A Specialty Publication...

So the other day I was wandering past the magazine display at the Wal Marts, and this caught my eye:



I couldn't wait to call the only actual professional magazine writer I know to describe it.

"Seems like a fairly narrow market", I said. Her immediate response:



"No, if it was narrow there wouldn't BE a market..."

Quick Thinking Norwegian Teens Take Down Killer...

"We knew we were on our own" is often repeated by young heroes talking about their successful resistance to a killer on Norway's Utoya Island, near Oslo, site of the Scandinavian kingdom's worst mass murder ever with 34 people dead.

The island was at the time the venue of a Labour Party youth conference. But the holiday atmosphere turned to horror when a man in Police uniform appeared and began shooting the campers.
"At first he asked some of us to come over to him, when we did he started shooting at us. I saw several of my friends hit, then a bullet hit me and knocked me down." said one injured witness.

According to another teenager on the scene, "As soon as he started shooting, everyone ran for shelter. We had all been through the active shooter resistance class at school, and since we could get away, we did."

Then, witnesses say, the killer began to stalk his victims. According to another of the teens, "He just walked along the shore, and when he would find someone hiding he would kill them. We were all behind some rocks a few yards inland from the beach, and he was coming our way. "Hilda" (name changed) was beside me, and she said, "He's killing our friends! It's an island, we can't just wait until he kills everybody!".

According to this witness, "Hilda" suggested that the small group of teens fight back when the killer approached. "We learned in school that these murderers are in a high state of stress and are usually as incompetent at violence as they are at life, so resistance generally stops them. So Hilda suggested that we distract him and then attack from another direction".

"She said that we should gather up stones, and we did. Then she said she would run out from one side of the boulders we were behind, and the rest of us should attack him from the other when he saw her. "Gustav", who is 18, said he should do the running, since he was the 400 meter hurdle champion at his school, and he and "Hilda" argued over it. But she is not very fast and only 14, so we all told her to let him."

"When the man came close, watching along the shoreline, we counted down and "Gustav" took off. The man was startled to see him and pointed his rifle at "Gustav". "Hilda" said "NOW!" and she charged."

"The man shot at "Gustav" who was running in a serpentine pattern. It was about 40 meters from us to the killer, so he got a couple of shots off before "Hilda's" yelling distracted him again. She threw her rocks as she ran, the rest of us did too, and before he could get his gun pointed at us we were on him. Six of us piled on him and it was like Gulliver, we just buried him."

"Gustav" came back and joined in. We held the man down even though he struggled. We took his guns away, and a couple of us who have similar guns at home carried them some distance away and put them on the ground so no one would think they were the murderer. Other people helped the wounded. We waited for the Police and they took the man away."

Police arrived at the island crime scene about an hour and a half after a gunman first opened fire, slowed because they didn’t have quick access to a helicopter and then couldn’t find a boat to make their way to the scene just several hundred yards offshore.

The killer was taken into custody and according to sources treated for multiple fractures and dislocations.


Isn't that better than "Survivors of the shooting spree have described hiding and fleeing into the water to escape the gunman, but a police briefing Saturday detailed for the first time how long the terror lasted — and how long victims waited for help"?

How do you say "United 93, motherf*cker!" in Norwegian?

I am a tremendous advocate for teaching children, because it's true, that

"Five or six seventh-grade kids and a 95-pound art teacher can basically challenge, bring down and immobilize a 200-pound man with a gun."

Just like a bunch of farmers can drive off a King.