mourning is for pussies!

It’s not horrible enough that gun nuts immediately–like, IMMEDIATELY–starting blaming the victims of the Dark Knight shooting for getting themselves shot because they weren’t patriotic enough to pack heat 24-7. Apparently spraying bullets into a panicked crowd running around in a dark room at an assailant wearing a bulletproof vest would have saved lives, WHO KNEW.

But now I’m seeing this conspiracy theory that the shooter was trained and given his orders by Obama so he would have an excuse to steal ALL the guns. Yeah, no. Maybe it would make more sense if I had a tinfoil hat on?

I honestly didn’t get where all this rancid OBAMA IS COMIN’ FER YER GUNZS OOGA BOOGA paranoia is coming from. I mean, I’ve never heard him–or any other president elected in my living memory–lean heavily on a gun control platform. Obama isn’t some free love, acid-dropping peacenik. Like everyone else to occupy the White House since Carter, regardless of party, he’s well to the right of the center.

Luckily a Facebook friend of a Facebook friend, who is apparently some kind of LOLbertarian (he claimed with, as far as I could tell, the internet being a non-visual medium, a straight face that politicians are “constantly attacking our 2nd Amendment rights”) cleared it up for me: it’s entirely based on half a sentence spoken 4 years ago before Obama was even the party nominee, taken out of context. Namely, the infamous statement “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Except in their minds, it stops at “guns” and concludes “…and I’ll break their grip if I have to break every one of their fingers”.

This is epically stupid on many levels, not the least of which is that this line had nothing to do with gun control or an assault weapons ban. Obama was pointing out the many ways that people who have been fucked by conservative policy get manipulated into voting against their own interests, and one of those ways is by making them think HEY THE OTHER GUY IS GOING TO TAKE YOUR PRECIOUS GUNS AWAY.

So thanks, dumbass. You just totally proved his point.

For a socialist god-hating pinko, gun control is actually pretty far down on my list. Much like the Seinfeld episode where Elaine is asked if she’s still anti-fur, my attitude is “Eh… who has the energy?” For whatever perverse reason, Americans are obsessed with guns, and I’d rather pick battles that can be won. At this point, I’d settle for closing the loopholes that allow teenagers, convicted felons, and the mentally ill to obtain them.

That being said, anyone insisting on their right to own assault weapons is always going to get the side-eye from me. Why not tanks and nerve gas, too?

The 2nd Amendment is a fossil from the Revolutionary era. Nowadays we have armed forces and police. Knowing a bunch of untrained morons are running around armed to the teeth doesn’t make me feel safer from, say, drug cartels. It makes me afraid of getting mowed down in the crossfire. (See: paragraph one.) Haven’t you ever seen a Tarantino movie? Whenever there’s more than 2 armed groups, everyone dies!

And as for the argument that we need assault weapons in case we have to overthrow the gubmint: I’m real sorry to bust your bubble Cletus, but you and Joe Bob and a few of your buddies aren’t going to be able to do shit against a military with nukes. If you hate the government that much, your best bet is moving to Somalia. They don’t have ANY government! HILLBILLY PARADISE!

we’ll live like kings, caroline! KINGS!!

Nellie Oleson: The original Mean Girl

Every time I move I re-read the Little House series. Some compulsion to connect major changes with my past or something, I don’t know. Or maybe moving is just stressful and beloved classic children’s literature comforts me. My father bought me the set for Christmas when I was 7 or 8. Probably at my mother’s urging.

When I was a little girl, my favorite of the series was On The Banks of Plum Creek, because that’s when Laura and Mary actually move closer to civilization and start going to school and meeting other little girls. I related to them more. Plus, when Nellie gets the leeches all over her legs, it’s pretty much the best thing that happens in the whole series.

Then when I was a teenager, I liked Little Town on the Prairie best, because they’re young women and Laura meets Almanzo and it’s all very sweet sixteen.

Now it’s a toss-up between On the Shores of Silver Lake and The Long Winter. TLW is frontier porn, pure and simple. Plus it’s when we’re introduced to grown-up Almanzo, who is a hottie. I like OtSoSL because it’s when Laura stops being a little girl, and Jack dies, and Mary is blind, and it’s all very bittersweet.

I get something new out of it every time I read. Last time was “Huh. Ma is kind of a bigot.” I don’t know why I never noticed that before. Umm, it’s not exactly subtle.

This time, I find myself wondering if Pa had some kind of mental illness that compelled him to pick up his entire family and leave with practically nothing but the clothes on their back every time he so much as smelled the smoke from a neighbor’s fireplace. Seriously, what was that about? In OtSoSL, as they’re driving into South Dakota, which hasn’t even been officially opened for settlement yet, he’s like “Fuck this popsicle stand! Let’s just keep going west!!” Dude, CHILL THE FUCK OUT.

Incidentally, apparently there’s some movement afoot by libertarians to re-brand these books as such. Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Laura and Almanzo and editor (some would say ghostwriter) of the books, was one of the godmothers of American Libertarianism. And libertarians are trying to claim that the vaunted American frontier “self-reliance” practiced by the Ingalls family represents their beliefs. Umm, except for how Pa only got that huge farmstead in South Dakota because the government basically gave it to him for free. After they ran off all the Native Americans.

LOLbertarians: Taking credit for everything supplied by the federal government since the 19th century.

hey guys, did you know california’s governor was the terminator?! well, let us remind you AGAIN!!

Earlier this week California became the first state to insitute a statewide ban of trans fat use in restaurants and bakeries. This was perhaps inevitable, given that our governor used to be a champion body-builder. (Meaning that he now has geriatric man-teats.)

The usual libertarian retards are bleating about nanny states and bodily autonomy. I will grant them the irony of one of the biggest marijuana consumers in the union (and one of the few with legalized medical marijuana–I swear officer, I have glaucoma!!) banning a delicious fat; but as usual they’re being so obnoxious about it that I simply can’t find it in me to take their side.

I can’t get worked up over a fat that’s only around because the managers are too lazy to change the fry oil at McDonald’s. It’s not as if this gunk is necessary. It’s like getting upset that toymakers aren’t allowed to use lead paint on pacifiers: trans fat doesn’t add anything to food, it’s just cheap and allows that suspiciously dirty-looking doughnut place in the ghetto strip mall to sell the same batch of bear claws all month.

Besides, “trans fat” sounds like something Christian Siriano would backhandedly compliment someone with.

But the thing that annoys me the most: The inevitable “Terminator” references in Google News:

I don’t know how the MSM is going to amuse themselves once term limits kick in. Maybe we’ll actually get Jerry Brown again, and they can drag all their old “Governor Moonbeam” jokes out of mothballs.