November,2009
SFC HEADQUARTERS DOCTRINE
"Read by Thousands Round' the World!"
26 November 2009: Son of Armageddon! The Sequal Sale!
More cats and dogs are sleeping together! Remember Winter, 2008? They predicted doom, despair and agony for 2009. So we ran an Armageddon sale. It is 2009 now! Yes, well, it’s back! Its worse! Unemployment, Iran with nukes, soup lines and rich liberals in charge of the economy! They are even taxing taxes. Death panels. The annual nuke-winter, Armageddon Sale returns this year with deeper cuts, despair and greater distress. Unions will soon run all major businesses until...unions leaders will be the businesses leaders and...and the union workers will unite against union management...leaders? And...wel ...make yourself feel better and buy something on deep six sale!
Quickly get these SFC DVDs, Books and gear in a sale like never before! It’s the end of the world as we know it. Look at the SFC Supply Depot Shop Site. Quick before 100 US dollars becomes just one Chinese jaun! We may sell out and move to New Zealand!
Everything is off 20% to 50%! Some things 75% off!
Adios amigos
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
20 November 2009: The First Guy I Knocked Out
The first guy I knocked out was in high school. Not uncommon for many, but there is a teaching point to the story. I grew up in the west side shadow of the Manhattan skyscrapers in a poor-mans land of the Jersey, Hudson River coast. The high school I attended had thousands of kids and I was not a tough guy. I was actually an art student as a major, bound for art college. I hated high school. I still think it was a waste of time.
By my senior year I had been knocked out three times. Twice while playing baseball and once in an auto accident. This metro area was full of ball players and leagues and high school baseball seemed too classy? Like college baseball it is a very short, limiting experience. Just a few games a season. A few chances to shine. But if you played in the sandlot leagues you were always playing. I took a shot at being a catcher. My dad was a catcher on New York semi-pro teams. But my dad was 5’10 and I was 6’4.” Lanky and skinny and not catcher material. Still I tried.
One day a long, lanky hitter took a power swing at an outside pitch and spun completely around hitting the back of my head with his bat as I leaned out to catch the ball. Bingo. Star-light city. I woke up with a splash of water and trying to count to ten. Then in another game I tired to catch a ball from the outfield and tag a runner coming in from third. It was a do-or-die catch, a pivot and a dive at the runner. I did, and his knee hit my face as I was airborne. He spun me completely around. Bingo. Star-light city. Water. Counting. I eventually settled in at third base, which I loved. the "hot corner." Oh, and a car crashed into the back of my car, knocking me out. Three for three. Woke up in the hospital. Since I have been knocked out another 11 times. But I digress...
Senior year I was counting the days to escape. In our P.T. “gym” period/class in the spring, they pushed everyone - about 40 of us” - outside to play baseball for 50 minutes. Well, it was some kind of baseball. They never had enough gloves and the few they had were old stubby rags from then the 1930s. Infielders got the gloves. And the ball was larger than a baseball and smaller than a softball and rubbery. It was like "retarded baseball" (spare me the cards and letters on the use of the word “retarded,” okay? That's what we snippy, wise-ass, yankee kids called it. This is a history lesson). The gym teachers could care less. They wandered inside the school and probably played poker. I wandered out to the outfield. jumped the fence and walked down the hill to the “candy store” - that's what yankees called all the “mom-and-pop” corner stores. Probably still do. Then just before the class was over, one of the " poker players" stuck his out the door and said, “bring it in.” I’d jump the fence and mill back in with the crowd.
Now we had thousands of kids in this school. And we had gangs too and this gym period was blessed with an inter-racial gang of goof-balls, led by a harnessing bully punk. What little I saw of the games, before heading off to the candy store, anytime mister punk came to bat and hit the ball, he would run the bases and generally fuck up any of the poor teens who tried to throw him at any base. He'd slap them around, shove them, shake them and make them drop the ball to the delight of his pack of sideline daushbags. Mister Punk would always get a home run if he hit the ball as far as I could see. Whatever. I had a date with a Coca-Cola and some chips down the street.
Well that covert, candy store, mission run day after day got pretty boring so, loving third base as I did, I became an infielder to kill the boredom. But the first day I was stuck playing shortstop, not third base. Mister Punk came up and struck out and sat down his forst time at bat. His next time he hit that piece of blubber they called a ball into the outfield for a hit. Should have been a single, but Punk rounded first as the outfielder tossed me the ball. I caught it. He ran right at me, yelling and I pounded the glove and ball into his arm well before he touched second. He was tagged out cold. Obvious.
“You’re out!” the other infielders yelled in a vindictive glee.
I routinely tossed the ball to the pitcher. This play was over.
Mister Punk stopped a few feet after touching second base, turned and marched up to me cursing. There was no ball to shake out of my grip. But it was his showtime. I punched him right straight in the face and knocked him out cold. He spiraled off his feet and hit the ground. All his punks ran out in shock. Not to get me, but to check on their hero. They carted him off the field.
When the gym teacher came out later to round us all in, he was told that I had knocked out Mister Punk. The teacher said, ”good.” There was none of this “zero tolerance” for fighting crap as there is today. But you know, they should have supervised those games and never let those shananagins go on. I was never bothered by this jerk before or after this. Now today, I guess you have to worry about retribution and drive-by shootings. Oblivious to me for a time, this little incident got around the school.
Now the teaching moment. I’d never thrown such a punch before, just in play and roughhousing, just like in the movies. I do not know why I punched him to quickly, so thoughtlessly. So instantly. He marched at me, chin and face out and up, barking, his shoulders back and his arms down! Totally stupid, but ever soooo street fight-ish and quite common. So typical. Years later, I learned that this very pose, this posturing is so typical in an angry confrontation. While this is unsafe, it seems a biological response for many jerks, doesn’t it? The antagonist often even bumps his chest against his target.
A good rule of thumb is to practice this confrontation in training class, see it for what it is and take the pre-emptive strike. Another teaching moment too is that I had a few situations like this later and just let myself respond. You see, I thought I was a...you know...a natural. Over-confident, which later led to a real major league, ass-kicking on yours truly. Bingo! Star-city. But, no water on the face. And nobody cared if I could count to ten.
I sometimes wonder if I should have stayed at third base and tried hard for a life in baseball. You know...”I coulda’ been somebody. I coulda’ been a contender!” But, I honestly wasn’t that bad a fielder and hitter. With good coaching....? Or, what if I'd went to art college?
Instead, just look at me now. Look at me. I’m just a half-deaf, paluka on meds, with a case of brain damage.
(I once had this very 1960s baseball card, signed by Clete Boyer, my hero and model for a third baseman. He was famous for diving at all balls that came remotely near.)
Adios amigos
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
16 November 2009: Three Dimensions of Target Training, "El Hocko-Style"
When range-only shooters gather up the smarts and/or the guts to enter into the chaotic realm of interactive, simulated shooting, the craft of shooting enters a new dimension. I use the term guts because a person must brave a new 3-D world where he is no longer a “champion, bulls eye shot” to learn what part inside combat scenarios all these range “basics” actually play. I say smarts because some traditionalists like to declare that all sims shooters are "paint-ballers" or "Lazer Tag, goof-offs." This flippant, pigeon-holing is a quick dismissal of the efforts of serious simulation ammo instructors. Meanwhile, despite the nay-sayers, sim-ammo training grows in the rank and file of military and policing exponentially. Civilian shooters, many of them too old or overweight for real training, seem to ignore the challenge, reality and sheer exertion of chaotic, gunfight interaction. In my learning progression to take a square-range, paper-shooter to interactive combat scenarios I use these terms for target training definitions.
One Dimensional Targets:
These are paper targets, Flat. Sometimes cartoonish in nature. Sometimes just a circular target with rings on down to a center bulls eye. These targets could also be those foam-like statues that are a bit expensive, not at all paper-flat, but still very one-dimensional. This type of target shooting is an integral part in the process of live fire, what I call "learning the machine." A gun is a simple machine, like an iron or a toaster or a car. Shooting and killiing people in real life is about emotional situations, scenarios and predicaments. Like driving a car on a back lot (range) as oppossed to driving it in a rush-hour, road race. The basics are somewhat the same, but the circumstances different. Traditional shooters must realize that these "commandment basics" might be changed or altered after experiencing interactive training.
Learning the machine - this live-fire shooting training must continually be done for weapon familiarization. If you must shoot at paper (as we must with live-fire) at least make the artwork as realistic as possible?
Two-Dimensional Targets:
Now, we step-up to simulated ammo. The target becomes alive! I teach this two-dimensional approach in two drills. One drill I call The Animator. It is a target drill in which the shooter fires at a paper target as usual, all while standing still and also while advancing and retreating. Every few seconds or so, a trainer, hidden behind the target (shown left), leans out from behind the target and fires back. This is first in the weaning process a range shooter does with us. Suddenly the shooter sees a paper target that animates itself and shoots back. It brings a new definition to the limitations of awareness of what is and isn't a shooting platform.
Another drill I use is a gauntlet drill. I now nickname it Baghdad Avenue. We bring in cars and park them in a row, right and left side of the gauntlet walk. The attendees are asked to stand, sit or hide by each car and develop a quick, vignette for the gauntlet walker to probe. Its a Shoot/Don’t exercise. Students can be very creative, but often use Iraqi accents and situations - thus the name Baghdad Avenue. Everything from an angry drunk with a machete, a man with a flat tire, a pistol quick-draw, a caller asking for a domino player...anything to create a very short, problem-solving situation that challenges the walker. The vignettes are very brief, and shallow. Just Shoot? Don't shoot? Very two-dimensional. (who needs an expensive computer program? This is cheap, back lot training and airsoft guns do not hurt cars! (nothing says "shooting people, like - shooting people!)
Three-Dimensional Targets
Its simulated ammo and full blown combat scenarios. Now I establish a series of orchestrated scenarios that introduce the shooter to problem-solving. Restaurant robberies, bank robberies, hostages rescue, car-jacking, bodyguards, convoys, drive-bys, stairwell gun fights, the list is long and the experiences irreplaceable. All ttendees cycle through good guy and bag parts, getting smarter and more savvy with each interaction.
In scenarios, the full spectrum of human skills are obviosuly needed, and it is important to make sure not all of them end up with shots fired.
Once a practitioner qualifies in various, virgin live fire courses, I use the "15/45 Gun Hour" training formula. 15 minutes of live-fire weapon familiarization (mandatory through life) where one-dimensional targets are used, and 45 minutes of interactive simulation, ammo training. where all kinds of 2-D and 3-D drills and scenarios are used. You are not learning how to gunfight unless moving, thinking people are shooting back at you. So, with the 15/45 Gun Hour, in an 8-hour training day that's about two-hours of live-fire and about six hours of simulation, situational training. If you are not using these "1, 2 or 3-D style of target methods, you are not maximizing gun figth training. This takes highly creative, energetic, experienced instructors
Oh, and one last thing, this ain't nothing like Lazer Tag, bubba.)
Adios amigos
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
12 November 2009: Who Me?
Yesterday was Veteran’s Day in the old USA. All Americans thanked all kinda’ vets for their service. Any service. Even if you made chocolate candies in the general’s mess hall for a three year stint you were cheered and regaled as patriots," and “fighting for freedom.” Or worse, some kind of, you know, “warrior.” Everyone in a helmet is warrior.
Frequently I have to explain to my friends some things civilians don’t know - that for every one troop in the field, there are 10 in the back office. Maybe more nowadays. Somebody has to make those chocolates. When I worked in MDDS, the Marijuana and Dangerous Drug Section as a military police investigator I learned some soldiers were heroin dealers, And when I worked as regular MP investigator, I saw that some were rapists, robbers and murderers. All kiinda’ criminals. Just like the common population. I guess not all men and women in uniform automatically deserve such a big, hardy salute on Veteran’s Day? Respect shouldn't be so automatic.
I had a few shout-outs on Vets Day and for my grand kids, I even participated in a little school day thing their teachers had. Dressed up a bit for them. I can still easily fit in my Army fatigue jacket after 35 years! Not too bad. The rhetoric for me and the other vets there and elsewhere was that we served my country, fought for freedom, your know - the usual allegories and platitudes. But really? Like some of the aforementioned chocolate bakers, office clerks, and well to some extent, even the bad guys, I don’t think I deserve an ounce of credit thrown my way for this pure altruism.
You see, I didn’t join the Army out of a severe sense of patriotism, love of country, to fight for freedom or such altruistic motivations. I was about 20 years old, and I joined the Army because of boredom and economics. They fed me and I could shoot guns. I can’t help but wonder how many other kids joined just like me? I knew some. Some were even sent by judges as an alternative to jail!
I didn’t even become a city cop years later for the right reasons. I was just looking for more action and adventure. Drama. And the women that would surely follow with such lofty endeavors. That’s the ugly truth about that.
It took me years - too many years - maybe twelve or more years to grow up and start to realize how important the military was, what this country was really about and why police work was so damned important. Way too many years. My time in the Army was like going to “Man-Up College” and I still consider the Army my true alma mater. That and my years in police work eventually sobered me into a foundation I really needed for understanding life...and death.
I am sure there were and are still some really great kids from great patriotic families that were destined for patriotic duty in the US Armed Forces. I salute them. I salute all who join now in these times of war. Very few people understand the raw courage needed simply to enlist into the armed forces. If they joined out of that sense of duty, love of country and patriotism, then they deserve all those praises, salutes and accolades. Fact is, I didn’t and I don’t. I did not come from such a great, picture-book family. I was too young, stupid and immature, with a rebel streak and hippy-disrespect for authority when I joined.
So, that’s why I always feel uncomfortable on Veteran’s Day or when someone wants to compliment me just because I joined the Army. Real truth be told, some of us don't deserve that hardy back slap. There's a bunch of great kids and folks middle-aged and older that better deserve that slap on their backs. Hey, I was just a dumb, shallow, skinny kid back then looking for an adrenaline rush.
The Army and police work slowly changed all that. I have grown up some. Even though I can still fit in that 35 year-old Army jacket yesterday afternoon, I guess I filled out a lot, if in some ways, through all those years.
Adios amigos
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
8 November 2009: The Triple Training Mission Theme Package (6 DVDs)
Mulitiple Opponents, Mixed Weapons, Arm Wrap Traps, Elbow Hyper Extension in Hand, Stick, Knife and Gun combat scenarios...
For more, Click here
Adios amigos
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
5 November 2009: Is it Love or Confusion?
“Is this love, babe, or is it...confusion?” Jimi Hendrix asked in a song. But, is it hormones or distraction? Is is adrenaline or lack of focus? Love/hormones/adrenaline and confusion/distraction/focus. Those replacement words don’t jive so well in the song do they? How do they jive in the real world? Adrenaline is a hormone and it can easily be confused with poor performance of tasks. Is it always the cause? Sometimes? Are instructors and researchers looking deep enough to really find the difference?
Lets quickly discuss an experiment. Walk up to your front door, pull the keys out of your pocket and unlock the front door. This is a task you have performed a gizillion times. If you dissect that very task, you would likely note that you use the same hand, the same pocket and the very same speed with which to do this simple task. You have probably even unlocked the door in the dark using the same process and rate of speed. It becomes like an “instinct.” The nerves that fire together, wire together, as the new breed neurologists love to say.
But, this new firing and wiring includes a specific rate of speed in the new brain road map. The speed in which you do the task is an integral part of the firing/wiring. In another example, martial arts expert Dan Inosanto once said decades ago, “train slow? Fight slow.” And the fire/wire includes the same hand, same pocket, same door knob, same speed, the exact situation that you unlock the door time after time. In other words if you come home every night with the same briefcase in the other hand, that is in the equation. If you always carry a shopping bag in your other hand, that is in the performance equation.
What if some things change? Within some range the easy, athletic success of opening the door can still be done. That depends a lot on the person. But what if these get out of this performance range? Ever unlock it with a backpack dangling from your key hand? What about with two shopping bags of groceries, one with a carton of milk about to slip out? Pretty distracting. Probably, your smooth, regular performance of easily unlocking the door is off by a few beats. Sometimes, people even have to place one shopping bag down on the porch to get the job done.
Or, ever unlock this door in a hideous thunderstorm? Or run up to the door because you can hear the house phone ringing and you expect an urgent call? You’ll have to be faster. The very speed that you approach the door, and once blindly inserted the key, and mindlessly opened the door, now becomes faster and often a fumble and a slowdown ensues. The speed, for whatever reason - be it hard rain or the phone call has now changed. New firing. New wiring.
Enough of everyday life. Lets get extreme. You are being shot at while approaching your door! Speed is needed! You may well fumble with your keys and the lock. If you do, many instructors and adrenaline-based training programs, founded in marketing and money, will quickly define the problem as sudden, spiking and increased heart rates or their old-time favorite ogre - that old evil, skill-robbing adrenaline. Why? They have invested in adrenaline-based fighting systems.
Relative speed is important. The speed the you need and the speed you train for. If an enforcement agent has a car wreck in a high-speed chase, can you always blame it on adrenaline stealing your vision, hearing and fine motor skills? No. The agent might not drive fast very well. The agent may have never been trained in high-speed driving skills. If a champion slow-pitch softball player is suddenly thrown fast balls, can he hit the fast ball easily? Odds are he cannot. The need for the speed needed.
Is all failure an adrenaline problem? Really? I don’t think so. Could it be distraction? Could it be focus? Could it be a different rate of speed than usual? All from a sense of urgency in and amongst distraction. These issues have real importance in all hand, stick, knife and gun training programs. Is it all adrenaline? Or is it a lack of focus and improper, situational training at the proper speed? The ogre is less of an ogre than many people sell and tell you it is. Is it raging hormones or a lack of focus and skill?
“Is it love babe? Or just...confusion?”
Adios amigos
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2 November 2009: Nervous about Nirvana, by Buffalo Nickels
Every Sunday I sit like such a good momma's boy in church. I count down the minutes for the Pats NFL kickoff on TV later. Every Sunday at 8 a.m., Mrs. Buffalo becomes my mommy. She punches me awake. She sets out my clothes, and harasses me until I am in the passenger seat of her car, bound for church. She warns me about snoring. I remind her that it is out of my control.
Like a small child, I don't want to go to church. I never do. Never have. And, as I sit in this solemn congregation, I ask myself how I got there? I am mean! I am a former Green Beret. I have killed people. Why, on one of my two days off a week - when I could sleep late and wallow in the steam of my hangover, am I going to church against my will like a powerless church mouse? How did this happen to me? How?
The answer is Heaven. Isn't it? Getting into it. Each Sunday morning while the guy in the black robe rambles on about ... well, really who the hell knows what - he seems to mention the Beatles a lot, I mean hear "John" and "Paul," but never Ringo - and I find myself day-dreaming about the real point. That is heaven. Church is a heaven-oriented place. Right? Its the LZ for heaven, right? (LZ means loading zone for all you draft-dodging hippies) That's the bottom line isn't it? A birth in Heaven? By birth I mean a slot, not a birth or re-birth. Orders for heaven. And honestly ... I'm a little nervous about the whole thing.
A paisley-assed necktie constricts my blood flow, as I stare down to gaze at my distorted reflection in the tops of my spit-polished, church shoes. I see a bald man with a fun-house face who has many serious questions about heaven. Behind the warped face on my Florsheims is the church ceiling, painted with the glorious, white clouds. Two shoes, two little weird faces of me framed by clouds. Can I see really myself there? What exactly goes on up there in heaven? I have many questions. I mean, is it anything like Thailand?
I have heard evangelists say there is golf in heaven, but I don't play golf. One Rev said there is no sex in heaven. No sex? What about those vestal virgins? The Muslims who flew into buildings and ones who still continue to blow themselves up think they will have a herd of vestal virgins with which to diddle and fornicate with. What is vestal about a virgin anyway? Don't these numb skulls want at least one of them to be an experienced dame? I don't like the idea of no sex in heaven. The only heaven on Earth I've found is those last four seconds of Nirvana at the end of my scheduled, conjugal visits with Mrs. Buffalo. And if I miss church? Or snore in the pews? That schedule gets changed.
Others think that we will gather and hang out at a river with the proverbial "loved ones." Its supposed to be a "beautiful, beautiful river." Are relatives mandatory in heaven? I mean, truth be told, Lord, I hate my stupid relatives. They are boring putzes. My uncle Sal is an idiot, and my grandmother hated us kids. My Pops beat me with an old enema tube regularly. And, I had to support my Aunt Tilly from Brooklyn in the last three years of her life. Ingrate! She didn’t even recognize me when I visited. When I got back down to the borough to see Tilly, she was sitting at home drinking Vodka and eating popcorn and still watching Brother Bob Tilton on the God channel. It seems that Brother Bob Tilton came back on television again, unlike Bernie Madeoff - who "made-off" with all that money? Bob Tilton made off with a lot of God money, but was back again and is still farming for God. Sowing. Reaping. Harvesting. God made the universe, but he always needs more money.
Anywho, one night my Aunt Tilly drank too much Vodka and sent Brother Bob her last $8,000. My Aunt lost her duplex. Me and my brothers had to chip in for years to feed, clothe and house Tilly. Then I wound up carrying the whole farm. All her sewing and reaping, the harvest and the liquior store bill. She can recognize Tilton on TV but she thinks I am the landlord’s nephew from India! I can barely tolerate Thanksgiving with these people! Not an eternity!
Will I spend an eternity with Aunt Tilly? Will she know me? An eternity too with Mrs. Buffalo? Will she look 30 years old again - ahhh, those scrumptious years. OR will she be her favorite age - 21? Not mine? Whose heaven is this anyway? And besides, I only promised, "till death do us part." Upon death...I should be free and clear to date in heaven, right? After all Maureen O'Hara will be up there too! Will Reverend Tilton be there and what if I kick his ass up and down "Heavenly Way" avenue? Will God let me because after all, Bob has raised a lotta’ money for him! That’s a lot of chits to cash in. Is there Sunday church in heaven? That ain't right! At some point? Jeez! Enough is enough!
There's a group that thinks they can earn an entire planet after they die. Imagine that! A whole planet. Is it lonely? Who's there with you? Relatives? Old Army buddies? Didn't they get their own planets? Do we just graduate to a lifestyle where we start visiting each other's planets instead of neighborhoods? How do we visit? Space ships? Who makes them? Is there a spaceship labor union? I tell you right now, I don't want my own planet. I don't want to cut the grass! I just want a small condo on the Miami Beach planet.
Best I can tell, my best buddy Johnny Redfern is going straight to hell. Will he have visiting hours? What about Valhalla? If you go down smacking heads in Norway, or is it Scandinavia, you get to go to Valhalla where your favorite day job is whacking off more heads. We rest up at night with vostic, Nordic goddesses in scanty, fur G-strings. Might be fun for a few years, but I might want a change. Does heaven change around for you? I mean, will it cycle through things if they get boring? It would seem that no matter how cool your favorite place, people and times would be, an eternity of virgins, Vikings, golf and clouds...it would get a bit boring.
Can you actually get bored in heaven? Maybe as bored as I am sitting in this church? Ahhh- what's the Padre talking about now anyway? Must be lyrics from a Paul McCartney song. "Paul said..." Oh ...its more reaping and sowing again. Jeez, enough with the farming! Enough! My face sure looks funny in these Florsheims. I hope next week Mrs. Buff sets out my fuzzy Hush Puppies. Enough with all this reflecting.
This heaven thing! Seems kind of subjective, huh? Hey! 87 minutes until New England Pats kick-off! Soon, I'll be sitting in my naugahyde barkalounger, pounding down ice-cold brewskis. Turn that electronic massage switch on! Ahhhh, now that's my kind of Heaven!
Bye-Bye!
(This was the work of Buffalo Nickels, former SF soldier and obtuse 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 )
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
|
