Answers
Shortly after being assigned to a new base, a Lieutenant and his wife were invited to the Colonel's home for an evening of bridge. The Lieutenant was partnered with the Colonel's wife and vice versa.
After many hands, the Lieutenant excused himself to use the toilet, but accidentally left the door ajar. When the sound of splashing echoed through the family room, his wife was greatly embarrassed and attempted to apologize.
The Colonel's wife smiled demurely, "Don't worry about it; this is the first time all evening that I've been able to tell what he has in his hand
I promise I was only helping him find the soap, pmsl
Another great one hun
Have a star
xxxxxxxxxx
the 911 terrorsists meeting. Released today by Al-Jazeera.
Thu Sep 7, 3:11 PM ET
CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Jazeera broadcast Thursday what it called a previously unshown video in which al-Qaida chief
Osama bin Laden is seen meeting with some of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The station did not say how it obtained the video, which was produced by As-Sahab, al-Qaida's media branch.
The video showed bin Laden sitting with his former lieutenant Mohammed Atef and Ramzi Binalshibh, another suspected planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings.
Atef, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri, was killed by a U.S. airstrike in
Afghanistan in 2001. Binalshibh was captured four years ago in Pakistan and is in U.S. custody, and this week
President Bush announced plans to put him on military trial.
In the video, bin Laden was wearing a dark robe and white headgear walking in a mountainous area. He smiled as he greeted several men, which the tape said were Sept. 11 hijackers.
shirley e - do you really think Pres. Bush controls al jazeera or As-Sahab, al-Qaida's media branch?
Pretty far stretch. The current administration may release other info that may help the Republican party but I do not believe this is one of those things!
Justsyd - orchestrated by whom? Again if you believe Pres. Bush controls al jezeera or al queda, I have some swamp land I want to sell you!
fasten your searbelt new tape, big attack comming
"WE'RE going through!" The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We can't make it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said the Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're going through!" The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" he shouted. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" shouted the Commander. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. "The Old Man'll get us through," they said to one another. "The Old Man ain't afraid of hell!" . . .
"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you driving so fast for?"
"Hmm?" said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. "You were up to fifty-five," she said. "You know I don't like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five." Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. "You're tensed up again," said Mrs. Mitty. "It's one of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look you over."
Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her hair done. "Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having my hair done," she said. "I don't need overshoes," said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. "We've been all through that," she said, getting out of the car. "You're not a young man any longer." He raced the engine a little. "Why don't you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?" Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again. "Pick it up, brother!" snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot.
. . . "It's the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan," said the pretty nurse. "Yes?" said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. "Who has the case?" "Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over." A door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard. "Hello, Mitty," he said. `'We're having the devil's own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you'd take a look at him." "Glad to," said Mitty.
In the operating room there were whispered introductions: "Dr. Remington, Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty." "I've read your book on streptothricosis," said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. "A brilliant performance, sir." "Thank you," said Walter Mitty. "Didn't know you were in the States, Mitty," grumbled Remington. "Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary." "You are very kind," said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. "The new anesthetizer is giving away!" shouted an intern. "There is no one in the East who knows how to fix it!" "Quiet, man!" said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep . He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials. "Give me a fountain pen!" he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place. "That will hold for ten minutes," he said. "Get on with the operation. A nurse hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale. "Coreopsis has set in," said Renshaw nervously. "If you would take over, Mitty?" Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great specialists. "If you wish," he said. They slipped a white gown on him, he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining . . .
"Back it up, Mac!! Look out for that Buick!" Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. "Wrong lane, Mac," said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. "Gee. Yeh," muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked "Exit Only." "Leave her sit there," said the attendant. "I'll put her away." Mitty got out of the car. "Hey, better leave the key." "Oh," said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.
They're so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street; they think they know everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off, outside New Milford, and he had got them wound around the axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The next time, he thought, I'll wear my right arm in a sling; they won't grin at me then. I'll have my right arm in a sling and they'll see I couldn't possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked at the slush on the sidewalk. "Overshoes," he said to himself, and he began looking for a shoe store.
When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him, twice before they set out from their house for Waterbury. In a way he hated these weekly trips to town--he was always getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, Squibb's, razor blades? No. Tooth paste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, Carborundum, initiative and referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it. "Where's the what's-its- name?" she would ask. "Don't tell me you forgot the what's-its-name." A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury trial.
. . . "Perhaps this will refresh your memory." The District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. "Have you ever seen this before?'' Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. "This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80," ho said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The Judge rapped for order. "You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?" said the District Attorney, insinuatingly. "Objection!" shouted Mitty's attorney. "We have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July." Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. "With any known make of gun," he said evenly, "I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand." Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman's scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty's arms. The District Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. "You miserable cur!" . . .
"Puppy biscuit," said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed. "He said 'Puppy biscuit,'" she said to her companion. "That man said 'Puppy biscuit' to himself." Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A. & P., not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. "I want some biscuit for small, young dogs," he said to the clerk. "Any special brand, sir?" The greatest pistol shot in the world thought a moment. "It says 'Puppies Bark for It' on the box," said Walter Mitty.
His wife would be through at the hairdresser's in fifteen minutes' Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn't like to get to the hotel first, she would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair. "Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?" Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.
. . . "The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir," said the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousled hair. "Get him to bed," he said wearily, "with the others. I'll fly alone." "But you can't, sir," said the sergeant anxiously. "It takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman's circus is between here and Saulier." "Somebody's got to get that ammunition dump," said Mitty. "I'm going over. Spot of brandy?" He poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and splinters flew through the room. "A bit of a near thing," said Captain Mitty carelessly. 'The box barrage is closing in," said the sergeant. "We only live once, Sergeant," said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. "Or do we?" He poured another brandy and tossed it off. "I never see a man could hold his brandy like you, sir," said the sergeant. "Begging your pardon, sir." Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. "It's forty kilometers through hell, sir," said the sergeant. Mitty finished one last brandy. "After all," he said softly, "what isn't?" The pounding of the cannon increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming "Aupres de Ma Blonde." He turned and waved to the sergeant. "Cheerio!" he said. . . .
Something struck his shoulder. "I've been looking all over this hotel for you," said Mrs. Mitty. "Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?" "Things close in," said Walter Mitty vaguely. "What?" Mrs. Mitty said. "Did you get the what's-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What's in that box?" "Overshoes," said Mitty. "Couldn't you have put them on in the store?" 'I was thinking," said Walter Mitty. "Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" She looked at him. "I'm going to take your temperature when I get you home," she said.
They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, "Wait here for me. I forgot something. I won't be a minute." She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . . He put his shoulders back and his heels together. "To hell with the handkerchief," said Waker Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.
waay too long. 10 points arent worth this.
Dara pushed at Wyl, barking, “Hurry. Hurry.”
As Dara stepped away from the window, a guard leaned out and swung his sword at her, sparking as it crashed against the stone surface of the exterior wall. He thrust a knee up to the sill and as he stood, Dara swung her blade down severing his head, which hurdled down into the darkness followed by his headless torso. The three intruders continued along the ledge distancing themselves from the window but three more guards climbed out and pursued. Dara presented her weapon then sparred with the first to approach her. They exchanged several parries then she gained position pinning his blade between her sword and the wall. As he attempted to withdraw his weapon to reposition, she slid her blade across his hand then poked the tip at his neck. He recoiled, staggered back a step into the man behind him, frantically swung a hand around, clutched the cape of the other man then stumbled off the ledge pulling his howling comrade with him and the two plummeted with a horrific series of distant crashes and thuds concluding with a loud splash of water.
The last remaining guard hopped with a quick succession of sidesteps in an attempt to gain on Dara. Mara rounded a corner into a howling cool wind and came to a stop as the ledge terminated at a narrow platform where the masonry exterior wall gave way to natural stone bluff face. Dara compressed Wyl against Mara with her sword held at the ready then the guard rounded the corner and stood his place for a moment. He smiled and declared, “Angel thief! The blood of my lord and that, which is rightfully mine alone, hath thee purloined. Know thee now my name for I am thy destiny. I am Barkal, Lieutenant of Lord Samaya, Angel of Death, and in recompense, I reclaim that blood you take and more, that blood you bring, in punitive satisfaction of transgression.”
“Nitwit!” Wyl impulsively spat through clenched teeth, “You dare such arrogance as name yourself ‘Angel of Death’? Look into the eyes before you! This is no half-baked ‘angel’! This is the Black Witch! Bane of Angel and God of Death!”
Barkal, Lieutenant of Lord Samaya and self-proclaimed Angel of Death, peered into the eyes of Dara, Black Witch, God of Death, and noticeably flinched but nonetheless struck a confident battle pose and swirled his blade whistling through a series of combat maneuvers, twirling over and around his shoulder concluding with a prone stance prepared to engage. Dara delicately moved her blade and tapped it against his with a gentle ring. The two slid both blades slowly across one another then exchanged a furious bought of swings and thrusts concluding with a mutual withdraw to repose.
Dara smiled and inquired, “If so crucial great lieutenant is he of great lord Samaya, why he does not attend fabulous banquet party in sparkly party hall of great lord Samaya, yes? Does his beloved great lord think not so highly of his social skills and etiquettes? Is he no more than muscle bound military buffoon of great lord?”
Barkal scoffed and sneered then initiated another exchange in which he sequentially thrust a jab at Dara’s face which she deflected with a side swing, swung an overhead slash which she blocked with a bar thrust, lunged with a stab at her midsection which she spun from slapping his blade into the stone, and finally swung a slashing slice at her knees which she leapt over then drove down with a slap of her sword. They mutually withdrew again in preparation for the next bought.
A crashing rumble reverberated through the valley as perhaps the roof of the banquet hall collapsed over the conflagration and Dara taunted, “Even now does house of his great lord crumble along with all his wishes and dreams, even while his tasty blood in her belly still splashes warm.”
Barkal growled and unleashed an assault of unparalleled ferocity with equally undisciplined rage and after a frantic exchange of clanging blows, both he and Dara withdrew stumbling and clutching at injuries. Half his foot dangled precariously over the edge of the ledge as Barkal stepped back in retreat and he struggled to recover his balance, throwing his weapon hand outward and away from his body in the process. With a bound, Dara landed within the reach of an arm then swung her blade cross-handed through his neck and into the wall with a clank accompanied by a spark. An expression of shock and bitter disappointment washed over the face of Barkal as jets of blood spayed from his neck splattering against the wall and dribbling over his shoulders and chest. His head toppled onto the ledge coming to rest as Dara clamped it under her foot, and perhaps Barkal watched his own headless body lean onto the wall, turn and stumble two steps then aimlessly wander over the edge and plunge into the darkness.
Dara sheathed her sword, rolled the head of Barkal underfoot to the corner of the ledge then braced herself with a hand on the wall, cocked back and kicked the head projecting it in
projecting it in a high looping arc, spinning out into the great wide open as a spray of blood dispersed in a geometrically perfect spiral pattern around it.
Wyl remarked, “Damn, decent quality angels are sure hard to come by these days.”
****************************************************************
If your answer is “Yes, reading this makes me want to read more.” then hit the link below and all your wildest wishes and dreams will soon come true…
http://www.nokilleye.com/111000.htm
pdf files - read online or print hard copy
If you read any, please leave a comment on the message board.
(… and feel free to propose read swaps!)
It took me a while to work out what they were doing, but eventually I got it. It seems you struggle with showing your detail, which most people do. With scenes of conflict, it is often easy to be caught in the moment, and perhaps struggle with writing. I've seen the other pieces you've posted, and they really are quite good, but this one needs more revision.
This is one of your sentences
"Barkal scoffed and sneered then initiated another exchange in which he sequentially thrust a jab at Dara’s face which she deflected with a side swing, swung an overhead slash which she blocked with a bar thrust, lunged with a stab at her midsection which she spun from slapping his blade into the stone, and finally swung a slashing slice at her knees which she leapt over then drove down with a slap of her sword"
It's a sword fight, this is clear, though consider leaving most if it to imagination - let the reader decide exactly how this happens.
You're getting there though, and you will probably be near publishing before the end of this year. Well done =)
Like this one.......
Friday Mornings at the Pentagon
By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
McClatchy Newspapers
Over the last 12 months, 1,042 soldiers, Marines, sailors and Air Force personnel have given their lives in the terrible duty that is war. Thousands more have come home on stretchers, horribly wounded and facing months or years in military hospitals.
This week, I'm turning my space over to a good friend and former roommate, Army Lt. Col. Robert Bateman, who recently completed a yearlong tour of duty in Iraq and is now back at the Pentagon.
Here's Lt. Col. Bateman's account of a little-known ceremony that fills the halls of the Army corridor of the Pentagon with cheers, applause and many tears every Friday morning. It first appeared on May 17 on the Weblog of media critic and pundit Eric Alterman at the Media Matters for America Website.
It is 110 yards from the "E" ring to the "A" ring of the Pentagon. This section of the Pentagon is newly renovated; the floors shine, the hallway is broad, and the lighting is bright. At this instant the entire length of the corridor is packed with officers, a few sergeants and some civilians, all crammed tightly three and four deep against the walls. There are thousands here.
This hallway, more than any other, is the `Army' hallway. The G3 offices line one side, G2 the other, G8 is around the corner. All Army. Moderate conversations flow in a low buzz. Friends who may not have seen each other for a few weeks, or a few years, spot each other, cross the way and renew.
Everyone shifts to ensure an open path remains down the center. The air conditioning system was not designed for this press of bodies in this area. The temperature is rising already. Nobody cares. "10:36 hours: The clapping starts at the E-Ring. That is the outermost of the five rings of the Pentagon and it is closest to the entrance to the building. This clapping is low, sustained, hearty. It is applause with a deep emotion behind it as it moves forward in a wave down the length of the hallway.
A steady rolling wave of sound it is, moving at the pace of the soldier in the wheelchair who marks the forward edge with his presence. He is the first. He is missing the greater part of one leg, and some of his wounds are still suppurating. By his age I expect that he is a private, or perhaps a private first class.
Captains, majors, lieutenant colonels and colonels meet his gaze and nod as they applaud, soldier to soldier. Three years ago when I described one of these events, those lining the hallways were somewhat different. The applause a little wilder, perhaps in private guilt for not having shared in the burden ... yet.
Now almost everyone lining the hallway is, like the man in the wheel-chair, also a combat veteran. This steadies the applause, but I think deepens the sentiment. We have all been there now. The soldier's chair is pushed by, I believe, a full colonel. "Behind him, and stretching the length from Rings E to A, come more of his peers, each private, corporal, or sergeant assisted as need be by a field grade officer.
11:00 hours: Twenty-four minutes of steady applause. My hands hurt, and I laugh to myself at how stupid that sounds in my own head. My hands hurt. Please! Shut up and clap. For twenty-four minutes, soldier after soldier has come down this hallway - 20, 25, 30. Fifty-three legs come with them, and perhaps only 52 hands or arms, but down this hall came 30 solid hearts. They pass down this corridor of officers and applause, and then meet for a private lunch, at which they are the guests of honor, hosted by the generals. Some are wheeled along. Some insist upon getting out of their chairs, to march as best they can with their chin held up, down this hallway, through this most unique audience. Some are catching handshakes and smiling like a politician at a Fourth of July parade. More than a couple of them seem amazed and are smiling shyly.
There are families with them as well: the 18-year-old war-bride pushing her 19-year-old husband's wheelchair and not quite understanding why her husband is so affected by this, the boy she grew up with, now a man, who had never shed a tear is crying; the older immigrant Latino parents who have, perhaps more than their wounded mid-20s son, an appreciation for the emotion given on their son's behalf. No man in that hallway, walking or clapping, is ashamed by the silent tears on more than a few cheeks. An Airborne Ranger wipes his eyes only to better see. A couple of the officers in this crowd have themselves been a part of this parade in the past.
These are our men, broken in body they may be, but they are our brothers, and we welcome them home. This parade has goneon, every single Friday, all year long, for more than four years.
Did you know that? The media hasn't yet told the story. [.....and never will]
Thank you for this. My husbans is a combat vet - not wounded but decorated (by the grace of God alone).
They don't tell these types of stories or others like them, because they don't sell papers and because it wouldn't further their agenda against the President.