Ending Gun Violence
Since the idea of restricting firearm sales and ownership in the US is so repugnant I've come up with a different strategy for eliminating Gun Violence.
First of all, it would involve the renaming of guns to reflect their intent and purpose. Away with the cool names like "HK SAM" or "AK 47" or "GLOCK" or "Smith and Wesson". In with brands like "The Mall Destroyer", "The Schoolyard Chum", "Bully Bully" ("The tragic but understandable reaction to bullying? Really? WTF PEOPLE!"), "The Terrorists...", "Gangsta's Choice", "Clear and transparent abuse of Authority", & "I AM THE LAW", "Above the Law", "The Compensator", "Revenge", the "Al Queda", the "Xenophobe", the "Vigilante", the "I lose fist-fights", I'm only scraping the surface here folks, there's a radical re-branding underway and the possibilities are endless. Only one rule - name every gun to it's manufactured intent and purpose.
Secondly, and this is a tough sell, but let me explain. Make every gun manufacturer and distributor accountable for the misdeeds of the weapon. I know, I know, there is something so fundamentally un-American about holding any corporation accountable or liable for it's actions or products, but such accountability would:
- Make the gun distributors a whole lot fussier about who they sold their shit to.
- Raise prices of guns, which given their awful possibilities should really be a little more pricey than they are. The increase in price would be necessary to pay out the many foreseeable lawsuits.
Well, that was easy enough. Now on to world peace...
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2016 - Deathwatch
And for some reason 2016 is starting off with the expected deaths of a lot of people I somehow knew...
David Bowie, Edgar Mitchell, Glenn Frey, Alan Rickman, George Jonas. All older than me, but culturally relevant. To me.
People have been dying forever, there's nothing new there, but these people, they are intruding upon my generation, they're the people I know, and they're the scouts preparing me for my time...
Every new death where I know the participant, it's a bit the death of me, and I prepare accordingly. I now understand what the last generation was feeling when they were witness to the deaths of Frank Sinatra, George Burns, Etc, it's not so much their loss as the realization that this death, this mortality, is but a foreshadowing of their own...
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Will Stratton - You Divers
And this, recommended to me by Pam as the answer to Joanna Newsom's "Divers".
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Don't know if it's the answer, but I like it nonetheless...
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"Earned"...
...and that ludicrous signage you see everywhere, "Earn Vacations!", "Earn Free Flights", "Earn Free Food", none of which shows the slightest understanding of the word "earn", and I'll vary here from the dictionary to rant upon the meaning of the word earned...
It's tough. To exchange ones labour or service for cash might be an obvious example. Simple enough. We all earn our daily bread by working at things we'd probably prefer not to. So "Earn", the exchange of ones precious time or life for the necessities we need to maintain it, like food or shelter.
This is subverted or perverted in the ideology of "Earning reward miles" or "Earn free food" by the fact that you are, in fact, not earning, you are squandering money on luxuries and receiving a tiny discount to be saved and then squandered upon further luxuries. It's not "Earn", it should be entitled rather "Squander you're money here and you'll get to squander a disproportionately small amount of it here again later....".
But it's by these subtle shifts in language and ultimately thinking that they win our souls...
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