Assorted Notes on Killing (Part VII)

We are both nearsighted and cagey, Friends, and we therefore refuse to speculate as to whether the future does or does not last forever. We can and will wholeheartedly confirm, however, that our post-election giddiness lasted but a few short days. Our liver and our door-knocking knuckles yet throbbed with painful satisfaction when we realized that mere personnel shifts aren't going to winch us from our national and global nightmare anytime soon.

What, you don't live in a national nightmare?

Lucky fucking you. Just wait. We don't know when it'll hit you.

What we and all longtime readers of the Swill do know, however, is that we are smack dab in that time of year when complicated minds turn to uncomplicated facts: that urine smells; that it's not darkest just before dawn but coldest; that meat doesn't grow on trees; that a bullet through the lungs produces a sort of luminous frothy spray; that arteries bleed brightly; that dark heavy drops disappearing in 100 yards mean muscle (and, in circles we inhabit, secondarily mean that somebody fucked up).

In short, Friends, the killing time is upon us. Time to put away the long knives, because short knives are more efficient (and don't threaten to perforate one's colon if one happens to sit upon them for too long). Time to rub oil over the leather pouch your mother brought you back from vacation when you were eleven, and time to rub your grandfather's "Old Timer" knife over a white stone with just a few drops of oil; time to wish you had listened a little more closely when your grandfather was trying to give you what is turning out to be -- however briefly -- truly useful information. Time to prepare yourself for truly understanding the cycles of life, for freezing your ass off, for communing with the great outdoors, for connecting with family, for acknowledging History and Nature.

In short, it's time to invoke a number of romantic categories in order to justify obtaining meat from the wilderness rather than from the grocery store or the bistro. Experience tells the Swill that if enough of these categories are invoked -- and if the language is gauzy enough and one appeals frequently enough to Tradition -- one might just barely escape being branded a mouth-breathing redneck (or worse, a Communitarian).

This is only part VII in what promises to be at least an VIII-part series, Friends, and it's going to be an early morning as we make the great treck north, seeking neither fame nor fortune but merely a plate full of dinner without Safeway's moniker tattooed upon the main course. We have a bottle of Hoppe's #9 that is calling our name, an assload of wool socks to pack, and some quiet thoughts to entertain.

But we promise to get back to you in just a few days with Conclusions We Have Drawn.