The Nashville Predators are playing the Chicago Blackhawks tonight. The preds currently are in sixth place in the western conference trailing the number one team, Chicago. Lets go Preds.

Amazonian manatees migrate during low-water season to avoid being hunted, say scientists…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: water noaa. For a different topic see cornbread recipe. The blog is also related to: gulf of mexico ocean.

Recently someone asked me what does “Christmas” mean to me. I did not answer them because I had no idea what “Christmas” meant for me. I knew that “Christmas” and holidays in general do not feel particularly good to me.

However, in my parents’ house, there is a fireplace and it is not a “real” fireplace because you do not light anything. You just press a button to turn it on. So you do not smell the fiery goodness of hear the crackling sound of the wood. In addition, most importantly you do not feel warmth from it.

It seems as though my fireplace and holidays are very similar. In my family it is about being fake, putting on a happy face when all is tumbling down inside. Material things tend to solve everyone in my families problems. Holidays seem to represent artificial things.

However, this year I am not going to pretend everything is all pretty and nice. I do not have to physically hug anyone unless I want to. I am not going to wear those ugly sweaters and those matching outfits. I am the real deal. In addition, any holiday is not going to turn us all fake.

I am not going to ruin anyone else’s holiday by my choice to renounce conformity. I am actually going to make my holiday more enjoyable and tolerable for me. After all, it is just a day. However, it is a day that has so many feelings surrounding it.

I hope everyone who is hurting during this holiday season finds light and stays safe.

Aullidos.com got first dibbs on the teaser poster for Robert Rodriguez’s Predators…and it’s weak.

Penguin Fun Fact No. 21: Even Penguins have enemies!

Yes even these cute waddlers also have enemies. Penguins are a food source for a number of marine mammels, especially leopard seals. Other predators include sea lions and orcas. Penguins are counter-shaded for camouflage. Their white bellies blend with the snow and sunlight making it difficult for an underwater predator to see them. It;s not only the marine mammels poor little defenceless penguins have to contend with but they are also eaten by a number of birds, specifically penguin chicks, like the Australian sea eagle and the Skua. The penguins black backs blend against the dark ocean water making it more difficult to spot them from above. They are also preyed on by a number of on-land predators like ferrets, cats, snakes, lizards, foxes and rats.

Part of determining whether you should attempt to reverse a break-up is determining whether you can trust your partner. Knowing how to detect a lie is a VERY useful skill, even when everyone is truthful!

No discussion of lying in a relationship would be complete without a discussion of lie detection, especially for men, because women are naturally more adept at both lying and its detection than we are; their brain structure makes them more sensitive to “tells” (and are VERY dangerous poker players if they have math skills!) and more creative. It could in fact take years with a woman to determine how her character dictates whether, when, and for what reasons she will lie to you, but chances are that if you are lying to her, you’re already busted whether you know it or not, so let’s level the playing field a bit.

And, by the way, I’m not talking about “leveling the playing field” in the context of helping you to lie, but in determining whether you’re being lied to. Nor am I saying that every woman is a liar and is lying to you; I’m saying that due to brain structure – higher creativity and more advanced communications infrastructure – they are capable of being far better at it than we are. So stop typing that nasty-gram and listen up.

The following is from an article I first published as part of my crash course in stopping and reversing a break-up now, my free “Break-Up Busting 101” report. I’m reprinting it today both because it gets the job done and because my subscriber list doubles every few months, and many of you have not yet taken advantage of the very valuable information in either of the free reports linked in the right-hand margin of my main blog at http://blog.makingherhappy.com/. I strongly suggest that all of you read those two free reports thoroughly; they contain more solid, proven information than a lot of authors’ for-fee products, and they can help you to avoid many of the potential disasters that can befall a relationship as well as start you on the road to recovery if you’re having problems.

Now let’s get into the meat of today’s lesson:

Lie detection is a necessary survival skill in all facets of your life, because unfortunately, there are those who think that lying is a survival skill. It’s not. The truth always ends up coming out, and then on top of whatever mistake you’ve made, you’ve destroyed trust. At best, it’s a tactic for stalling the inevitable. The only people who get away with lying in the long term are those who spend their life on the run, bouncing from place to place, customer to customer, acquaintance to acquaintance, and not staying anywhere long enough for anyone to catch them in a lie before they’ve left. That’s not going to work in a long-term relationship, is it?

Gentlemen, the deck is stacked against you from the beginning with regard to lying, because women are better at both doing it and detecting it than men. Both of those advantages come from their more highly-evolved communications infrastructure and skills (as compared to our own). However, since you shouldn’t be lying anyway (statistically, women will tolerate just about anything before they will tolerate a liar, even if they are chronically “factually challenged” themselves), you need only concern yourself with how to detect if and when she is lying.

Making you an expert on the subject would require an entire book, and we only have the space of this article to work within, so I’m going to hit the high spots for you to show you how easy it is if you have good information and then point you to some other very good information which, incidentally, I am not selling. (I am developing a primer on lie detection to include as a free report with my other e-books, and anyone who has read “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” at the time of its release will be receiving a free copy if I have your current e-mail address on file.)

First, everyone has heard about how body language can be used to detect lies. That’s true, yet not true. There are many body language clues that indicate both that a person is lying and that they are very nervous about telling an unpleasant truth. When attempting to determine if someone is lying, you must watch for several different indicators and make sure they are all consistently pointing in the same direction.

A person who exhibits a single indication of lying may indeed only be nervous about the truth, have an itchy nose, be trying to cover bad breath, etc., but when the signs start stacking up and you see five or even ten signs that someone is lying, the statistical probability that they are telling the truth becomes such a long-shot that a penny placed on that bet would win you roughly the sum of the world’s oil and currency trade for a day – literally trillions-to-one. So where do you start?

Let’s start with the eyes. The eyes move when the brain does certain things. When a right-handed person attempts to access short-term memory, their eyes will move up and to the left, where if they are lying, which engages a creative center in the brain, they go up and to the right. Oddly, this is reversed in left-handed people. A big clue as to whether someone is right- or left-handed (if you don’t know them well enough to know) is to look for their wristwatch, which will be on the opposite hand, if you can’t get them to write something down for you. (Ask for their phone number, and if they try to hand you a business card, get them to write something on the back like their cellular phone number, business hours, secretary’s name – anything at all will do, just to see which hand wields the pen.)

People also tend to become less animated when they are lying, clasping their hands or crossing their arms when you have observed them “talking with their hands” in most of the rest of the discussion. Liars will also tend to look away from you and even move away from you as they lie, a subconscious effort to try to distance themselves from an uncomfortable situation. Touching the nose and covering the mouth while speaking are classic body language signs, but when you look at these, you’re looking for CHANGE in behavior, not so much the behavior itself. People do sometimes get an itch in their nose, or realize they have bad breath or ugly teeth, or shift their posture because of an aching joint.

It’s because of this that you must realize that it takes several minutes of observing someone to make this determination, not just a quick jab with an incriminating question. You must see enough of how they act when they are speaking normally and truthfully (by getting them to talk about something non-threatening or non-incriminating) before bringing up the subject you think they lied about or before thinking they’ve lied about something they brought up with you. That’s the value of small-talk, something that most men are very, very poor at engaging in because we really just don’t like to talk that much; we prefer to take action. That’s another reason women have such an edge on us; they enjoy small talk and are very good at conducting it, especially in getting to the truth. However…

There are some techniques that can be combined with body language reading that nobody, not even experienced con-artists, can beat. They involve watching for hesitation in response to a question. Let’s say you think your partner was on a date with someone else, and you say that somebody she works with whose name you can’t remember stopped you in the grocery store to say hello and asked how you were getting along after the break-up, and mentioned that they assumed there had been a break-up since she was dating this other guy. If she is innocent, she will immediately protest, because she has no idea what you are talking about, but if she hesitates, it’s because she’s guilty and has to think and make a choice about whether it is safer in that moment to accept that she’s been caught or to try to deny it and bluff through. The hesitation before she speaks, not whatever she says, is what tells the tale.

Another good tactic is a diversionary one. You tell a partner that you know all about something they’ve been doing (that you really are only suspecting), and that you understand how and why it happened and are willing to let that go if they will promise that something lesser won’t be happening again, like hearing it from her friends instead of her. When she agrees to make the promise, which is easier than the confession, she has confessed to the transgression.

Even here, you can still take advantage of hesitation. A person with nothing to confess will immediately deny they did anything, and a person with something to confess looking for an easy way to do it will immediately make the promise or will pause while weighing their chances of getting away with another denial, the only reason for them to hesitate. I don’t care for this particular tactic because it requires lying to detect the lie, but my job is to instruct you, not judge you, and it is highly effective.

People also tend to objectify and generalize when they are lying. A person who really worked late will tell you that they worked until 10:30PM, while someone who is lying is much more prone to say they “worked really late.” Also, they will tend to say, “left MY office” if they were really there, as opposed to, “left THE office” if they were not. Again, this must be weighed with other indicators, as the use of these pronouns can vary because of personality, level of detail-orientation, etc. It’s the change from using words like “my” to words like “the” or the change from speaking actively, like “I did this,” to passively, like “this was done,” focusing on the event or act rather than on them that tells the tale.

There is a book by David Lieberman, PhD, called “Never Be Lied to Again,” that has been on the NY Times Best Seller list and is an excellent book if you really want to dig deep into this subject and become a true expert. I’ve also used a lot of the hand-held lie detection gadgets and computer software that do voice print analysis, but was not impressed; there were too many false positives and false negatives for me to see them as useful tools at the time (the manufacturers’ reports of their own tests indicated that they were proud of numbers like 62% accuracy, which is only 12% better than half the time!). Over time, you can expect these products to increase in accuracy, just as voice recognition software that lets you give input to your computer has improved, but it may not happen until most of us are too old to care.

Communications is a tough subject, even when everyone is telling the truth. There are good and bad ways to ask questions of women, good and bad ways to start conversations, and good and bad ways to end them as well. When you’re already in a stressful situation like a fight or after a break-up, the last thing you want to do is trip over some protocol or miscue that you don’t know about and end up with your foot in your mouth and your signature on divorce papers because of it. Let me help you with that…

Go to http://www.makingherhappy.com/ and download your copy of “THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage” right now, and get with the program. If your relationship is not in crisis, it will show you exactly how to not only keep it from getting there, but how to make it better. If you are in crisis, it will show you how to determine whether you should indeed reverse it or let it go, and if it is a relationship that you should save, it will show you what to do to quickly get things on stable footing and get everyone in a state where they are receptive to working things out and making positive change.

If it shouldn’t be saved, you’ll learn how to turn your combative soon-to-be ex into a cooperative soon-to-be ex who may go so far as to set you up with dates after a non-contested divorce without using control, threats, tricks, or deceit. Seemingly far stranger things have happened to my readers…

I’m sure you’ve heard that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure;” this is about a pound of prevention and it’s worth several tons of cure, and it can be yours for less than the price of a good meal for two, so get it done – or would you prefer to be alone after shelling out that $34,000 that the average contested divorce costs in the U.S.??? I didn’t think so!

In the meantime, live well, be well, and have a wonderful day!
David Cunningham

Labels: Communication, Lie Detection, Lying, predators, Red Flags, Warning Signs

Baker County Deputies said they’ve put up a sign 10 times to warn neighbors about Torres, and all 10 times the sign was taken down.
The last two signs were put in his yard near the road in concrete. Deputies said the final straw was when they saw Torres in action removing the sign.

“He thinks he can circumvent the law and he can be the only one,” Sheriff Joey Dobson said. “We have five predators in Baker County. All of them have signs in front of their houses, and he is no different. He is going to have a sign in front of his house.”

Dobson said people will know. He said another sign will go up next week, and it will also be placed in concrete.
“We have made the decision that the signs are the best way to notify the community,” Dobson said. “We’ve done that for years and it’s worked properly.”

source: http://constitutionalfights.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/fla-installs-signs-in-sex-offenders-front-yards/

LAURENCE FISHBURNE

Want more? Check out a review of a working script HERE but heads up – MAJOR spoilers are revealed. They don’t give away the ending or who survives etc. – but they do touch on a some details that you might prefer to be suprised by while watching when the movie opens on July, 7th 2010.

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The Flames had a pretty poor first period, but I thought they came out in the second and third wanting to win this game. Then they just ran out of time. But you can’t be mad at the effort. Except for Jokinen’s effort, or lack thereof. And what was with Glencross wheeling around throwing pucks in random places? I think he was either super-excited that he’ll be in bed by 9:00pm, or on drugs.

A writer over at TheWrap.com has his list of the top ten movies to see besides ‘Avatar’ and Adrien’s ‘Predators’ he says is “the most anticipated genre flick”.  I, too am looking forward to this film, but not for the same reason.  He likes the fact that Laurence Fishburne has signed on.  I think Adrien will probably be the sole survivor of the ragtag team since he’s the most unlikely hero as others have put it.  Of course, I am also looking forward to the releases of ‘Splice’ and ‘High School’ as well.  And if they would finally release ‘Manolete’ I would be one happy camper next year.  When Penelope won that Oscar for ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’, I thought for sure they would blow the dust off of ‘Manolete’ and put it out there.  Maybe if she wins something for ‘Nine’ they will seriously consider it.

Sexting in schools: good or bad? You decide

Social networking attacks on the rise. New wave of phishing attacks targeting the users of these applications

AFP: Sex, hot online search topic for children: Norton While the top three search terms for Internet users under the age of 18 were YouTube, Google, and Facebook, the words “porn” and “sex” took the next two positions, based on data from Symantec-owned Norton.

Privacy watchdog files complaint against Facebook A Washington-based privacy advocacy group has filed a complaint against Facebook over the social network’s latest privacy changes.

Twitter temporarily hacked, now up. Domain name system records were temporarily “compromised. Micro-blogging site Twitter said its domain name system records were temporarily “compromised” Thursday night, but that the problem was fixed later.

Shooting Swan
By Corby Anderson

“What is it?” asked Sam. Both of their heads were tilted upwards, watching the strange object buzz towards them.
“It’s a drone. Be still Sami,” replied Tariq. To Sam, his older brother looked much older than his twelve years in the focused light of the sideways sun.

The brothers watched the plane flying in high, banking turns around the valley. The white wings of the plane flashed brilliantly when it made a turn to the west. The mountains that rose up in triumphant ridges, lining both sides of the Swat seemed to hold the plane within their confines, like a silver fish caught in deep net.

“Will they shoot it?” asked Sam.
“Shh. I don’t know. They may not want to give away their positions. Be still, I said.”
The older boy put his arm across the bony shoulders of his brother. The gesture calmed down Sam, and he barely noticed when Tariq put his scratchy palm across his mouth. The plane turned its wings hard towards the fading sun and started to make a long turn back towards the steep mountains that lay ahead of the young boys. They watched from behind a scrape of black rocks which sat above their father’s farm as the traffic below scattered from their pocked ribbon of dirt that paralleled the river.

Sam fidgeted, now aware of his brother’s hold on his mouth. He had more questions to ask, but Tariq’s grip was firm and insistent. “Sami, settle down. Listen to me. Do you want to get blown up by a missile?” said Tariq. His brother’s intense face had just enough fear etched across it that Sam decided to swallow his questions. He hoped that he would remember them later, and that Tariq would be amenable to answering them. They were good questions. The buzz that came from the engines on the place rattled around the walls of the canyon before them. It sounded like two rattlesnakes fighting over the fore and aft of a field mouse. Still, it was more peaceful sounding than the helicopters that came in waves from time to time. Tariq’s nerves could handle the uncertainty of a single plane much better than squadrons of the American copters and their gunship escorts.

Sam watched as the plane continued to curl in its pink-hued arc. It would be dark in minutes. There would be no bird for dinner tonight. The plane had stolen their hunt. Sam thought of the meal that his grandmother would be making down in the valley and his stomach began to groan with excitement. No bird, but it did not matter – she could cook a royal meal with no meat, no rice, no flour or spices. Her magical cooking had sustained most of his young life.

The older brother wasn’t thinking of dinner. He was thinking of darkness. As soon as it was dark enough, he would tell Sami to run down the mountain, across the bridge, and to the house. The drone would still work in the dark, but he had heard that it could only see the flaming barrels of a night gun, not two dark-clad boys running in the shadows. He kept his arm around his brother, his hand still covering his mouth, but now only loosely. With his left hand he thumbed the trigger of the old Russian hunting rifle. Its stock was scratched and dented, its emaciated wood barely holding the old iron screws that kept the barrel attached.

The plane banked to the east now, heading upriver. “What is it looking for?” Tariq asked under his breath. He scanned the road and could see no cars or bikes. The Taliban were around, but they would be in hiding deep in the cellars and caves if they heard the drone come into the valley. The sun continued to sink to their left, down river. In a dramatic display, it showed its very last tip in a fiery spot above Malaam Jabba Peak, where the ski resort once was. Sami thought of his grandmother. My, she would have loved to have a bird to roast tonight, he thought. He felt shamed for not being able to bring home the duck he had so boastfully promised her. Together, they had harvested a basket of eggplants and a large melon, and she had explained to Sami in excruciating detail how she would prepare his duck alongside their bounty in the night’s meal.

The plane slowly buzzed down the valley, menacing the evening calm. Tariq watched intently, and pointed immediately when he saw the truck bolt across the road from the apple orchard towards the center of his village. Sami watched for a moment with his brother as the truck lurched along through the field. About halfway across the hay-lined double track, the truck seemed to get stuck. It shimmied back and forth for at least a minute. Its gears grinded loud enough for Tariq to hear that its driver did not understand the fineries of a manual transmission. Finally the men inside the truck jumped out. They tried rocking the truck back and forth, but the tires just spun freely against the fine river sand that lined the field. The drone swooped back once more, reversing course in a sweeping turn. Tariq was sure by its attitude that the drone had seen the truck and it’s former occupants, who were now running in every direction away from the stuck vehicle. He watched with an increasing anxiety as one of the men ran in the direction of their home. He could see the man’s white turban bobbing quietly as he ran through the gardens that were just two blocks from their house.

“Why don’t they shoot it?” Sam asked. Tariq’s hand had fallen away completely now, and he forgot that he was being shushed. Tariq looked down at his little brother, surprised. “I don’t know. They can, I know that. Maybe they are cowards. Afraid to give up their positions. See?” he asked, now pointing down the road. “Those men are running. The drone sees them, but I don’t think that it will do anything unless one makes it to a house. I am concerned that this one directly ahead may run to our house. That is my worry.” he said.

Seeing the concern mounting on his brother’s angled brow, Sam decided to lighten things up. He knew one sure way to make his brother laugh. Both spent most of their day’s time making jokes about their unreasonably mean sister. However, on this day she had fallen ill, and the regular fare seemed inappropriate. Sam thought for a moment. He toed the pebbles that were gathered at his feet with the worn leather of his father’s old sandals. Quietly Sam slipped his right arm out of the sleeve of his shirt, keeping it inside next to his body and letting the sleeve flop loosely by his side. He watched Tariq for a moment, and then started to swing the loose sleeve at him. “Look at me,” he said with perfect comic intonation, “I’m an arm-ey of one!” His brother looked at him out of the corner of his eye with disdain. His glare warned that danger was still present, but Sam knew it had passed. Besides, they were just boys out tending to their flocks. The Americans knew what to shoot at. Their bullets were expensive. They were smart, he had heard, and they only worked on the Taliban, who were not from his town anyways. Most of them were jerks and arrogant and ripe with hatred. He swatted at his brother a few more times with his empty sleeve, and then put his hidden hand up into his armpit. The year prior, when school still met, he had learned from a boy during a quiet moment of outside study how to make a noise like a rap record with his underarm.

Starting softly, Sam began to chant the lyrics to a favorite shepherding song. As he reached the first chorus, he began to drive his elbow back and forth with varying degrees of vigor. He kept his little hand cupped against the joint underneath his shoulder, and pushed air through the openings of his fingers. The result was a rambunctious aural display of pops, poots, squirts, and deep, bassy blorts. The young boy gathered steam, creating a steady beat of underarm rhythms timed perfectly to his mocking lyrical tone. His soft, blue eyes focused directly on the almost identical pair that belonged to his nervous brother, and laughing now between almost ever word, Sam imitated their sister Mela, she of the shrill screech of a dying parrot – and doing a fine job of it, with backing music to boot. Irritated at first, Tariq could not help but fall prey to his brother’s comic talents. His face had been like a dam, smooth and unflinching. Now, with each new line of the old familiar song, with each farting noise of accompaniment, cracks began to form in his stern visage. Small cracks led to the formation of larger seams along his sharp cheeks, then entire folds of skin were laid back in a rippling grin. Soon he was laughing in uncontrolled snorts alongside Sam, pitifully singing along. He is so talented, he thought, this brother of his. But so young and foolish, he thought too. God help him, he thought finally, for he makes me laugh so much. Sam ended the song in an arm-pumping flourish and the two sat laughing from the gut, trying to stifle their noise by both burying their faces in their chests. Tariq did this first, and Sam watched him, as always, and then copied his brother, as he did most always.
Tariq gradually composed himself. His cautionary tone returned with renewed urgency. “Sami, you have to promise me that you will stop singing like that. Do you want them to find out? Do you not recall what they did to Jola and his horn?”
Sam thought for a minute. Before they conscripted him, the Taliban had poured candle wax into his older cousin’s ears, and ran over his prized French horn with the tires of their trucks. It had all been a big show, out in the open for everyone and God to see. “No.”
“Then you must stop.”
Sam considered his brothers warning, looked him squarely in the eyes, and said sincerely that he promised. He offered out his arm to shake on his promise, and when Tariq took it, Sam jerked his right arm forward, bleating out one last sharp underarm fart. This earned him a hard wallop to the back of the neck and a hushed string of choice words from his brother, but Sam thought that the timing was unavoidably perfect, and that it was worth it. After a moment of squabble, they both turned their attention back to the valley below and the plane that was hunting along its banks.

After a few minutes, Sam could see that the men from the truck had all separated and were making their way into the village. “Riq, I am ready to go down the mountain. The plane is not going to shoot a single man,” offered Sam, breaking the silence. “Its bullets are too expensive for that.” His stomach now quaked with hunger. He was thinking of the eggplant that he had watched his grandmother pull from the garden early that morning. Its skin was a perfect purple hue, like shiny velvet. The squash was so ripe that it smelled good enough to eat raw, without the curry. He imagined it cubed and steaming on a bowl, with her famous sauce for dipping filling the bowl that he had made her from a tortoise shell.
“Maybe, but two people?” Tariq asked.
“Well they are all going in different directions. Two will not go to the same house. They have houses everywhere. There is no need to bunch up,” reasoned Sami.
Tariq turned towards his brother. His face was red with irritation. “Well what about our grandmother? What if they run in on her? Is that not two people? Are we not two people? Sometimes you don’t think at all, Sami. Have you already forgotten Samir? Jedah? You will get killed like them if you don’t start to think better about things such as these,” scolded Tariq.

The plane flew quickly above over the abandoned truck, this time much lower than any of its previous passes through the valley.
“I wish they would just shoot it,” said Sam. “It is a terrible plane.”
Tariq settled back against the rocks. He tapped the barrel of his rifle lightly against a pile of volcanic rocks in front of him. He was quiet for a few minutes, and then he started to smile a bit. Sam watched his brother’s face now. Still he heard the buzzing of the thing, but it seemed to be down towards Malaam Jabba once again. “Maqmoud told me that they know how to see what it sees,” he said finally.
“How do they do that?” asked Sam.
“I don’t know. It is a computer. They have a code.”
“A code?” Sam smiled. Other than soccer, or his family, the only thing in the world that Sam loved as much was a computer. There were two in his school and whenever he had the chance to use them he would sit transfixed by the array of electronics. His teacher had teased him for kissing the screen of the monitor the last time that he had been allowed on the machine, but he didn’t care. He loved it almost the same as he loved his own brother.

“Yes. They can look into the camera that is onboard and see what the robot camera sees. Maqmoud says that soon they will be able to take control of the planes and crash them into the rocks,” Tariq said. The drone echoed lightly. It was now out of sight. Tariq studied the mountain below and stood up to walk the two miles back to their house.
Sam sat staring at the rocks where they had sat in hiding. An expression of giddy excitement was cast on his brown face. “Riq! I hope they smash one! I want to see its computer. I want to learn how to make a plane like this one.”
“Don’t be silly. You cannot make one of those planes. Especially if they smash it. Where do you get these silly ideas? Are you sure that your father is Houshman Krita?”
Sam looked up at his brother disappointedly. He thought that his idea was a good one. He thought that Riq just liked to make fun of him because his own ideas were not as modern. “Come on little one. Lets go. It is almost too dark to see our way down.”

The path down from the high steppes where the flock normally waters for the night is treacherously steep and littered with sharp rocks. Old men don’t use the trail anymore. They say that it is too dangerous. Only young boys moving herds or fighting men used the trail. The bright grey granite was perfectly mixed, as if in some enormous ice cream blender, with the course black basalt rock. Small cactus and dead looking wire brush filled every crack in the rocks, and where there was room for a mound of dirt, sweet sage sprouted up. Peppering the hills along the trail are bright green cedars – their branches straight like the arms of a straw man. Occasionally an old, weathered pinon pine snaked its way grotesquely towards the sky from the fertile soil. But those were mostly gone now. The people needed their heat more than their beauty.

The brothers made their way down the hill slowly. Tariq shouldered his bird gun, and Sam carried their rucksacks but wished that he could carry the gun. His mind was alternating between visions of his grandmothers cooking and the computer that sat waiting for his attention at school. He could not wait for school to reopen. It had been too long. He loved moving the sheep and goats. He loved more than work the hunting and soccer; the days spent staring at cloud heads and rainbows. But learning languages and math and music and laboratory and computers – it was what made him wake up running. He missed his classmates and his teachers. Tariq did not miss school at all. Since they made it off limits, he had taken over Jalil’s herd in addition to his own, and after a summer of learning to move and protect twice the head, he loved the responsibility of it. And Tariq liked much better the new religious studies that had taken their old schools place. They made more sense to him. He felt empowered by the teachings of his elders, connected much more so to the teachings of the prophet than the unprovable lessons of the old textbooks and the young teachers who used to push them on him.

As they walked Sam could hear the buzzing of the plane off in the distance. Occasionally it sounded like it sputtered and was going to crash. He held his breath each time, thinking what bounty it would be to bring back to Maqmoud and his friends the computer that lives inside it’s nose. Tariq listened for the sounds of town as they descended further and further down the steep ravine. It was very quiet in town. Not a single car moved. Everyone was still staying hidden from the roving plane. It was still dusk, and thought the sun was down there was enough light to see clearly for another 15 minutes.

Tariq walked ahead of Sam. Sam watched as the sling on Tariq’s rifle slid off of his shoulder with every other step. His arm was too tired to hold the gun, he thought. It had been a very long day, and together they had walked many miles since the dawn prayers. More than most days, and most days saw them go twice around their world, it seemed to Sam.

Tariq felt sluggish and weak. The hill was so steep. Downhill seemed to take more out of him than uphill had. His nerves had been pierced by the plane. When his brother tapped lightly on his shoulder, he turned slowly to see what he wanted. Sam motioned to Tariq that he would shoulder the rifle with a loving smile. Tariq let the rifle slide down his arm. He had to dip slightly to let the gun slip over the knobby protrusion of bone that was his left shoulder. Sam gingerly held the frayed old nylon strap and considered the gun. It was a Russian single-shot rifle with a bolt lever – originally for military use, converted to a sporting gun long before. The name Mosin-Nagent was etched in Russian letters into the rusting steel barrel. Their father had hunted game with the rifle before handing it down to Tariq four years prior. The rotting barrel was nearly ringed with crude hash marks. It had come to their family nearly encircled by these marks, and they had simply continued to add to it. Tariq had a feeling that not all of the marks had been made after shooting a pig or duck, but he recalls easily the strange ecstasy of carving his first notch on the stock, when he was only eight. The knife was covered in the steaming blood of a young deer taken in the early winter. His hand had shaken so.

Sam thought about hanging the rifle over his chest, perpendicular to his body, which was a much easier was to carry a gun as long as the Russian. He thought better of that idea when he looked at the sky. The day’s sun was dead to its world, but in its wake it had left a vibrant, bloody swath that was pooling out over the entire valley. The sky vibrated with the electric hues. The projected display energized the clouds, which in turn began to rumble to life. This much light left in the day made it possible to see the birds if they were to come across one in the marsh below. He kept the gun on his shoulder in case they did. Though the night was beating back the day, it was not too late to see their prey silhouetted against the breaking sky.

As Tariq and Sam picked their way down the darkened path – Tariq always in front, the air began to fill with the resounding din of chattering insects. Down out of the drainage and now on the lower flanks of the exposed ridge that swept down like a ramp from the mountain above, the brothers could see the grove of trees where the truck had been abandoned. Through the thickening chorus of cicada, Tariq thought that he could still hear the Toyota’s engine idling. Sam watched the marsh and thought of his grandmothers cooking. He knew his ill-mannered, ill-in-general sister would chide them for coming home without protein for the curry. With her, there was no trick to calm her. She was a force of nature unto herself. Were she ever to marry, both her brothers would both dance for joy and weep for the fate of their new brother.

A movement below them stopped Tariq in mid-step at the crux of a switch back. Below, at the base of the hill that they were descending, a tall man stood up and looked over his shoulder at the brothers. In the dim light, Tariq could see the sleek tip of a grenade and its long launch tube cast in black against the reflected sunset that had overwhelmed the marsh. The man stood for a moment studying the brothers above him, seemed to motion in some indecipherable way, and then took off in a half crouching run. When he reached the edge of the water, another figure appeared behind him, and then another. Each had the minarets of war slung over their shoulders. Tariq held his arm out against Sam’s chest, physically stopping his progress downhill. “Soldiers. Be still,” he said briskly. The sound of the awakening locusts nearly drowned out all sound now. The buzz was omnipresent, the orchestra whipped into a frenzied pitch.

One of the fleeing men broke off from the other two who took a route that skirted around the edge of the marsh. The third man went a more direct route, aiming directly for Tariq and Sam’s fathers house, which stood set back, fronting a pasture that separated it from a group of other houses. In doing so, he committed to sloshing through a hundred meters of knee-deep water. The going was more difficult, but his route was quicker by half, and ran him under the relative cover of some scattered marsh cedars.
“Is he going to our house?” asked Sam.
“I think so. Do you hear anything?”
Sam listened. “No, just these stupid bugs.”
“I think that the plane is back,” said Tariq.
“No. I don’t. It is just the bugs. The men are coming out now that it is dark.”
“Well, walk fast. I hope that man is gone when we get there.”

The soldier splashed through the center of the pond, creating a small red wake in his path. He moved quickly and directly, and as he neared the other side of the marsh he hit dry ground in full stride, running right through a clutch of large whooper swans, who flailed their wings and danced in sudden panic at the mans intrusion. The long necks of the birds craned and bobbed in unison as the man tore through their ranks, kicking at their blockade of white wings as he ran. Tariq watched as first one swan, and then another ran after the soldier in furious charges. He saw too when the man leapt over the back of one of the birds and tripped on its neck when it swung around to peck him, landing on another bird in a rolling heap of dark fabric and bright feathers. The commotion sparked a movement. All at once, the flock, minus one, ran into the water, stepped high on its surface with their webbed feel, and then together rose up on the strength of their powerful wings.

The swans exploded out of the marsh and climbed quickly towards the hillside before them. Their wings pounded the air. This both Tariq and Sam could hear very clearly above the now raging song of the cicada. Tariq watched the man struggle to stand up on the banks of the marsh. The remaining swan appeared entangled in the strap of his rocket and was giving him fits.

Sam followed the flight of the swans, his eyes locking onto their beautiful wings, now drenched orange and purple, pink and red by the strange hues of the last light, which was transmitted downward, echoed from the reflective clouds that were steaming above. Instinctually, Sam slid the rifle off of his shoulder, fumbled with the safety briefly, but quickly overcame the lever and rose the barrel to the murky sky where the birds would be making their pass within just a few heartbeats.

Just downhill from Sam, Tariq was doubled over with laughter at the antics of the man who appeared to be losing an embittered wrestling match with the incensed swan. The swan was on top of the soldier now, pecking at his head, tearing off his burqa, pulling huge chunks of hair from his beard. The man could do nothing but fend off the swan as he desperately grasped for his knife from its sheath below him. Tariq laughed and laughed. He had never seen a funnier sight. After a moment, he thought it a bit strange that Sam was not pounding heartily on his back in agreement, since he was one to never miss a chance to make fun of someone. The roar of the cicadas thickened impossibly, drowning out all sound. Tariq turned back uphill to point out the incredible scene to his oblivious younger brother.

Sam steadied the long barrel to the sky. Excitement coursed through his small body. Adrenaline fired through him like a thousand spark plugs. In his excitement, he forgot to snug the butt of the gun into his underarm. Instead, Sam held the gun directly out in front of his face, a position that offered him a direct line of sight down the barrel. He watched through the sight as the nine swans climbed into view. He would have a bird for grandmother’s curry after all, and not just a common duck, but a bird fit for kings!

As the lead swan rose up on the thermals suddenly, it raced out ahead of Sam’s sight. Sam gave up on tracking it, and drifted the barrel back towards the larger group of birds that trailed the lead. One by one, Sam danced his sight from bird to bird. In a magical way, time seemed to stop just long enough for Sam to choose his prey from the flock. He did not hear Tariq yelling, though it was at the top of his normally restrained voice, nor did he feel Tariq’s desperate tugs upon his the thin blouse of his hand-me-down shirt sleeve, though he yanked with all of his twelve-year-old might. He saw only birds flocking across his sights in a sustained, slow climb. He counted again with the tip of the rifle. One, but that one is gone already. Two – smaller. Three and four are smaller still. Five was out on the wing, further away than the rest. Six was a nice hen, a fat mother. Sam liked the looks of the sixth bird. But to be sure he checked the rest. Seven and eight were smaller than six and further out on the fringes, and the ninth looked to be gaining speed, separating from the flock, too fast for Sam’s liking. He started to settle back towards the middle, where the largest bird flew when he saw out of the corner of his eye a much larger bird rising out of the marsh, moving far quicker than the rest. Keeping one eye on the fat hen, he glanced back to his right where the monster was racing towards its flock. He turned to swing the barrel towards this new bird and nearly ran right into his older brother Tariq, who was running past him. The noise was incredible. The air turned violent. The birds banked away in instinctive group fright, flying suddenly to the east. All but one.

12-18-09
Los Angeles, California