Person 1: The world sure is beautiful. Isn’t the world beautiful? Don’t we live in a beautiful world?
Person 2: Mmm.
P1: I just saw a gravel road running into the woods back there. Even in this cold rain it was beautiful. It reminded me of the woods out at my parents’ house.
P2: Mmm.
P1: Not that I’d actually want to live there. I’d want somewhere with more of a view. I’d feel too isolated stuck in these dark woods all the time.
P2: Not to mention afraid of robbers.
P1: I suppose so. Although your grandparents have several guns.
P2: No fooling?
P1: Your grandpa has a Winchester 30.30 that I know of, real nice saddle gun, and a Colt .38 detective, you know, snubnose revolver. Except once you have robbers in the house it’s usually too late to run and get the guns.
P2: Uhhuh.
P1: The .38, you couldn’t hit a damn thing with that short barrel either. A human close up, maybe. But grandpa and I were shooting at rats once when I was a kid. Loud as hell. We hid in the barn, waited for rats to come out, no further away from us as that red car in front of us, took careful aim and BANG. Jesus. Couldn’t hear a damn thing for fifteen minutes. Of course the rats all disappeared. We waited another half hour and BANG!!. Didn’t hit any rats either time. They didn’t come back again that night, though.
[Insert usual gun-control blah blah here]
P1: That .38, though, decent stopping power if you did manage to hit someone.
P2: Really?
P1: Not as much as a .45 of course. That was originally invented, eh, not sure when* but it was invented by some colonial military, British in Malaysia maybe** because they were fighting these local guys who’d go amok and could manage to run clear up to their soldiers and kill one or two even if they took a few shots on the way. The .38s weren’t stopping them. In your European wars, you know, shoot a guy, he’d go, “oh, I’m shot, better sit down, medic!” whereas these guys, they’d wear armor or tie vines or ropes around themselves as tourniquets and go amok and shit, actually had to knock them off their feet with something big.
P2: Is that so?
P1: Of course, now you’ve got even bigger guns, magnum .357s and .44s and stuff, which are handy I guess if you’re walking down the street and suddenly have to shoot a moose or something.
P2: What’s amok exactly?
P1: Basically go apeshit and try to kill as many people as you can. I saw someone go amok once.
P2: Really? Who?
P1: Um, a maid at work.
P2: Heh.
P1: [Tells story] They finally flew her home. Glad I wasn’t on that flight. Screaming babies would be nothing compared to that.
P2: Anyway.
P1: Anyway. Beautiful world we live in, kid.
- *end of the 19th century **US military in the Philippines
it’s nice to know that being half filipino i can probably take a couple gunshots if i’m going for a guy. *grin*
Attitude is key, but apparently “chewing special leaves” and “wrapping oneself tightly in rope or vines” beforehand helps.
your definition of ‘amok’ reminds me of the movie ‘Erik The Viking’, in which there was a member of Erik’s clan designated as ‘The Berserker’. Funny movie- you should see it if you haven’t.
Actually, in this conversation, the differences and similarities between berserk and amok were also discussed. Berserk and amok (in battle) strike me as fairly similar, being intentional; whereas someone just going postal style amok would be different from berserk in that it wasn’t intentional. But the berserkers were, I believe, a warrior class, who lived outside normal society, drinking MD20/20 and heckling normal Viking passersby. But don’t take my word on this.
I get to see berserk and amok in my classroom every day. When they run amok, I go berserk.
You’ve already hosted a comment thread about the etymology, and philosophical grounding, of “amok,” right?
When I was little, I had a mammoth 12 gauge shotgun. OK, I’m still pretty little; the thing was almost as tall as me, I swear. It was useful for scaring away the gangs that haunted us in the stinking redneck hell where my mom bought her first house, on a corner, while I wore a big-city Catholic school uniform and she dated a string of black cops. Oh, let me tell you the backlash from that was extra fun. I never shot at an actual person, but I did carry it to the door a few times. And I got really, really good at shooting skeet. I kind of miss that.
Skeet shooting.
Not El Sobrante (which is a big beige luxury estate, now. The Fry’s Market where I bought our groceries is now that major chain of electronics stores. Go figure. {Added El Sobrante trivia: Les Claypool grew up there, worked at the Shell station down the street from our house. I had a crush on his coworker. thought he was gross. ffwd to the mid-80s, when he lived in Berkeley and started his band. ffwd to now, when I’m typing this comment from the office that was at that point his bedroom. Neat.})
Primus. The band is/was Primus. I always figure everyone knows that, since they play every Halloween and NYE, but that’s just here. They’re nifty. You should check them out.
Thanks for the clarification, Jessica. When I first read “Les Claypool” I thought it was something French.
I remember seeing something about amok before, yeah. All I’ve been able to find so far was this, at feral living, which is as of this writing still accessible:
http://feralliving.surreally.com/archives/000806.html