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9 thoughts on “540 – Trick Hello”

  1. Scarsdale

    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. Crazyman

    Gotcha! 😉

  3. Zombatar

    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?

  4. ConcordBob

    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”.

  5. 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.

  6. 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)

  7. Crazyman

    She wants him alive so she can question him; otherwise, he’d already be dead. 💀

  8. ConcordBob

    Good discussion on trigger discipline!
    His skin is very pale / gray. Is this malnourishment, or has he been poisoned with a mind-control drug? I would have to go back and look a t all various of skin tone.

  9. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Now can we satisfy my curiosity? Colt, Smith & Wesson, Ruger, or other timeline variant?

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540 – Trick Hello
Posted on February 26, 2025 by Dawn

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!

Mining the metaphysical

Posted on November 11, 2015 by Clint
I suppose it’s a writer thing, but I can be downright entertained by multiple meanings. For example, the verb “mining” could refer to the extraction of valuable resources, or it could refer to setting explosive booby traps ready to blow up in someone’s face. As anyone who’s been around the Internet is no doubt aware, bringing up religion and/or spirituality is one of the most sure fire ways to set off a (figurative) explosion. And yet such matters are so intrinsic to the human condition that it’s a rare storyteller who doesn’t set foot in that minefield sooner or later. To go back to the other meaning, there are valuables there to be mined and brought forth. Judeo-Christendom alone has provided countless strikes of metaphorical bounty for writers throughout the centuries, not even counting instances of outright fan fiction like The Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost (and those in turn have inspired quite a few spin-offs of their own). Shakespeare all but strip-mined Greek mythology for his plays, and now in latter days we strip-mine Shakespeare and posit “What if Puck was some rich dude’s executive assistant?” Now would an Ancient Greek who believed in the Gods and Goddesses and lived their life accordingly find those representations of Puck blasphemous?  Better yet, would they have been offended by, say, how Homer represented Zeus and Poseidon?

 “Unlike practical Greek religious observance, Homer’s portrayals of [deities] suited his narrative purpose, being very different from the polytheistic ideals Greek society used. To wit, the Classical-era historian Herodotus says that Homer, and his contemporary, the poet Hesiod, were the first artists to name and describe their appearance and characters.“

Sounds a lot like what we do to this day when someone decides to represent God as George Burns or Morgan Freeman. I like to think that the reactions are similar, where a minority might take offense but the majority will recognize it as fiction and have no more problem with it than a professional computer programmer does with the average Hollywood hacking scene, unless it’s particularly insulting. Anyhow, I don’t even want or need to bring personifications of myth or religion into Zombie Ranch, but I did feel that sooner or later I would want to touch on religious topics in a world-building sense, after establishing early on that Christianity in some form had survived the apocalypse. The easy mode most zombie (or apocalypse) stories seem to default to is splitting the world into two camps: atheistic amoral hooligans, or bloodthirsty religious fanatics — with the heroes caught somewhere in between, usually too busy trying to survive to really consider any theological questions. Now do extremists exist? Sure. Do they get more traction in times of crisis? By the lessons of history, absolutely. Are they the whole story? Absolutely not. Cults like the Flagellants during the Black Death came and went, but the core Catholic Church endured. And because endurance in the face of disaster is one of my biggest themes, it was a more interesting answer to me that institutions like the Catholic Church could and would endure the zombie apocalypse, and a couple decades and councils later would have discussed and resolved some of the theological issues that the walking dead presented. I find the Catholic doctrine of spirit (or “rational soul”, present only in man) versus the material soul which motivates plants and animals to be a fascinating concept, and one which I could easily see being applied to the riddle of the zombie. I lay no claim to being a theologian, but I believe the Church skewing in the direction of incorporating the new facts of life (or unlife) in the Weird New West–with as little change to existing doctrine as possible–to be a plausible outcome. Hopefully that doesn’t blow up in my face. If it does, well, them’s the breaks of mining, I suppose.