I Rule!

Oh, how Fortune’s Wheel has turned since this morning!

Vacation?  Approved.  Favor?  Completed?  My continued suckage?  Averted.

Quickies

–“Melungeon Mixer.”  Never let it be said that Appalachian folks don’t have a wicked sense of humor.

–Mack, Sarcastro, you think on this, give us some options, and get back to us.  If the rule is that it has to contain Jack or George, I’d like it to be something like this–One drop of Tennessee Whiskey, a heap of Tennessee Moonshine, rounded off with Sun Drop cola.  If that doesn’t scream Tennessee, I don’t know what does.

–Did y’all hear the police bitching about Heller on NPR this morning?  Good lord.  The problem is two-fold as I see it.

One, as the police move away from being community peace-keepers, walking a beat, or driving around, two to a car, getting to know whole neighborhoods, not just trouble makers, towards being militarized rapid responders, they are less able to identify problems long before they reach the point where people are shooting at each other.  So, I have to say, in that regard, I have little sympathy for the police’s argument.  Would it make your jobs easier if only the bad guys had guns, so that you could be certain, when you swooped in in your SWAT gear and your no-knock warrants that anyone who was firing at you deserved to be fired upon?  Sure.  But tough shit.  Get to know your communities, your whole communities, and what’s going on in them.

But SWAT teams are easier, flashier, and seem to cost less money than putting more police on the ground, every day out in communities.

Two, for seventy years we’ve had nothing but increasing gun laws and we have had ever increasing gun violence.

I am, and I have said it before and I will say it again, uncomfortable around guns.  They scare me and I don’t like them.  But more gun laws and a more militarized police force in response to folks breaking those laws has not, by any stretch of the imagination, helped keep people safe from guns.

For seventy years we’ve seen this approach fail and fail miserably.  It’s time to try something else.

That’s What She Said

Every once in a while I must call Mack and ask him a question, like “What does ‘es mucho hombre esta mujer’ mean?” and he pauses like he can’t quite decide if I’m asking him to translate the punchline to an old dirty joke or if I’m asking something serious.

“Um…” he says, trying to buy some time, “I’m going to need some context.”

Sadly, I was not asking him to translate an old dirty joke, but now I wish I knew a joke that had the punchline “es mucho hombre esta mujer.”  Not that I would tell it in public, but you can bet that the next time I got drunk on Cape Cods, I’d be all over whipping out the one dirty joke I knew in Spanish.

I Suck

Y’all, I completely forgot about a giant thing I promised to do for a friend.  And I need to figure out how I can take next week off without my boss being in the country to clear it with.  And neither are things I can do anything about at 2:30 in the morning, but that’s just one of the times I woke up in utter distress about having no idea how to fix things.

Argh.

But, in other news, at least Christians aren’t exploiting the ways my government has turned my best traits against me in order to finally win a fight we’ve been having for 500 years.  So, there’s that.