Tuesday, June 21, 2016

I had a better title but I am going to call this My semi coherent gun rant

As the U.S. reels from the deadliest shooting in American History and everyone seems to weighing in. The Media has jumped in with both feet to make this the story of the year.
As if this doesn't happen over and over.
I stop and think about another massacre that everyone all but ignore until it was an epidemic and now that it's not, we went back to ignoring as if the thousands had not died. Ironically, the victims of that massacre were also gay- at least, initially.
There was a famous quote used, a book written around that quote and even a movie made.
To what am I refering?
"And the band played on..."

  • from whence: And the band played on is an expression used to describe the deliberate masking or downplaying of an impending calamity by authorities.
  • sometimes is used in reference to the band playing on while the Titanic sank.
  • In 1987, a journalist by the name of Randy Shilts would use it for a book that chronicled the discovery (creation), development and subsequent epidemic of the AIDS virus.
  • My mother read the book, I tried to read it, but I could not finish it as the disease took away an uncle that meant the world to me, even as the hatred for the disease was only displaced by the new found hatred for Gays who many believed were the cause of it.
  • In 1993, the book was made into a movie. 
  • The impact of the book was profound and helped push the ignorance around AIDS out, things got better, but in the end we still have the disease and the ignorance that scared everyone into believing all kinds of wild ideas about the disease returned to pretend we beat the disease and now it's safe to go back to unprotected sex again and so on.
This blog post is not about the book or the movie or AIDS, it's about the title of the book in reference to the problem that we all face. A few people, will recognize the problem(s) at hand while just about everyone else (or so it seems sometimes) will do anything and everything to deny or pretend that this problem(s) does not exist and the minority who believe in such a thing is delusional or communists (socialists) who need to be silenced or shamed into silence.
And the band played on.

We have another shooting. 49 gay men and women (and I suspect straight/pansexual/transexual/etc) people were gunned down by a man filled with anger/hatred and violence. Who found that the easiest way to express his feelings/intentions/beliefs/purpose was with the problem that everyone will debate until no one really wants to talk about it anymore and we will rail against each other until we are hoarse and our own fears and hatreds will destroy the rhetoric that really matters here and we (as a whole) will ask the band to play on until someone else goes on a shooting rampage and kills a lot of people at once.
The problem is guns.
Many of us like them (lots of reasons). Hell, I like them.
But people do horrible, terrible things with them.
Almost everyone who handles one will do what should be unthinkable with one. I know what you are going to say, but hear me out.
You may not shoot another human being with it. You might never shoot anything with it but a target.
You might never even shoot it at all (you would be almost unique for that) but you are more than likely to fantasize shooting someone or something alive with it. I know what you are going to say, and  you are right, it's just a fantasy. 
But let me ask you this.
When you went to the shooting range or out to the woods (I hope it was in the neighborhood or next to my house) to shoot your gun (that is any firearm) to shoot that target you didn't imagine it was a human target. This means you with the human silhouette target, Frank.
Bottom line, a firearm is designed to do one thing: KILL. 
It's not designed to paint pictures or make music. Yes, it can do these things. A fork is designed to help you eat food but you can, with enough effort kill someone with it, but it wasn't designed to kill someone. There is also the argument that people kill and guns don't. The answer is you are right it takes a person to use the gun to kill someone...unless you drop it and it goes off and kills your best friend or wife or child. Gun accidents alone account for a great many deaths in the US each year.
I could present my proof, I could spend pages and hours pouring over the evidence only to have some self righteous gun owner or troll debunk it with a single phrase.
The Second Bloody Amendment.
A right (not a law) originally written to prevent the government of 200+ years ago from abusing its citizens as the British were commonly believed to do. The amendment is dated and retranslated over and over again so that it pretty much means that anyone who wants to claim anything about guns or WMDs has a right to own one and strut around preening with it.
Today marks yet another defeat of reason against this madness as the same group of Republicans kill yet one more attempt to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists. My own state's elected cronies are headliners on that one.
One Day, though, the tide will turn.
I have to hope it does, because believing it is too hard.
I have a dream where this country will stop believing in the lies of a handful of angry white men and start believing in the the hands of all its citizens regardless of gender, sex preference, race, economic availability, political philosophy. On that day, we all will finally become Americans, not just the privileged easily bought out white male agenda driven loud mouths that are running this country into the ground.
It is so hard not to give "Them" a face and believe that they are a real threat.
We don't have to ban guns.
We should ban guns.
But we don't have to, just to find a place where proliferation is not a problem.
The law should read that you can only own as many guns as you can carry while outrunning a raging bull in your underwear.
Sure, some ingenuitive gun owners will hook extra weapons to their underwear, but since the majority of them are overweight lazy deer hunter types, they will be hauling ass butt naked.
It's a nice metaphor that makes me smile.

This is just a rant.
I hoard firearms in Fallout 4. I can be caught carrying at least 8 at any one time in this videogame.
In case you are unfamiliar with Fallout, it's a post apocalyptic video game where pretty much everyone and everything is hell bent on killing you. Like a liberal journalist at a Drumpf Rally.
But it's just a game.
I don't own a gun.
I do own a Daisy single cock Buck model BB Rifle. Which I don't use much anymore, it turns out to be useless against skunks.
I suspect it wasn't designed to kill much more than wood bees.
I can hit the broadside of my barn with it.
I have been tempted to point it at people. this scares me, because I can recognize the lure of power a firearm presents.
The main reason I don't own a firearm is that I have Clinical Depression and there is a history of suicide in my family.
I like my ugly mug in it's mostly original shape, in other words.
I call this a responsible decision, for myself and others.
Yes, by the argument of so many detractors who will read my blog (or at least the headline) and then call me names and write me off as another liberal kook, I say this.
I could probably do myself in with a spoon. I might even be able to attack someone with one of the knives or swords I own or the machete I have for chopping undergrowth or with the chainsaw- assuming I can ever get it going.
It's true.
Chainsaw deaths in this country are equal to the number of grown men crying in the backyards with raw hands, cramped biceps, screaming incoherently at their fucking tools for not working. or stalling mid cut
Oh the Humanity!
But my argument stands (the grammar nazis can bite my butt- I am going to keep using but to start a sentence! It's a Rant, get over it...I think Stephen King said that).
If I had a gun and bullets, it makes shooting people and things so much easier.
And it is the ease that scares me.
It's so easy to get a gun.
buy bullets.
and then go out and take all the frustration and anger and hurt and resentment and fears out on a group of people or persons who have gone out of their way to hurt or torment you in some way.
or just some random target or targets because you can't find another solution to your problems other than taking the easy way out.
I know someone will say it's not the easy way out.
I agree. It's the easier option.
Surviving, overcoming, living with the horror that your life has become is much much harder.
It's a given, as a seemingly average white middle age man who lives with his mother, I am painfully aware that I fit the stereotype of the psychopath, rapist, abuser, mass shooter profile.
I also have a history of being abused.
I could easily generate a long list of people who have treated me poorly, made me a social outcast, gone out of their way to harass me, hurt me, ruin my prospects with any number of women, destroy my reputation, make me into a self loathing overweight monster filled with such rage and despair that taking up a gun seems like the only way to show the world who I truly am.
It's a nice lie to tell yourself while looking in the mirror before you go out and do the unthinkable evil that is done in this country on a daily basis.
Kill someone.
No One is Immune.
We all have this potential to be that shooter.
We all have the same potential to stop that shooter.
We all can stop the potential for any and all shooters.
What is the answer?
I suspect it's the same answer that changed my life. It's the reason that a man who has so many negative attributes is also the same man who to those who actually bothered to get to know him realize that he is, in fact, a good man.
It's love.
It's why I am a Christian.
I do it for love.
It why I am a liberal, a social democrat, American and South African, a geek and a dork and an erstwhile nerd, a best friend, a good son, uncle, cousin, would be significant other.
I have potential (as we all do)
I have love.
It is that simple.
Find love and by that I mean the real stuff.
not some hot chemical human reaction to bliss but the stuff of godliness.
I found it in the words and deeds of a lowly man from Galilee.
You might find it in the words and deeds of a lowly man from India or Spain or Central America.
You will probably find it in the way your mother looks at you (assuming your mother found it as well).
The real stuff comes from the Creator of life (the universe and everything).
For me, it is in the Bible (along with all the other stuff, but it's the point of the whole book)
For me, it set me free, with it I can be who I want to be, not a product of my culture or past or present, or upbringing or religion or lack of such.
With love all things are possible.
with guns, nothing but death awaits.
If I were to dream a dream, I would wish for a world free from the need for such a tool as the gun.
It is a tool, there is no denying it.
So, instead of preaching on- which part of me wants to do, because that part believes if I can just make you see my point then surely you will join me in a weapon free world; I will, instead offer this olive branch.
Come up with a reason to love that is not as important as a reason to own a gun.
If you do, it is time for you to look in the mirror and ask yourself the hard questions.
You probably know them a lot better than me.

and that is the rant according to Mike.



Sunday, June 19, 2016

Thoughts on a Sunday Morning

Sunday's are good for musings.
(don't ask where or when I actually wrote this)
I am pretending I am sitting on my father's deck, watching the blue skies and thinking Deep Jack Handyish thoughts.

  1. If all men, and women- but mostly men, could stop for one minute, and talk without using body references- we could find a way to fax a pizza or solve internet bandwidth caps.
  2. What a world it could be if some people would no longer refer to their own children as sex gods or confuse them with cats.
  3. We could have peace on earth, if my mother could keep up with her reading glasses, or my boss, or my father, or that guy at Starbuck's - who still doesn't get that you can't read the menu for espresso by tilting your head back and squinting through them while talking to the ceiling.
  4. Chocolate may not be the key to total nuclear disarmament, but semi sweet dark chocolate might take my thumb off the trigger.
  5. If I could successfully flirt with a woman I really like; then I could probably ask for an insane raise and get it as soon as the higher ups stop laughing and choking on their Lattes.
  6. Love can heal all things, but so can duct tape. If you say no, then (cliche moment) you are STILL not using enough Duct Tape.... also use red duct tape. Nothing says I love you like red duct tape.
  7. There are two types of people in the world: Those who keep saying things like this, and those who can actually count.
  8. Church Organ music will not actually put you to sleep, you might wish you would become comatose though.
  9. Cake, or at least the very idea of Cake,  will fix most problems if you just recognize that cake will fix most problems. For everything else, there is that lame commercial jingle or Chocolate (refer to number 4 for more).
  10. If you tell everyone to sing, and for some reason they do, it will probably suck or sound really, really good.
  11. People without iphones are only as unfortunate as people with iphones and no imacs. People without droids are just unfortunate storm troopers. People without iphones or droids should not make a scene and thus avoid being embarrassed while flipping their antique phones.
  12. People who take Facebook Quizzes are blissfully unaware that sharing their privacy on Facebook with the world is paying someone else to come up with more quizzes to keep sharing their private info. It's a win- win- you gotta be kidding me win scenario.
  13. If thirteen is an unlucky number, I need to not trust Dwarves, blame RR Martin (for everything) or blame it on that guy on Youtube.
and that is Life (and utter ridiculousness) according to Mike.

Monday, June 6, 2016

Mondays (Redux)

Mondays....

But, for me and the other truly fortunate souls in the multiverse, I have Mondays off.

Let the hate, envy and outrage flow through you.... no I am not a Sith Lord, although I can laugh like them.


Mondays, for me, are writing days, blog updates, book projects and many cups of coffee- well at least 2.
It's also a time to reflect and ask myself: "are you sure you want to write a blog about presidential elections?"
In case you're curious, the answer is still yes. Blame Bloom County. Dammit Opus!
(sorry, John Oliver moment).
but I digress.
So what is this blog about?
Nothing. It's a blog about nothing!
(sorry, Sienfeld moment).
I am taking this as a moment to ask no one in particular, what should I blog about next.
(sound of crickets cliche)
It happens. no one really cares unless I says this on youtube. then mostly people tell me to go somewhere (usually repulsive).
If I wished to address the problems of this country, I would need a lot more mondays.
So, another time then.
There are so many things horribly wrong in the land of the "free" and home of the "brave"
The free people in America are either ungodly rich or completely penniless (homeless and don't care they are homeless) and the brave people in America don't belong to the NRA.
The Blogger hides behind the Freedom of Speech act and the newly founded Not in the Face ammendment.
But I digress.  Now where was I?
Right, not much further that saying I am contemplative on Mondays.
actually this is part of why I contemplate on Mondays. Also, got get my two dogs- rabies injections, and the male neutered cause I love him...no actually just want to pet him without have to dodge his constant erection. (dog humor)
Okay, that's scheduled.
Now I must persuade Amazon Visa, that's it's me, not them, although really it's them.
I have a Amazon Rewards Visa Card with a self-imposed $500 credit limit, and I received this letter from them.

Let me summarize what this is. The card servicing company for Amazon Visa wants we to fill out a W-9 tax form and a dubious release form so that they can look at my banking information and tax information. Yaay! Invasion of Privacy!
No, I am not complying not for a $500 limit.
Sheesh.
So Chase and Amazon Visa can kiss my behind goodbye.
but only after payday, I forgot to remove the card from one of my paysites and now I owe them money again. 
ARRRRRRGH!
Moving on.
Well, I guess I just got the case of the Mondays.

That character probably was found in a field somewhere bound and gagged with telephone and usb cable.

and then there is wasting time on Facebook dealing with dopes:


Ironically.
wow nerd!
I wrote a big long post proving why the original post was wrong...apparently someone at Brobible (or whoever they grabbed the vid link from edited it down for some reason) and left out the few reasons that would have proved its validity.  The thing with stuff like this is that is probably still fake is that youtube is filled with videos like this. Even I have been taken in on this crap. I think people want to see Wow players lose it over that "dumb  game."
I almost did, and then it hit me it was just all just data, little bits of data.
Then I got over it.
Then I realized I had dropped 20 minutes with this dumb post and commenting on it.
Then I looked at myself (figuratively- too lazy to go to the mirror) and said You are a troll.
so I added it here.
In case this matters for some reason, Blizzard doesn't delete anything forever. you can always retrieve deleted characters.... Blizzard understands vengeful girlfriends and maleficent account thieves.

and that was monday.

and that's
Mondays according to Mike.