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6 thoughts on “540 – Trick Hello

  1. Called it, she figured he’d do this, if by choice or by zombie voodoo. I’m sure the “friendlier” questioning will start soon, if she doesn’t just kill him out-right. Or just add him to the herd.

  2. This turn of events is a surprise only to Eustace. And, maybe, Eustace’s subconscious. After all, this way he doesn’t have to actually risk actually attacking Suzie, which gives him a greater chance of survival than actually attacking her. I wonder what he was promised/threatened with?

  3. Not to nit-pick, but since sights are on target, finger should be on the trigger. Especially this close.
    The usual rule is “keep finger straight and off trigger until sights are on target”.

  4. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Not to nit-pick, but since that was current philosophies regarding trigger discipline have evolved.
    Of course, it will depend on who you get/got your training from.
    Experiments have determined that the fraction of a second to go from finger off the trigger to finger firing when appropriate is insignificant, and the risk of firing unintended is greatly reduced.

  5. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    I did the google thing and I believe I saw how you reached this conclusion … but there are two parts to it – One should not omit the second part.
    “Trigger Finger Discipline: · The practice of keeping your finger “off the trigger” until your sights are on target AND YOU ARE READY TO DISCHARGE THE FIREARM.” (Caps are my own)

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540 – Trick Hello

Suzie hearkening back to the last time Eustace was faked out. She probably regrets not being able to sneak the Lawn Ranger into the bedcovers to be the victim of the stabbing.

And with that, it's Episode 23 time! Welcome back to the Ranch, everyone!

Strange Love

kyle-lambert-stranger-things-posterI am a child of the 1980s. I remember rotary phones, cassette tapes, televisions with “rabbit ear” antennae (and no remotes), and the freedom of a good bike to roam the neighborhood. I remember also a time when movie studios kept pumping out awesome flicks starring kids much like me, insisting that little boys might very well befriend an alien from beyond the stars, or build a spaceship in their backyard, or find a lost secret pirate cave beneath their sleepy little town, dodging everything from gangsters to the U.S. government along the way. With that in mind, the new Netflix original series Stranger Things hits me right between the eyeballs. It’s a love letter to the early ’80s of my boyhood, both real and imagined. It also owes a substantial part of its DNA to the works of Stephen King, except that King was writing in the ’80s about being a kid in the ’50s, while Stranger Things jumps that forwards to cross-pollinate with Carpenter, Spielberg, Cronenberg, Joe Dante, and the other luminaries of the pop culture Reagan era. It works surprisingly well, and not just on a nostalgia level — although there is certainly a half-cringing joy in seeing those green and yellow striped athletic socks and tousled haircuts again, or my completely shameless joy at hearing X-Men #134 namechecked or seeing the blue cover of the D&D Expert Set that lo, I once did own. No, Stranger Things works because it goes beyond merely aping the aesthetics of early 1980s America and its films, it captures the ineffable spirit and charm of them as well. Stranger Things remembers that there was an era where child actors were not just tolerated in a cast but were the leads, and we loved those films because of them, not in spite of them. At the time I’m sure it helped that I was just about the same age as the protagonists of E.T. or The Goonies, but the kids of Stranger Things are relatable little cusses that you can’t help cheering for, able and willing to display a wide range of emotion to satisfying effect. The teenage and adult cast are no slouches either, and allow a full gamut of era-specific tropes and imagery to be run through as their seemingly separate stories all weave into one at the end. Simply put — if you like ’80s things, you’ll like Stranger Things. And even if you don’t or you’re ambivalent, I’d still tell you to give it a try, because it has good performances and a good, slow-cookin’, creepy story, the kind I’d expect the regular readers of Zombie Ranch to appreciate. Hell, the Duffer Brothers who created the series were born in 1984, one year after the setting of their fictional tale, but you wouldn’t know it. You don’t have to be personally nostalgic to appreciate what the show offers. It just helps.