I’m going to be teaching a class at the Writers for Life Workshop in Provo next month. There are still spots left, and your membership fee goes to charity.

Here is a post with more details: http://matthewflitton.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/writers-for-life-schedule/

I did a lot of research on human trafficking and modern slavery before Mike Kupari and I wrote Swords of Exodus. It is a horrible, evil, and surprisingly gigantic thing. One thing I’m fairly sure of about the kind of people who do that sort of thing for a living, is that they really don’t give a shit about a bunch of American movie stars taking pouty selfies of themselves holding up signs with hash tag give our girls back. The disapproval of fat, soft, Americans on Facebook really doesn’t move them. They care about getting paid or getting killed, that’s about it. The self-righteous pouting is useless.

For the idiot libprog pussies with the selfies, the world is a violent place, filled with violent men. If you actually want something to be done about these evil people, maybe you shouldn’t bitch, whine, and moan every time our military takes action against evil people. It seems odd to me that the same people demanding military action for this are the same ones that complain about military action for anything else. Oh, but wait, I forgot, the left has no overriding principles, and to them violence is always bad unless their guy does it, and evil is relative depending on how it trends on Twitter.

This kidnapping event made the news, but this sort of thing happens every day somewhere in the world. You’re shocked and outraged about this, but that just shows how little you know about the subject. There are plenty of outrageous acts of evil out there to choose from. You can take useless photos of yourself holding up a sign, but it will do nothing other than prove to your fellow idiots that you care so hard.

You want to actually do something? You can demand that America truly be World Cop and swoop in to kill all the bad people every time they do something bad somewhere… Only if you really want that, then you probably shouldn’t bitch continually about the American military doing violent things to violent people. The problem is in reality we couldn’t afford to kill every bad person, we couldn’t pull it off anyway, and it isn’t really our problem.

But if your selective outrage is really up in arms about this one, movie stars with the hash tag, I’ve got a simple solution for you. Take some of your millions of dollars and hire some mercenaries to go into Africa to shoot all the members of Boko Haram. I wonder how that would trend on Twitter. #gurkhaskillscumbags

But the left hates the private sector, so hiring Blackwater (or whatever they are named this week) to gleefully give slavers some stylish new 5.56 body piercings is out of the question. So we’re back to being useless or taking military action. And if we drop Navy SEALs on these assholes, you guys really need to think through how come it is okay for our guys to kill these woman abusing assholes, but not other woman abusing assholes. Those assholes, left wingers invite to speak at Ivy League colleges.

The real solution? Nigeria is one of dozens of screwed up countries. If Nigeria wants to be truly safe from slavers and madmen, it is going to require the Nigerians defend themselves from assholes, and if the Nigerian government won’t do it, then the Nigerian government needs to be replaced by Nigerians who want something better. For the thousands of other evil events that don’t trend on Twitter, replace Nigeria with whatever lawless hellhole country is in question and you get the same answer. People get freedom when they demand it for themselves.

On the Real Men Don’t Buy Girls campaign… Holy shit… Seriously? That is so blindingly obvious that it takes a campaign on Twitter? “OMG! I was totally buying some child brides for my harem and then I saw that Ashton Kutcher said slavery was bad! LOL. I would have been soooo embarrassed!” said no Saudi prince ever.

Sometimes I wish that Exodus was a real organization—a bunch of warriors dedicated to brutally killing slavers and evil warlords in the places where law has broken down and chaos rules—only in real life I bet the morons holding up the signs on Twitter would complain about what horrible violent cismale gendernormative colonialists they were. They’d probably come up with a catchy hash tag or something.

The video is posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGdYziux4Vc&feature=youtu.be

It is pretty darn funny. It is a long video, but if you ever wondered what it was like to hang out with the International Lord of Hate on the slopes of beautiful Yard Moose Mountain, this gives you an idea.

Jeremy is a friend of mine who was nice enough to let us use his family’s farm… which we almost burned down. Many of you already know Bob, because that is Pirate Bob Southunder, scourge of the seven seas. The character in Grimnoir? Didn’t actually change him much.

We had fun and raised some money for a good cause. And Corn truly is my nemesis. Watch Larry miss. Hear Larry swear!

If you want to jump in on the campaign and get an awesome anthology from a bunch of writers, go here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/altered-perceptions#home

I am a stretch goal! 🙂 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1486366537/world-of-aetaltis-the-temple-of-modren

Gamers, check this out. Marc has put together a really impressive roster of talent.

I know Marc Tassin because he is the man behind GenCon’s writer’s symposium. He gave me a basic outline for this world and what he was trying to accomplish with it, and I was glad to volunteer to write a story. It sounds awesome.

So the charity anthology for Rob Wells continues. It has done well so far. We’ve raised enough to get him half way out of the hole. If you missed this last week, please go check out the link. You get an anthology for a good cause.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/altered-perceptions#home

I did my part this weekend by shooting the hell out of a bunch of different things. We did ten spots at $250 which were basically “Larry Shoots Stuff!” We sold all ten of those in the first couple of days.

Originally I was planning on going down to the county gun range. (Sadly, I have neighbors on Yard Moose Mountain who frown on me shooting high powered rifles off the porch, which is why I’m fairly certain this will not be our last house) then I got this call from Rob:

Rob: “Hey, you ready for Saturday?”

Larry: “Yep. I reserved the county range.”

Rob: “Good. We’re shooting a bunch of books, and a man made out of meat and filled with salsa, and beer, and an old computer, and the New York Safe Act.”

Larry: “Uh… Not at the county range. I think they may have a rule against Meat Men. Hang on.”

So I called a friend who has a farm across the river. He was happy to let us make a mess of things. Then I called Pirate Bob Southunder (who is a real person) and he brought some more stuff.

So we shot lots of things on behalf of charity. Rob recorded it all. I don’t know if he edited out the few embarrassing misses, but fingers crossed. Holy moly, I’m rusty.

For the record, I used to be pretty darn good. Shooting was part of my job. When I was teaching I had to be able to demonstrate on command, any technique, and I had to do it fast and accurate, mostly because when you’re teaching classes full stubborn adults (and shooting classes attract a lot of Alpha types) you need to show them with no BS that you know what you’re talking about, they don’t, you’re better than them, and now they need to shut up and pay attention. 🙂

But shooting is a perishable skill, and I went from shooting three or four times a month (six or eight in the summer) to once every couple of months if I’m lucky over the last few years. But that is the nature of being a workaholic. I am happy to say that I’m still pretty darn good though, and only had a few notable misses and mistakes.

For example, if you last used a rifle on 500 yard targets, and you adjusted your scope accordingly, don’t be a rookie moron and forgot that you did so when trying to shoot pill bottles at 30 yards. Duh. It is sad when you’re using a scoped 20 inch suppressed AR from the bipod, prone, and missing, so you stand up, pull your pistol and go 3 for 4. 🙂 So luckily I haven’t forgot to shoot a pistol. (also, first round of the day with the MHI long slide 10mm on a hundred yard plate. Ding. Love that gun. It makes me look like I know what I’m doing)

We got several requests to shoot various books. For the record, I want to be clear that I was doing this for charity, and I personally have nothing against any of the books that were shot. (nobody suggested the Scarlet Letter, because I would have burned that thing). So when people see the video and whine about me destroying books, A. These aren’t Guttenburg Bibles, they are still in print. B. It was for charity. C. The authors/estates still collected royalties. D. It was for charity. E. Lighten up, it was for charity, and if you are that offended, feel free next time to donate thousands of dollars to outbid the people who wanted me to shoot books. 🙂

There was only one modern book that was asked for, and since it was a modern book by a living author (and a recent Hugo nom) I let Rob shoot that one. I saw it and I was all like, nope, I catch enough flack as it is. I’m not touching that one. Here, Rob, this is 3 inch magnum 12 pellet double aught buckshot. You’re going to want to hold on tight.

On books as clay pigeons, they fly a little wobbly, but a good impact makes for an impressive page shower. I thought I missed Moby Dick because it showed no reaction on impact. Nope. It was filled with bird shot. Only the book was so heavy that it didn’t phase it. A couple of slugs took care of it though.

Having shot lots of paper things, the New York Safe Act was put onto a crappy, virus ridden, dying computer that was sent to us, and then we lit it up with 3 guns that are banned by the New York Safe Act. The battery got hit and it caught on fire. That was cool.

And for whoever asked me to shoot cans of corn with my carry gun (and who wanted the camera close enough to get splattered) thanks a lot. I got ten feet away to make sure we’d get a dramatic splash, and 230 grain Speer Gold Dots made it so I got hit with corn shrapnel. (though on that one I actually missed a shot. At fifteen FEET. D’oh)

Now the DSM on the other hand, that book we punished. It was the one we wanted to use to metaphorically punch mental illness in the face. Rob explains it on the video. So we tried to see if it would hang from my dueling tree with duct tape (nope) and when that didn’t work we stuck it on a log and shot it about a hundred times with 9mm and .45. Then we duct taped it back together into a ball, and took out the shotguns.

Take that mental illness!

EDIT: Rob just sent me this. Meat Man’s head didn’t fare too well against a Saiga. That was our opening shot.