September,2009
SFC HEADQUARTERS DOCTRINE
"Read by Thousands Round' the World!"
26 September 2009: Yes...Lightening Struck Twice My new laptop shut down and was sent off to the drug laptop, rehab clinic. It came back this afternoon but has not apologized for damaging the operation. What step of the 12 step was that? Anyway, we are loading up programs from Scratch One. We will probably debut here again 1 October...
Adios, Amigos
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16 September 2009: Attack of the Acronym!
“We must have an acronym.”
“We must have an acronym.”
Repeat it after me. "All systems “must have an acronym title. Must have acronym outlines. And all zombies fall in to the right."
"Yes Business Master. We hear and we obey. "
Definers tell us an acronym is a word formed from initials, or a word formed from the initials or other parts of several words, e.g. "NATO," from the initial letters of "North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But there was a time when acronym meant a clever collection of words that, once "acronymized" became another recognizable word. Like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Uncle. The United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Its perfect isn't it? Once upon a time, in the good ol’ days, an acronym had to spell out a real word. It doesn’t seem so anymore, though. If you can catch the perfect word spelling out your perfect message and mission? F.A.N.T.A.S.T.I.C.! But, its not to easy. 
People still like to use a real word when possible. I remember as a child, I was advised that when committing important lessons to memory, one trick was to construct an unforgettable word to help you recall the answer. For example, the school book test would ask, "name the four man exports of South Gorgonzola." Then the trick was to create a work like "MINT," to help remember that Magnesium, Iodine, Necture and Tin were Gorgonzola’s main trade commodities! Easy! But, it works for some and not for others. As for me, while I could remember the secret identities and weakness of the world’s super heroes without any tricks, answers like “T for tin” often escaped me. (Remember back when I was kid there were only 12 super heroes to keep track of.)
But it seems like when you join any business group, such as the AOOA -Affiliated Organization Of Associations or its brother group, the AAOO - Affiliated Association of Organizations, one motivational speaker tries to tell you that you must use acronyms as much as possible in catchy, unforgettable terms. In the fighting world, this causes newbys to develop programs like FIGHT, SCAR, MAIM, FLATTEN, SPATTER, ATTACK, COUNTER-ATTACK, SPEAR, EXPLODE, DEFCON, DEFEND...well you name it. The challenge really lies in making sensible words that fit each and every letter. And often, business owners love the their chosen word so much, that they fudge on one or more of the letters. Like the “X” of EXPLODE was always a problem, huh? Owners might combine the “EX” to mean Exterminate, then move along with Plod, Louse, Orate, Detonate and Eat. E.X.P.L.O.D.E.! Well, you get the picture. Combining the “E” with the “X” would anger the official Acronym Gods! But these heathens did not care. Its cooler when it sings out like a related word, even at the expense of the program’s doctrine. So at the very start-up you might have a built-in, word game problem.
Then inside the programs are outline acronyms. I recently read one called LADDER. Losers Always Diddle Dungarees....whatever...whatever...letters all to live and learn by. So often, the organizers must have loved the word LADDER, but as often happens, there is one or two damn letters that just really don’t fit with the program and lesson plan. The other five do so well! And the word ladder is perfect. It sings! So they play fast and furious with at least one or two letters just to get the word in that they love. Typically, the half-baked letter becomes a doctrine problem somewhere down the comprehensive line. Or, another vital point is ignored, or stuffed in where it shouldn’t be because it screwed up the spelling.
I’ll bet most most of you reading this have wrestled with the invention of acronyms for your system or for your training outline, and you know exactly what I am talking about. BUT now hear this. The world, marketing and education usually does not fit into an neat acronym. Do not cut your program or material short by being zombie brainwashed by the AOOA or the AAOO. Do not be captured by the trick of required acronym!
To me, one the most vital teaching subjects I use is the “Who, What, Where, When, How and Why.” It will never fit into a word or even any semblance of a word. I just call it the “Ws and H.” It is what it is and its the best. You can toil away with substitutes, but nothing else covers the lesson plan like it does.
I know, the Man from UNCLE would never be the Man from Ws and H, or be the Man from AUNTIE. But sometimes you just have to absorb systems and lessons without a trick.
Oh, and by the way, the Green Lantern’s secret identity is Hal Jordan. After all these years I remembered that without a trick acronym. I.M.A.G.I.N.E. that, B.U.B.B.A.!
Adios, Amigos
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13 September 2009: the Element of Surprise In The Water Hole of Life.
A surprise attack is a cave-man idea going way back. Maybe back into the apes and even other species when you consider the natural camo that many creatures genetically possess to hide out and strike. Consider their swift, explosive, zero-to-sixty speed, and how stealthfully quiet many learn how to move. Such are the attributes of the animal ambush. Intelligence on the path and resting holes of the enemy. Concealment. Stealth in approach. Explosive movement. Concealed weapons like the contracted teeth. The hidden, giant teeth in the closed mouth. The acerbic, poison spit or bite. The epoxy tongue that covers unnatural distance.
With humans we add more layers. Arm, leg, head, and full body fakes. Sucker-punch, style attacks. Distracting actions. Planned distracting events. Verbal ploys and tricks. Concealed impact, spray, projectile weapons. Fake surrender. Situational ploys.
From the very big to the very, very small, we can use the element of surprise in just about every aspect of our attack as well we should. But the element of surprise on the receiving end counts on your level of...surprise. How surprised will you, or your team, or family be when ambushed? In preperation, we have to look at the who, what, where, when, how and why, my favorite (and best) equation for survival training.
Who will ambush us?
What will happen in an ambush?
Where will the ambush likely occur?
When will the ambush likely occur?
How will the ambush start and unfold?
Why are we being ambushed? To what goal?
Every encounter is situational. Life is one big watering hole. The Ws and the H define the situation for the citizen, the soldier and the cop. Good intelligence will lesson the surprise in the classic "element of surprise" attack.
Adios, Amigos
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7 September 2009: The Big Cross-Over | Part 4 Next, Reduce the Abstract Abstract Case Study 1:
“Yeah, yeah, they do stress shooting!”
“What kind?” I ask.
“While we were shooting an instructor came over with a whiffle ball back and started hitting us on the back of our legs while we shot.”
“Interesting, but you know what that really makes you good at?
“What?”
“Shooting while being hit on the back of your legs with a whiffle ball bat. If you want stress, make the stress as real as possible. That would mean being shot at, from the front, by sims ammo for example.”
Abstract Case Study 2:
“Yeah, yeah, they do stress shooting!”
“What kind?” I ask.
“Sometimes two instructors yell at you, one on each side, and shout, ‘you suck!' Or, ‘you're a terrible shot!'”
"Interesting, but shouldn't they be yelling real things that real bad guys say in a shooting, to prepare you for a much more real incident?”
Abstract Case Study 3:
“Yeah, yeah, they do stress shooting!”
“What kind?” I ask.
“We mount a heavy bag. Sit on it straddle legs and punch down on it. An instructor hits you on your back with punching bags. Then we have to draw a pistol and shoot the heavy bag. Then lift the pistol and shoot a target down range.”
“What about the opponent's arms? I mean the imaginary guy that is the heavy bag? Wouldn't it be better if a trainer was grounded under you punching up at you? I saw this exercise you are talking about in a gun magazine. In each picture the mounted man draws his gun in a two-handed grip, arms extended and shoots down on the bag. Do any of the instructors remind shooters that this extended arm, two-handed grip is ever too close in these quarters? Oh-so grab-able by that man under you? That you cannot and should not let this grip get into your muscle memory in that situation. What about doing this with simulated ammo and real guy under you?
Overview
Entirely too much shooting training ignores high value, simulated ammo training. Once a person certifies/qualifies on a weapon, then subsequent training, dissected by the unit/hour, should be 15 minutes weapons familiarization, then 45 minutes simulated ammo, interactive training with moving, thinking people who are shooting back. You are not learning how to gunfight unless people are shooting back at you.
In a quick overview of this point in all hand, stick, knife and gun, in the beginning utilize cross-over skills to jump-start the student. Next, start reducing the abstract aspects, as exampled above, to really refine the cross-over as well as hone any training progression. Wherever possible be constantly looking to reduce the abstract between the training exercise and the reality.
Adios, Amigos
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3 September 2009: "The Doc!" Curt Sheldon
Many of you know Curtis "The Doc" Sheldon. Doc started up with us in the year 2000, a cross-over from traditional martial arts. By day, he is a pediatric surgeon, performing up to five surgeries on children a day. He also dedicates time each year to traveling the world and performing surgery on needy children in poor countries.
He has run a number of CQC classes in the northern Kentucky, southern Ohio region, hosted me twice a year for seminars through these years and has attended numerous seminars. You all might have met him also in Dallas, Chicago, Michigan, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri and Las Vegas events to name a few. In the early years, he and his son Eric were staples of these seminars. Eric is now a combat pilot in the US Navy, preparing for a tour in Afghanistan.
Just one of Curt's favorite pastimes and hobbies is to read and write about ethics and patriotism. Needless to add he is a gifted instructor and leader. We might say in Texas that Curt is "damn good company at suppertime." A highest praise in these here parts. Doc is now in a fight for his life with a cancer. Ever an avid athlete, one afternoon three months ago, while on a marathon bike race, he had to turn off the road from a sudden lack of energy. The next day, he took naps between his five surgeries, and the next day he couldn't work at all. He was instantly hospitalized. Battered with chemo, fighting off infections, the facilities of Ohio did about all they could for him. Doc's great family took him to MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, TX for the advanced work of super-specialists.
It is a rare "acquired" cancer. Doc has been in and around children's radiation and X-ray treatments for years, but he said he always took precautions for it. The latest medical guesses are the cancer may come from toxic paints and thinners he was around as a child himself? He also grew up on a ranch in southeastern California and drank well water, now on a list of suspicious cancer causers.
I visited him last week. In the last two months he has battled back, fought off pneumonia and achieved a remission status, but still needs a pending bone marrow transplant. A match has been found. but he still must undergo a few more batteries of chemo, and the transplant with the really high risk of infection that comes with this. His immune system will be dropped to zero. The next 150 days or so are critical. Tough times for tough guy.
His dedicated wife Maureen told me that one of Curt's oncologists is from India and there was a Hindu prayer group praying for Curt thousands of miles away! In this conversation I learned that numerous people and churches back home in Ohio and Kentucky were also praying for Curt. I am respective of other people's privacy in these matters and would never mention this publicly but when I heard that they had these support groups at work, I decided to report this here.
Curt Sheldon is one class act of humanity on so many levels I can't describe here. And he touches many, many lives, the children he saves regularly, as well their parents. His future work is the most important to us all. So, what ever you do, or believe in, positively think about or pray, give Curt (and Maureen) some positive and regular support in your mind, words and beliefs.
Adios, Amigos
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1 September 2009: "Lower Bits and Bones," or "The Second Time I was Arrested," by Buffalo Nickels The second time I was arrested was in 1972. I was a New York Yankee stationed in the deep, southern USA.Its a place some people call...Carolina. My buddies and I had heard of a topless bar out in the backwoods to beat all topless bars. The place was called "Lower Bits and Bones." They served the best ribs south of the you-know-what, and tall tales of sex abounded. And Pabst. They had Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer-the beer that made Vietnam famous.
Arty and I went in his Chevy and Richy took his motorcycle. Richy didn't trust Arty's driving when he was dunk, and if Richy got too drunk himself, he would just pull the bike over in woods, lay down and go to sleep. Sleep anywhere. Its an SF thing.
Lower Bits and Bones was on "Lower" State Highway 3. Now, this conjures up a well-paved state road? This was a two-lane. windy, roller coaster trip. A state highway is just what the local indigs / aborigines call it. Lower-meant on the downside of the "hollar", or "yeller," or whatever the hell they call a ditch in the southern ground.
We pulled onto the dirt parking lot. which was once just a front yard. You see, the Lower Bits and Bones was a dilapidated, wood frame house converted into a bar. In the side yard of this establishment a guy sweated over his cooking at a brick barbeque. It smelled terrific. Oh boy! Just delicious smoker, but he wasn't eating much of it because he was bone skinny, hunched over, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Ashes tumbled into the pit. Country recipe. What the hell. The meat was smoked. What's the problem with a few extra ashes from some cigs?
There were two fat guys in ski masks sitting on the wooden porch. Ski masks! These guys were wearing fucking ski masks on their faces. The bouncers. In case you're wondering, it was August. Hot. Rednecks? No. No necks. Really fat people have no necks. They sat on each side of the front door and beside them on the plank floor rested baseball bats. I should have planned for evil trouble right there...but, Yo! I had walked in the valley of death called Vietnam and two, no-neck bookends would not frighten me out of a ice-cold Pabst. As we walked by them, Richy said, "Hi." They looked down and away. Too stupid for eye contact. So much for the social graces.
We stepped inside. The place stank of skank. It looked dark and dirty, like a giant living room in a hillbilly nightmare. Their patrons? As I reconned the room, I saw 14 people and six teeth among them. At the first table sat a mentally retarded man with his sister, or mother.. I don't know which but they looked just alike. The other tables featured hunched-over, dirty, farmer and miner types. Bare feet saluted me from under the tables. Dinosaurs had better-looking feet. Two topless women danced on a makeshift platform. A skinny, third wore no top or bottom. She doubled as a waitress because the guy behind the bar called her over to deliver the retarded guy a plate of food. All sweaty and bony and looking like a leather sack puppet, she laid the plate before the couple and asked, "Will that be doing ya' fer' a while?"
Against the law? Oh my friend, this was beyond the laws of man. Sitrep? This is obviously the place where evolution stopped. A land of Bozo genetics. The Outer Limits. The Twilight Zone.
The naked waitress shuffled up to us as we sat down. Her gray-haired, personal, female business level with the dining room table in a manner that made it difficult to tear your eyes away-much like the scene of a terrible road accident. When we could tear our eyes away to look up, she smiled real big and passed us menus. The menu contained only a few items, and I KNEW what my mission was. It was their barbeque rib special. I love barbeque!
"I'll have the Bones and Bits and a Pabst," I said.
The dynamic duo I was with ordered the same. Then I mustered all the courage I could and made for the men's room. It was spotless! I would rather have eaten in there than on the table. Not even a smudge on the mirror. I got back in time for Skinny to deliver three heaping bowls of pork, beans and dark brown ribs, smothered in secret Appalachian, white-lightening sauce, and of course - beer. My god 0' mighty. It was heaven. Like a soup with bones. The kind of ribs you would trade for sex" - Rib Quality Test One: "Ok, what will it be? Ribs or sex?" Answer - "Ribs."
- Rib Quality Test Two: "What will it be? Ribs. or sex with Maureen 0' Hara?" Answer - "Ah ... er. .. ribs."
While we ate these ribs like Vikings and drank a few more grogs, one of the Two-Ton-Tilly dancers walked off with the retarded guy behind a drawn curtain. I guess he chose the sex over the ribs? Richy, has face and fingers covered in honey-mustard, mountain man, rib sauce. stood and made his way to the bathroom. No sooner did he enter, than a crashing sound came from inside. Yelling and cursing, Richy burst back through the door, and slammed it back against the wall. A photo of a coal mine fell on the floor.
I could see inside the bathroom and the toilet partition was knocked over and a guy with dinosaur feet trying to get up off the floor. With red sauce bubbling and dripping from our mouths, we sat there stunned as Ritchy stormed over to us.
"That son-of-a-bitch grabbed my ass in the bathroom" Richy announced. Now, even I got to admit, Richy was cuter than the three dancers, but this scene has now turned to an LSD trip. The ass-grabber was now up and at the bathroom door. The barkeep looked at him, then at us, and I got the feeling I was gonna' see the wrong end of a hillbilly varmint gun pretty quick. I decided I didn't want to die in Lil' Abner's queer bar, covered in red sauce. The skinny fucker outside would be cooking my bits and bones for lunch tomorrow!
"Go, go, go, go, go, go, go!" I said quietly as we stood up. I dropped a 20-dollar-bill on the table as all the locals began to congregate around the wounded ass-grabber.
"He grabbed my ass'" Richy barked again and pointed an angry finger as we made for the door. The cadre of degenerates didn't seem to care who grabbed whose ass. Their tribal clan had been assaulted, and their "purty" bathroom busted up.
"Hey!" the barkeep barked, and sure as hell he came up with some kind of sawed-off rifle as we went out the door. The two masked bubbas outside couldn't stand fast enough to catch this Yankee infantry in full retreat. We ran right past them.
All asses and elbows, we slid into Arty's Chevy and Richy kicked his Triumph in a roar. The Barkeep stepped outside with his hunting gun, hip-high like John Wayne, cussing the two stupid fucks in masks on the porch for letting us get by. I would have given my left nut to hang an arm out that passenger window with a .45 auto, and strafe all around those clowns. We screeched out of there. The pit cooker waved at us with a big grin. John Denver said that "life ain't nothing but a funny, funny riddle." I waved back.
Up the road a bit, I could see no one was following us and I belted out a big laugh and gave a greasy, red thumbs up to Richy as he pulled past us. "Got away again I" I yelled. Well, so I thought anyway. Ten or so minutes later, not one, but two police cars cut in behind us. Richy could have made a Steve McQueen great escape on his crotch rocket, but he pulled over with us. Leave no man behind.
We got out of the car. They sauntered up to us.
"Boys, boys, boys," 0l' Buford T. Justice said with a sigh. "You boys with the Aaaarmy?"
We nodded. He continued, "Lower ... I say ... Lower Bits and Bones said you busted up they's esTABlishment. Say you busted up a boy named Willard's NOSE, and a bathroom wall to boot.'·
Then he turned to Artie, "and you son? You ain't got SHIT for brake lights."
It was true. Arty's brake lights were out. Wiring, fuse or something.
"You is all unner' Arrest. Unner' deep arrest for a multitude of infractions. "
There was no arguing with the law in those parts. And we had a new company commander that we hadn't figured out yet and fighting the cops might be a big beef. At least we had made it out of the third rung of hell, and we were near the Level one rung, in a town - some kind of town - with streetlights and fire hydrants. And a sidewalk. They arrested all three of us for:
"DisTOYben' da peace," and "shit for lights, and "hitting Willard. " Richy called our CQ with his one phone call at the jail, and Top came up and bailed us out the next morning. Top was pissed but he was laughing his ass off when he heard the torrid tale of the Lower Bits and Bones.
We were delivered from their evil, Amen. But someday, I might just go back again. Good God, those ribs were absolutely outstanding. Might bring the whole group with me. And that .45 auto. Do a little strafing for dessert.
Bye-Bye!
(This was the work of Buffalo Nickels, former SF soldier and madman. We do not usually agree with his comments. Nor should you. Please do not visit the Buffalo Nickels page. It may offend you. Click here - The Buff )
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Yes, the book, years in the making, is finished. 300 pages. Over 1700 how-to photographs. This is not the razor-thin, large-print, knife books you have seen by others in the past.
Even I am impressed and I am my own worst critic. Click here for more
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