed as “un-American” are themselves GovCo employees (just like you!), war veterans, investors in T-Bills, IBonds, TIPS, stocks of military sub-contractors etcetera etcetera. Collectively not only are very many of these protesters paying your salary – never more reluctantly so – these hard-working Americans as you so cynically refer to them when it suits your purpose are directly invested in America. And you have the temerity to refer to them as “un-American?” You ungrateful sniveling little toady. Who do you think you could be? If I were king I’d fire your ass in a hot second. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. It used to be said, mostly by Libertarians but old-fashioned, small-government, abolish-the-income-tax republicans as well, that it was government employees who were parasites on capitalism and thus they were the real “un-Americans.” How dare you try and reverse the shibboleth. You want to see a real un-American, Johnson, look in the mirror.
Mr Johnson is a lawyer; according to his wiki page he was especially adept at defending religious liberties. How quaint. Before creeping into congress he once defended a group that wanted tax incentives to build a Noah’s Ark amusement park (on a property adjacent to the owner’s Creation Museum) against the loud objections of local taxpayers who didn’t want to pay for this nonsense. Johnson won the case, on a legal technicality, but you have to ask yourself why he would align himself with the cause of religious wingnuts. Unless, maybe, he’s come to believe that these wingnuts are the real Americans, and that it’s the disbelievers (and/or believers in the wrong fantasy) who are the un-Americans, and the best way to rid the country of these un-Americans is to out them, turn real Americans against them, and in this way start a holy war.
Just thinking out loud here.
In 1942 Japanese soldiers haggard but undaunted advanced night and day through a jungle of fog and rain and mud over the Owen-Stanley Mountains of New Guinea, then Australian territory, toward Port Moseby under order to secure the island and thereby create a tactical separation between Australia and America. Possibly no theater in WWII anywhere else in the world at the time featured more man on man savagery than what occurred on the island of New Guinea[1]. The supreme commander in the A-P theater along with his Australian counterpart, displeased with the progress of the Allied forces, would sack three high level troop commanders in the land campaign although historians have since shown that this indicated a gross misunderstanding of the lethal precision of the actual fighting going on beneath the jungle canopy. Inside the war room waving a pointer at operational maps on which the collective strength (or lack of it) of real human beings is belied by color-coded dots and arrows on what amounts to a game-board. This kind of central command style had worked variably well in other WWII campaigns, but not in New Guinea, not in 1942. From a God’s eye point of view were one to part the canopy and look closely one would have witnessed a horror, unprecedented even in war, that drove some soldiers, actual boots-on-the-ground guys, into irretrievable madness.
The Australian war correspondent Osmar White tells the story of one Lick Lick, a native of New Guinea who along with his fellow natives had been enlisted by the Australians in the fight against the Japanese invaders. Described as no taller than 4’9″ Mr. Lick Lick, one day while out on patrol, was late to return to the rendezvous point carrying a large sack made from indigenous material bulging with thirteen heads. The heads of Japanese soldiers. Prior to the war the native people of New Guinea, so-called Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, had been described as kind, warm-hearted and always welcoming toward visitors to their island. But then the Japanese invaded and routinely killed them for practice. Japanese soldiers were exemplars of lethality, capturing natives then tying them to a tree whereby a troop commander would run ’em through repeatedly so as to demonstrate to the rank and file the proper way to thoroughly kill a man, the enemy. This made the native people mad. Though of course the real enemy of the Japanese were the Allied troops, Australian militias and, somewhat later, Americans. So the angry natives aligned themselves with the Allied force, and were crucial in helping the Australians especially navigate the dense jungles and high mountains and were even enlisted in the fighting and killing of the Japanese. At the rendezvous point holding tight his sack of heads, Mr. Lick Lick asked for a brief leave of absence which he was granted. In a nearby village one by one he removed the heads from his sack and displayed them on posts for all to see. Troop commanders admonished him for his excess savagery of the dead but then Lick Lick told the commanders that the soldiers weren’t dead, only injured, so I finished ’em off first. Sometimes, lacking a proper bush knife for beheading, other native fighters like Lick Lick would instead take a dead Japanese soldier and find a sharp spine protruding from a tree trunk and skewer the dead man through the neck and then spin the body until it detached from the head. They’d learned from the invaders how to thoroughly kill a man.
Some eighty-three years later, in America, an inept dry drunk would address a stoic assembly of generals and admirals posturing to lecture them on the real meaning of Lethality and the Warrior Ethos. The 4’9″ tall Lick Lick was heard hooting from his grave.
