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Fuck the NRA
“So while the NRA may be a bloated, possibly corrupt, excessively powerful lobbying force, partly staffed by horrible racists, it’s also the mouthpiece of a fandom more widespread than Bronies, Trekkies, and Furries combined and multiplied by a hundred. Gun ownership is almost inarguably the single most popular hobby in America, and the NRA is a consequence of that.
Even popular gun-control efforts that failed, like the 2013 bill, would have been nothing more than tiny, symbolic changes, such as making background checks more ubiquitous, or eliminating high-capacity magazines. Elliot Rodger passed his background check and didn’t use high-capacity magazines. The presence of the NRA makes real reform so far-fetched, nothing has even been proposed, let alone voted on, that will get us anywhere close to Richard Martinez’s “Not One More” promised land.
And meanwhile, there’s shooting after shooting. When these things happened, the president used to fly out to the grieving town and give a speech. Now we don’t even fly our flags at half mast. They’ve become an ongoing problem we can’t take the time out of our day to be individually upset about, like Adam Sandler movies.
Matching shooters gun-for-gun isn’t a solution anyone takes seriously, not even the NRA. The real answer is that we, the American people, see that there are school shootings, and we all agree that they’re tragic, but then we’ve done the David Foster Wallace thought experiment in our heads: Gun control would mean an America with fewer school shootings, but we would lose some of our gun freedom.And apparently we don’t want to live in a place like that.”
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How About Some Tuesday Ink?
Hi
Money Well Spent
And to think there are people in this country who want to cut NASA’s funding.
If it were up to me, I’d increase it a hundred-fold.
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Quote of the Day
The Two Things…
…combined into one image that are forever burned in my memory that sent my 19 year-old imagination to overdrive and launched me on a spiritual journey that lasted for the next 30 years.
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Forget Cats, This Is Our Dog
Word.
Quote of the Day
“Republicans, almost entirely steeped in hatred and bigotry and brainwashed by Hate Talk Radio, no longer have that sense of responsibility for a fellow countryman—or for anything else that benefits America or Americans. Nothing gets beyond the hatred and white rage. And there are no lies too outrageous for them to perpetrate in the service of their goals. The Republican Party has turned itself into a party of sedition and madness.” ~ Down With Tyranny
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Denver
…where you will stop at every traffic light no matter what time of day because idling cars are so much easier on the air and the city’s engineers seem to have a pathological need to prevent traffic from flowing smoothly.
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Aspire to Greatness
Quote of the Day
“Tranny is an abbreviation for transvestite and transsexual, so I’m free to use it since I fall with that category. Much as blacks can use the N-word. I know tranny from London, where they abbreviate everything—breakfast is brekkie, biscuit is biccie. Tranny is used affectionately on the club scene. Even transsexual advocates like Jayne County and Kate Bornstein have come out and said that these words aren’t necessarily slurs…
“And I’m sick of people thinking they can ban words because they make them feel bad. Boo hoo for you! Any time we choose a different path in life, we’re going to get shit for it—whether you choose to be openly gay, trans or even a straight guy with tattoos all over his face. If you don’t have the balls to take shit, then choose an easy path. And for huge gay organizations like GLAAD to join in to censor Ru or anyone else confuses me. “Gender bender” is on GLAAD’s list of banned words. That’s what Frank-n-Furter, David Bowie and Sylvester were—that’s not a slur except to the most precious, uptight goody two-shoes.” ~ Lady Bunny
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Ain’t That the Truth?
I am Incorrigible
Scenes from a Birthday
Yeah, it’s that time of year. It kind of snuck up on me again. For most of my life I’ve been used to it being over 100℉ when it’s time to light the candles on my cake, and living in Denver—or even in San Francisco for that matter—I never got the usual seasonal clues.
I’ve reached the age where birthdays aren’t as big a thing as they once were; they’re more a realization that I’ve simply managed to survive another trip around the sun and that I’m one year closer to retirement.
That being said, this year will be a memorable one. After I initially located it (may the FSM bless the internets with his noodly appendages!), Ben managed to acquire the one gift I’ve been wanting for many, many months: the German language soundtrack of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Ever since I first stumbled across the This is Halloween on YouTube years ago (that I regularly repost here on the holiday) I was hooked and wanted more, more, MOAR!
I had three years of German in high school and an additional two in college. At that point I was relatively fluent, but over the years it’s faded. Back in 2007 or so I dived back in, getting out all my old textbooks and realized I hadn’t forgotten as much as I’d feared. At one point I even connected with a nurse at the hospital I where I was working at the time who was a native speaker, but just when my skills were getting decent—or at least passable—again, she left for parts unknown.
Even though my auditory vocabulary is once again failing me and at best I can only glean bits and pieces of spoken (reading is slow, but as long as I have a dictionary at hand I can manage) German now, that doesn’t mean I still don’t love the sound of the language, and discovering that there actually was an entire German language soundtrack available to one of my favorite movies literally made me squeal.
And for the occasion of this birthday, we also chose to support a local restaurant, The Creek Seafood Grill. Delicious is an understatement. I had the Cioppino, and Ben had the scallops. Both dishes were incredible. We’ll definitely be returning. Afterward we stopped by Milk&Cake, where I got as much of a birthday cake as I wanted or needed:
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