Full disclosure: nobody died, his name wasn’t Joe, and thankfully no one was singing. And yet this is a true story.
While on a trip to my home state of West “By God” Virginia, my spouse and I were on our way between stops when we had to change lanes on Southbound I-79 just before midnight. We were in high spirits, having found a favorite restaurant open on our way and looking forward to some much deserved sleep, but being deer season, a buck had wandered onto the road and been struck. The lane change had been to avoid the fresh carcass, just behind another vehicle who had done the same.
Before we could switch out of the passing lane, the vehicle in front of us did so abruptly; a thick wooden or metal grating was in the lane and over it we went. The front tire cleared but my right rear tire snagged. A tire pressure warning on my dashboard appeared almost instantly, and Exit 5 was just ahead. I caught a glimpse of a gas station sign, so I took the exit. As I made the turn, I felt how badly the tire was pulling, so I stopped beneath the underpass to check it.
This was my first mistake.
You’re more visible on the interstate — even in a rural state like West Virginia. At midnight on a moonless night, it’s dark…like REALLY dark. Get off the road but don’t leave the road. The other problem was it was highly unlikely either of the aforementioned gas stations were open; this is a state where the capital rolls up its sidewalks at dusk. Moving on…
Realizing where I’d stopped, and took my high-lumen flashlight out and did a quick sweep of the underpass; we were alone. While I was born in WV, movies like Wrong Turn are far more realistic than The Blair Witch Project, so we weren’t looking for any encounters. I had a tire pump and a repair kit but not a spare, something my car manufacturer assured us was more than adequate.
This was my second mistake.
I have low-profile tires. They look good and grip the road really well, but what I didn’t know then is the grating had gashed my tire’s sidewall, something the repair kit wasn’t going to fix. The tire was a loss and we were stuck. A donut could have gotten us back on the road and to our next destination. Lessons learned.
And then Murder Joe appeared out of the darkness.
Continue reading “The Ballad of Murder Joe: A Cautionary Tale”
Aram is an NSA coder and cracker who wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s a successful nerd working in the intelligence community in too-close proximity of female operatives waaaaay out of his league. Part of the problem is Aram himself; he hides nothing and expects others (read: SPIES) to do the same. But Aram also puts women he admires and respects — and often fancies — upon a pedestal, equating beauty and strength with self-imposed standards of nobility and purity (of character).
The new social network gathering the requisite amount of buzz this…year? Month? Week? It’s called 
A friend pointed an article my way called 
Complexity isn’t reserved for the old; it’s often a mistake that, too often, many adults forget how smart they were as kids and underestimate young adults. The difference is experience, not intelligence. Also, the point of view of a child isn’t any less interesting than an adult – or an alien, a monster, an animal, an addict, a plumber, or an artificial intelligence. Stephen King’s Stand By Me aka “The Body” has an all-child cast; It is born of childhood fears and has one leg in. Very few will argue that John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In is “for children.”
Kevin A. Ranson 