Belly-cuke

Man, I knew this was going to happen.

Opposite Freckles

I am a dotty person, in general. I’m covered in all kinds of dots of all sorts at any given moment–freckles, moles, zits, bug bites, etc. And my arms are covered by thick constellations of freckles, some of whom clump together into whole galaxies. And it was while exploring these galaxies that I noticed I have some what we might call “opposite freckles.” I am, in general, a very pinkish white person with some blue-green undertones. My freckles, in general, are brown.

But I’m getting spots, shaped like freckles, that don’t appear to be any color at all.

I don’t know what to make of it, exactly.

But it’s intriguing none the less.  Once I also sprout my belly-cuke, I’m going to open a road-side attraction in my front yard and people can pay a quarter to look at the weirdness.

Oh, Cucumber, You May Be the Death of Me

I ate a whole cucumber for lunch. A large cucumber. From my garden. It was so yummy. But now I’m feeling totally like a cucumber could come bursting out of me at any second. I saw an episode of Mythbusters where they discovered that you could lay a person on top of bamboo that was just coming out of the ground and the bamboo could grow through that person.

I now suspect the same thing could be true of cucumbers. I could be sitting here and I would get an itch right at stomach level this afternoon and there, nurtured in the warm moist dampness that is my innards, would be a tiny, curling cucumber sprout bursting through my skin.

And I would have to go every afternoon and lay out in the sun, big white belly to the sky, to encourage it to grow.

I will probably have to start drinking more water.

The Whole Gun Debate

I find a number of things about the “guns-in-everywhere” debate frustrating. And I keep saying it repeatedly, but I think that’s just because I’m still struggling to wrap my head around it.

1. I do think it was a misstep by the legislature. Like I said before, there are a lot of people in this state, even pro-gun-rights people who are like “Everything that’s going wrong in this state and you’re passing gun legislation? WTF?” And a lot of bar/restaurant owners were blind-sided by this. You really don’t want people who have easy access to a lot of voters to be able to say, night after night, to a large group of people “If the guy’s supposed to be representing me, why didn’t he talk to me about this?”

2. I’m a liberal, so I’m all for imposing shit on people who don’t want it for their own good as determined by me (ha), but my understanding is that what’s happening now is how it’s supposed to work. The state says, “Hey, we’re not going to forbid you from carrying wherever you want. Go ahead.” and then individual communities and businesses set the standards that work for them. I don’t see how threatening to go back to the state to force communities and businesses to not opt out of this is in line with conservative principals. Isn’t this how it’s supposed to go if you’re a conservative? Isn’t forcing communities and businesses to do what you think is best for them to do nanny-state-ism?

I guess I need someone to explain that to me, because I don’t get it.

3. I am really kind of taken aback at how gendered this discussion is. Almost every debate I’ve read online ends up in a fight about who has the smaller penis, who’s the biggest pussy. And, frankly, after about half a second, I feel like this debate is more about masculinity and how men should behave than it is about whether we need to have concealed carry everywhere.  Is it a man’s job to be an agent of authority and protection at all times?

The answer on both sides seems to be “yes.” So, now the debate becomes about how men display their authority and their ability to protect others. Is it by modeling a peaceful non-gun existance and working to keep guns out of the hands of others, so that everyone will be safe? Or is it by responsibly carrying a gun and being ready to act in an emergency when the police aren’t or can’t be present in order to protect his family and the community?

But, of course, I reject the notion of a hierarchy of authority in which a man’s job is to act as an agent of authority when no representatives of state authority are present.

So, I don’t really find either of those arguments compelling or helpful when I’m trying to understand if people who want to should be allowed to carry.

For me, it comes down to two things–it clearly spells out in the Constitution that people have a right to bear arms. Yes, blah blah blah militia blah blah blah. But that only makes the concealed carry argument more clear, doesn’t it? You can’t have a militia that exists only in your house.

And the other is like I said over at Pith the other day, if a woman is being stalked, are we really saying that our concerns about what might happen trump her right to be safe?  I don’t like that.

Hell, if the problem is men with guns, let’s just take the guns from men.

Ha.