Category: Guns

From rods of death to staff of life

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
The best part of waking up.

OK, it can’t be all fascism and firearms all the time around here, goddamn it all anyways.

The last of the cornbread went down the rathole with coffee this morning. I miss it already.

Our “new” bread machine.

Happily, we have a “new” Panasonic SD-YD250 “Bread Bakery” to play with. I put “new” in quotes because the thing could share a birthday with my Subaru, having first been released in 2005.

A new model is available for $374.99. We didn’t pay that much. Herself acquired ours at an estate sale, for chump change, and I vigorously ignored it for the better part of quite some time until she finally badgered me into taking it for a quick spin around the kitchen by dragging it from its cubby and starting to fiddle with it. Gimme that!

Loaf No. 3.

The first couple loaves came out looking like a Klingon’s head after Captain Kirk backed over it with the USS Enterprise. But the third looked like a loaf of bread, and tasted like one, too. A little less flour, a skosh more water and yeast, and Bob’s your uncle.

Little puzzles like this are good for staving off the dementia, but not so much for the upkeep of social skills. So I intend to keep visiting the neighborhood bakery from time to time.

It takes five hours to bake a loaf but about 15 minutes to buy one, counting driving time. And they sell delicious scones, brownies, and cookies, too.

Going off half-cocked

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
The pen might not be mightier than the pistol, but its output is easier to edit.

I had heard of Charlie Kirk.

That’s about it.

Now I hear of nothing else.

So, thanks for that, to the asshole that killed him, elevating the bloody corpse of a right-wing provocateur light-years beyond any merit he accrued while still walking the earth.

I am opposed on general principle to shooting mouthy nuisances, in part because I have been one myself and may be one again. I may be one right now, depending upon your point of view.

So, please: Don’t shoot. If only because should you miss I may very well shoot back. And then where will we be? I may be a mouthy nuisance, but so many of us are, and ammo and lawyers and bail bondsmen and prisons and funerals are time-consuming and expensive.

Plus every good cult (and the bad ones, too) loves a martyr. The right stiff puts the pinheads in the pews and their pennies in the plate. These Elmer Gantrys don’t need a new angle — they’re doing just fine hawking Genuine Pieces of the One True (Double) Cross to the rubes.

So, instead of potting someone from a rooftop, why not turn up to debate with them? Append a nasty comment to the video! Make a plausible fart noise with one palm tucked in an armpit! Whatever blows your skirt up. Or your kilt. Crotchless panties, tactical boxers, fuck, I dunno, Christ, everybody’s so fucking sensitive these days,

Whatever you wear, or don’t — musn’t forget the nudists! Naturists! Jesus! — keep the Colt in its holster. Or better yet, at home, in the gun safe. Arm yourself with words.

Battle lines being drawn

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments
It was a hot time in the old town at the No Kings rally.

We had just found a small patch of shade at the No Kings rally when Herself showed me the first reports of the assassinations in Minnesota.

Another psycho with a gun.

The first one I can remember was John F. Kennedy. I was nine. Next was Malcolm X. Then Martin Luther King. Bobby Kennedy. Fred Hampton. Harvey Milk. John Lennon. The list goes on.

Tell you what. This sort of thing does not make you feel good about being in a strange place surrounded by people you don’t know, with a DJ working one side of the park and some sort of drum circle going in the other.

Herself caught me looking around and wondered why.

“I’m trying to make sure I know how we can get the hell out of here,” I said.

She thought I meant at the end of the festivities. I was thinking about the beginning of someone’s fantasies.

A young woman came up with a tray of sliced bananas and oranges and asked if I’d like something.

“No, I’m good,” I replied. “But thanks just the same.” Head still on a swivel.

Paranoia strikes deep 
Into your life it will creep 
It starts when you’re always afraid 
Step out of line, the men come and take you away

I tried to cling to the spirit of the moment — small-d democrats old and young and in between, with imaginative signs and fashion choices, dancing, music — Sly and the Family Stone’s “Stand,” because of course “Stand” — but it slipped away from me. It was a large park, but a cramped space, with a lot of noise and people milling around and a sound system that was not up to the task.

We about half heard Rep. Melanie Stansbury from the drum circle, then changed locations to see if we could find a better listening post. Nope.

I tapped Herself on the shoulder and gave her the old thumb over the shoulder.

“Ready to beat it? ” I asked. She was. We did.

I’m glad we went. I’d do it again tomorrow. I’ll do it as long as I can still take some hope from it.

Because it beats the mortal shit out of killing people.

Air conditioning (and one ventilation)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
One of those hazy, lazy days of not-quite summer.

Lots of schmutz in the air today. Our air purifier started sounding like a 747 trying (and failing) to take off from Newark, so I figured Elon was back to blowing up Starships in Texas between Special K binges and using his face as a catcher’s mitt for some pitcher’s high hard one.

But nope. Just windblown wildfire smoke and dust from Mexico, according to the local press. A health alert* has been issued. And warmish, too, so much so with the doors and windows closed that I finally caved and turned on the air conditioning. We must think of Miss Mia Sopaipilla, after all.

* Health alert not provided concerning side effects of the Second Amendment.

Pennsylvania AR-15-oh!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
No trombones here: This is a solo for black rifle.

That wasn’t a Glenn Miller big-band number they heard yesterday at the rally in Pennsylvania.

Those folks were dancing to another sort of tune altogether. The Black Rifle Boogie.

As has become traditional, before the echoes of the gunfire faded, the Keyboard Kommandos Rapid Response Team — “Last to Know, First to Blow, We Will Defend to the Death Our Right to Remain Misinformed” — instantly let fly in all directions at once.

I do not intend to do that here, beyond observing that when one has a country full of cuckoos and bang-bangs the two are liable to find each other. Frankly, given the prevailing political conditions, I’m astonished it took this long for them to come together and make music.

You’re listening to the Armed Propaganda Network. Don’t touch that dial!

It’s number one with a bullet.