The Impossible Dream

I've seen a bunch of stuff all over the Intartronictubes about gun control this week. Mostly it's all: "guns are bad, get rid of them" and "bbbbut my farm, and hunting, and defending my castle from invaders!" -- I get it, honest. Up until this week, when this shit got way too personal for me (and I'm not going to detail that further than to just say teachers in this country aren't paid nearly enough to deal with the kind of shit they deal with), I really liked having my own personal arsenal around the house. But why did I like that? I never really thought about it.

I haven't shot any of my guns for a couple years now, but they're there, in the safe, ready. But for what? I don't hunt, so not that. Zombpocalpyse? Hmm, maybe I'll keep a shotgun. A home invasion? Yeah.... no.

I have not and cannot live in that kind of fear -- I've never had a loaded weapon by my bedside, and never will. How is a gun locked in the safe gonna help me in that invasion, exactly? Oh right, it won't.

"But I have a farm! I have to defend my chickens!"

Yep, I get it. I lived on a farm for a number of years, but the farm raised grass (not the fun kind) and xmas trees so predators weren't a big deal. Mostly we had to worry about gophers, rabbits, and coyotes, just as annoyances. We ignored the rabbits. The coyotes came around at night to try to eat the rabbits -- no biggy, ignore them too. I think a coyote got a cat once, but I don't really like cats so there's that. The gophers were a bit of a messy pain, and hard to shoot. I tried (and failed) shooting them but that is hard and wastes way too much time. Oh well, there were some holes in the yard. But yeah, I can see that. A nice small-bore bolt-action rifle and/or a shotgun should do just dandy if you really need them, so you should keep one of those. I'm cool with that.

I understand the rural hunting and guns-on-the-farm thing, really. I'm not a hunter, but I know many hunters and have lots of hunting weapons I inherited. I understand the appeal -- I've had fresh venison. Hunting or having a gun around to protect your farm does make sense to me.

But that doesn't mean we need the kind of ridiculous fucking gun culture we have in America.

Obviously, I don't think a full ban would ever fly in 'Merka. Just way, way too entrenched and way too much money spent convincing people they "need" guns. But I still think we have an oh-so-brief opportunity to do something.

Maybe.

That opportunity will, of course, be utterly squandered by our useless political class. Before it is, it would be at best constructive, and at worst slightly amusing, to imagine something that might work in the way of gun regulation. So I will. And please note again, I own many guns:

First, ban all semi-automatic weapons. Yes, all of them. (Note, this would require that I get rid of several of my own guns. I'm cool with that.) They serve no legitimate hunting purpose. If you need a semi-auto to hunt: UR DOIN IT RONG. Banning them all means no more quibbling over what an "assault rifle" is, which is critical.

B) ban all high-capacity weapons. Again, if you need more than a few shots for hunting: UR DOIN IT RONG. And yes, that means I need to get rid of more of my own personal guns (although high-capacity and semi-auto tend to go hand-in-hand, no surprise). Oh well.

3) no handguns. Yeah, people love them, but they serve no purpose. And no, once again, "self defense" is not a real purpose, and if you really think having a gun around the house will save you from the blahs coming to steal your white wimmens, go buy a nice simple double-barrel shotgun. Bonus: you can force the dude that gets your daughter pregnant to marry her while standing there like the patriarchic asshole you probably are.

IV) regulate, regulate, regulate -- like the sacred second amendment says! Guns are way, way, WAY too easy to get in this country. There are dozens of mundane things we all do day-to-day that take more work than owning a gun. Getting a gun needs to be at least as hard to deal with as it is to try to start a fucking legal brewery!

Fünf: Have all the fancy shit we just banned be available to play with at licensed, ridiculously regulated, private facilities. Shoot the hell out of those guns! Waste thousands of dollars on ammo! It's almost as good as Viagra after all.

Will we see an instantaneous drop in gun violence in this country and suddenly only worry about violent attacks from sparkleponies? No. Would it make a difference? Probably. I'm willing to try it to find out.

And yeah, I've completely glossed over the "how" parts in all of this "banning" talk. Gov't sponsored gun buy backs? Buy backs by private anti-violence charities? Ship them all to Somalia, along with the owners that refuse to get rid of them? Dunno. I'm sick and tired of thinking of violence and death, and thinking about how our useless goverment could manage to implement all the details behind this pipe dream is just too much right now.

I recognize that this is all a sad fucking dream. Oh well, a guy's gotta dream.

Half staff

I wish I was hopeful that this was the last time I'd see these flags like this.

Clock tower

Couldn't be any reason for me to take special notice of this clock tower today.  Nope.

This second pic just shows the serenity of a deserted campus.  Thankfully campus is deserted because everybody's on break, not because there's some madman shooting the place up.

Fuck.  People are awful, hideous creatures.

Vintage

This post is dedicated to a certain testicle's Instagram endorsement.

Pics taken on my walk to the bus stop tonight. No Instagrams were harmed --or used-- in the creation of this blahg post.

FORGOTTEN DRUNKEN NIGHT PHOTO UPDATE:

Not sure whether I prefer this version that doesn't really indicate the scale:

Or this version that adds the bleakness of the barbed wire/chain link:

Frosty Friday

Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics has some startling revelations about Frosty The Snowman:

Rudolph vs. Frosty needs to be a thing.

Woeful Wednesday

With the holiday season in full swing and the weather exceptionally shitty, my typical seasonal sadness starts to kick in. The ebb and flow of friends/acquaintances moving through a college town can effect that too.  This song is the perfect complement to that feeling, but wasn't on the ute-oob. Since blooger doesn't seem to want to let me upload just audio, I put together a quick video with some sunset photos I took in summer.  Sorry about the "Ken Burns" effect -- I know it's the standard cop-out of quick videos.  You'll live.

Gifts

(Original source image from here. Meme explanation here.)

Don't Blame Me

I figured I'd help out the millions dozens of sad Jill Stein voters out there by making you a special bumper sticker:

Keep up your spirits! I'm sure next time a 3rd party candidate nobody has heard of will win handily and usher in a new utopian paradise where nobody gets bombed, progressive legislation is passed easily, and every child gets a sparklepony.

Tonight's The Night

Welp, this is it, another election day has come and the usual anticipation, trepidation, and knotty naughty stomach are present.

Rather than do my usual election night schtick and stay home drinking myself into a stupor, I'm going to go out to dinner and drink myself into slightly less of a stupor. Hopefully wherever I end up with doesn't have a TV so I won't see waht's going on 'til I get home late.

Until then, I'll just leave these here:

And for something completely different:

You're welcome.

Sunrise over the bus stop

Not all that bad of a way to start Friday.

Next week when I'm waiting for the bus at the same "time" it will somehow really be an hour "later" and I'll miss this view. I wish we had DST either all the time, or never. Make up your mind, time! Stop being all wishy-washy and undecided. Sheesh.

UPDATE: Related.

Ermahgerd!

Hopefully like the girl above all my New York lieberal scum internet friends have been hording their mershed pertaters and such so that gawd doesn't cause you to sterve to derth in the violent aftermath of Herpicane Serndy.

Political Performance Art?

No way am I going to comment in yet another one of those threads over at LGM, but for some reason I did click the link to RAF's post over there. In that link you will find that this "person" describes themself as:

Mormon ... Kansas-dwelling populist/localist/Christian democrat/anarcho-socialist

Seriously? You self describe as that? I find it hard to believe that this is a real person and not a Fenwickian style persona as online performance art. Or a BYU-educated academic. Oh, wait...

Also, too: When reading his gibberish, I can't stop thinking of this.

Binders For Everyone!

Against my better judgment I watched the debate last night. I was pleasantly surprised not to be tempted to toss my pint glass at the TV more than a couple of times.

With regard to the WTF moment and fucking hilarious "binder" thing, this bit immediately after that also caught my attention:

Now, one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort, but number two, because I recognized that if you’re going to have women in the workforce, that sometimes they need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school. She said, I can’t be here until 7:00 or 8:00 at night. I need to be able to get home at 5:00 so I can be there for — making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school. So we said, fine, let’s have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.

...

What we can do to help young women and women of all ages is to have a strong economy, so strong that employers are looking to find good employees and bringing them into their workforce and adapting to a — a flexible work schedule that gives women the opportunities that — that they would otherwise not be able to — to afford.

That is just condescending as all hell. Everybody wants a flexible work schedule, you fucking asshat! It's not just "mom" who should have to be able to work, take them to soccer, go home and make dinner, tuck the kids into bed, do the dishes, etc. Y'know, if women made as much (or more, FFS!) than men for the same work, maybe dad might like, and be able, to do some of those "home" things while mom stays late for a meeting?

Is it really so fucking hard to imagine a world where everybody had flexible schedules and equal pay for equal work? Just a possibility? Ever thought about that Willard?

No, of course you haven't. You'd prefer we still lived in the pretend 1950s America that only ever existed on TV, you pathetic fucking misogynistic Mormon wanker.

In a just and sane world (i.e., not this one) women would be seeing this bullshit and Willard's general contempt for the moderator and the women asking the questions and run away screaming from his candidacy. Perhaps in this world it'll translate to fewer votes for the wanker. We'll see.

Oh, also, too, etc.: vaguely related

UPDATE: I see I'm not the only one to notice this part.

UPDATE AGAIN: I want to make clear that I, a (married) man with no children would also like a flexible schedule.

Because flexibility.

Just in case that wasn't entirely clear here.

Foreign Policy News

Today in super cheerful news from the "Golly gosh we have awesome allies" news desk is this from Harper's Weekly:

A 15-year-old schoolgirl named Malala Yousafzai was flown from Pakistan to the United Kingdom for medical care after being shot in the head by masked Taliban militants in the Swat Valley. Yousafzai, who at the age of 11 began blogging for the BBC’s Urdu service under the pseudonym Gul Makai (“cornflower”), was targeted for championing girls’ education rights. “She has become a symbol of Western culture in the area,” said a Taliban spokesman. “She symbolizes the brave girls of Swat,” said a local filmmaker. Members of the Pakistani Taliban said they would target journalists for giving the attempted assassination “undue” coverage and for unfairly portraying the Taliban as the “worst people on earth.”

You stay classy Pakistan! Good thing you're not one of our enemies or we'd be bombing the shit out of you right now with drones or something.

Atlas Curled

My contribution to this Paul Ryan stupididty:

Random idiocy

This craigslist post is fucking hilarious. I've saved a screenshot for posterity:

"Oh noes! I cut a hole in my gas tank and (surprise!) gas came out! Now what do I do?"

The only way this could be better is if they'd managed to catch themselves on fire during the process.

Also: look, a blahg post! Yay me.

90 Days

Those who know me know I'm not an "O-bot" and have been and continue to be critical of da prez and many of his policies and actions. With that out of the way, I'll just leave this here for your consideration.

Technology

Hehehe, I just got this in my inbox from an Apple rep (I use lots of Apple stuff, so this isn't to bash them):

Technology makes this a magical time to be a student. And a powerful time to be an educator. The Apple Learning Tour is an opportunity to experience how you can transform learning with innovative new tools for creating, curating, and deploying content.

Due to a technical issue with our registration system, we are currently not able to accept registrations via our website.

Register today by sending an email to...

Emphasis mine. Perhaps fixing your issue might give educators a bit more confidence in this innovative new technology, eh?

Lunch View

Not a bad spot to spend a random Wednesday afternoon. Well, a few minutes of the afternoon anyway -- this is the Dimple Hill summit. It's a great spot for a lunchtime mountain bike ride.

IH8DMV

Clever. I bet this really helps with quality of service when he renews his registration. Also clever to give extra money for a custom plate to an organization you hate.

Angry Birds In Space!

I may have never been more proud of an OSU alumnus than I am of astronaut Don Pettit:

I mean Linus Pauling never played Angry Birds In Spaaaaaace. Wotta loser.

Not Creepy At All

This is not a post about the ultra-creepy misogynistic crap the "right" in this country is currently spewing at alarming rates. No, this post is about something nearly as creepy, a new DARPA running robot:

Yeah, not creepy at all.

I'll be so excited to see it after it's completed with a nice armored skin and a bunch of weapons bristling all over. It'll be super great if DARPA can manage to combine it with some of their other research into autonomous vehicles.

I hope there will be a non-lethal version available for your average campus police department and well-to-do homeowner. I envision a small market opportunity for some decorative "Beware Attack Robot" yard signs. Since I won't be able to afford the robot, I may have to get in on the sign making, maybe I can make a few bucks before one of our 1% overlords outsources that to China too.

Sexy Soup Nazi

Another incredible masterpiece (hah!) inspired by Thread Bear over at Sadly, No:

Oregon Hops

There's a good article in Willamette Week about the future of Oregon's hop industry and how it relates to craft brewing. It's nice to see people working toward getting the local industry going again, especially now that the "big boys" that usually dictate what varieties will be grown all being big foreign megacorps now. I hope the new hop efforts are successful and that we will end up with a thriving local industry and lots of great new varieties of hops available for home brewers too.

Album Cover

I should really stop reading Sadly, No...

Friday Funnies

There were a few good webcomics in my feed today:

• Cyanide & Happiness today is relevant to the new "Neckbeards 'n Blazers" trend that vs identified in her recent post.
• Wondermark has a good comic that certain cat people might enjoy.
• And Gunshow comes up with a voting system that Santorum would really get behind.

Disclaimer: Friday Funnies will most definitely not be a recurring feature. Offer not valid in Rhode Island. We have always been at war with Eurasia.

Death Squard

I was inspired by this comment over at Sadly, No!

Twinsies

This post over at TPM inspired me. Others have already pointed out Newt's resemblence to Baron Harkonnen of Dune, but I didn't know was that Newt is also working with Glossu 'Beast' Rabban. His campaign makes perfect sense to me now.

Didn't make the cut

I haz a sad that my blog didn't make the list of intertron sites that the DHS monitors to "gauge the mood of the online populace."  Maybe this will help:

Mood of the populace:  Pissed off.

I'm also really curious how you get to be on the team that monitors those sites.  Job posting:  "wanted, people willing to trollbrowse blogs all day.  Horrible spelling is a must."

And are Facebook (and Myspace?  Really?) on that list just so that any fed when caught updating their profile at work can just say "This? Oh, this is just a little project I'm working on for DHS."

And the fact that they "monitor" Youtube actually makes me hope all they're doing is watching funny animal videos all day, because if they actually read any of the comment threads over there they're going to get a very, uh, interesting view of the world... Hmm, that could explain some things now that I think about it. Crap...

Coming soon to a protest near you!

Has pepper-spraying non-violent protesters lost its charm? Do you long for that adrenaline rush you felt the first time you bashed some hippy in the head, but no matter how many heads you bash, it's just not the same?

Have no fear! Our delightfully precocious military is developing all sorts of exciting new "non-lethal" weapons that will soon be "trickling down" to your local campus police force and average rent-a-cop.

Will zapping hippies with microwave guns or the awesometastic-sounding "Distributed Sound and Light Array" give you that same rush? We'll have to wait and see, but I'm sure the average authoritarian rent-a-thug is already furiously masturbating while imagining the screams and sounds of sizzling hippy-flesh as he anticipates these exciting new developments in weapon technology.

Happy new year!