Cynic

It's Saturday, February 16, and we have 32 days of winter left... officially.  We all know there is no specific second when the weather is going to begin to warm up because Mother Nature isn't that considerate.  She's going to do the same thing this year as she does every year, tease the hell out of us.
I'm not going to New Jersey!!  I am really so glad!  Training is fine, as long as it's within a 20 mile radius.  Two and a half hours on the road for a 6 hour training sessions is ridiculous.  Add to that the fact we most often try to car pool which means I usually drive... it's the only way to guarantee no one smokes in the car.  I simply hate that.
I also got notification yesterday that I'm scheduled for Jury Duty on the March 25.  Yippee.  I've been to this rodeo before.  I didn't get selected then, and probably will not get selected this time, no doubt because this little sign begins to flash over my head in bright, neon red letters:  CYNIC   That's right, in case you haven't noticed, I'm a bit cynical.  I work in retail, remember?  Where someone is always trying to get something for free.  We see them daily, liars with tempers flaring because they feel they are owed.  Oh, and this is for Civil Court, a place where people go, the place where people go to swindle big settlements from insurance companies.  Not that the insurance companies shouldn't pay, but sometimes the greedy side of humanity presents its face.
And, since I'm being cynical, how about that Ann Coulter trying to do a little tap dance all over the Idiot Jerk in the White House?  "A stupid act designed to please his stupidest voters," is, I believe, what she Tweeted, or something very similar.  As expected, the Idiot Jerk shit out a couple of words saying "he didn't know her."  Excuse me, but wasn't he happy as a pig in shit when she was singing his praises?  Keep in mind, his "stupidest voters" will not remember that far back.  And I am in no way defending the Nazi Princess Ann, she's just pissed she is no longer one of his closest advisers.  In case you didn't know, instead of the briefings he's supposed to be getting from the CIA, and Homeland Security, and a whole bunch of other security organizations, the Idiot Jerk is relying on the advice from Thimble Nose and Bumble Brain, aka Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, a political hack and a spineless, political entertainer.
Adding to the irony of that Shit Show in the Rose Garden yesterday was the fact that an American with a gun murdered 5 people in Aurora, Illinois yesterday, before being killed by police.
Anyway, after today I'm off for 3 days.  Nice.  Not that I  have big plans.  I'm thinking about making chickpea fritters on Monday.  How's that for excitement?

Now, don't that look scrumptious?

The cost of Dirty Harry, celluloid phony

With Vice President Joe Biden looking at creating some form of gun legislation, the crazies are coming out of the woodwork.  Of course they've always been there, never being satisfied to be subtle presence.  They damn anyone and everyone who they think is threatening their second amendment rights.  What makes these people moronic is Harry Callahan.  There are at least two generations of Americans who know who he is or at least what he said.  Two of his most memorable phrases are "read my lips," and "make my day."  Wayne LaPierre, of NRA fame,  is actually old enough to have seen at least one of the Dirty Harry movies in the theater.  It is not too difficult for me to imagine him going deer hunting, sighting and aiming at his target, making the kill, and saying "make my day."  All you need to do is look at him and see how that image fits.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of people like him, and all of them dumb as bricks.

Dirty Harry, celluloid phony

They don't seem to understand he is a fictional character, or that all of his words and actions were first written down in a script, or that the scene was short several times and a director chose the one he liked best, or even that a film editor cut and spliced the scene to achieve the desired effect.  For them, Dirty Harry and all of his words and actions are real.  How do I know this?  I listen to the people around me, those associates I work with, and now and then those boneheads on TV who want to be deemed voices of authority.  As one example I'll give you a large woman I work with me.  After the Aurora shootings I found her standing in the lunch room reading a comment by that horse's ass Louie Gohmert.  She actually said, "if I'd been there, I'd have taken out my gun, drawn a bead on him and put him down."  The trouble with this comment is that she didn't remember James Holmes was wearing body armor (big dumb shit duh).  When I pointed this out she replied "well, I would have gotten down behind the seats, lifted my gun and fired in the direction his shots were coming from."  When I pointed out she would not only have to contend with the volume of the movie, which was still playing, but with screams, and shrieking and wailing of 200 plus movie goers she looked at me blankly.  I also noted that the people in her row would run right over her, that she would  actually become a speed bump in their exit from the theater.  Even though you could see she was absolutely clueless about what that night must have really been like, she remained adamant, she would have taken out the shooter and been a heroine.

People don't understand.  They want to see themselves standing along in the Dirty Harry spotlight.  They want to say "make my day," and read my lips."  They need to learn that owning a gun and knowing how to use it does not make you wise.  It just means they have a lethal weapon in their possession, and in the wrong hands that weapon can unexpected kill a lot of people.  Until they have actually been in this type of situation, they need to keep their mouths shut.

 

Is James Holmes the Joker?

Of course he is, at least in his mind, though there is a high degree of disagreement on whether or not he is insane... or not.  The important thing to not lose sight of in spite of everything is to try and understand what it is he thinks.  There is a lot of speculation what set him off.  It may have been something as innocuous as a traffic ticket, you have to remember that for how many years has he been told he is "special."  Imagine having a police officer not recognize that you are "special" and force you to pay a fine for speeding!  Jimmy Holmes was weak and did nothing, the Joker would have done something.  At what point did he begin writing the script he began playing out last Friday?  We may never know.
I do suspect the real targets were to have been the police and those victims in the theater were only the bait.  He was, after all, dressed for a fire fight with the police not an audience in a movie theater.  I think he also planned on winning that fight because the Joker would not be taken down.  Is apartment was rigged to take out even more officers.  Unfortunately for the Joker his gun jammed and he didn't have a spare.  I can not imagine what happened in his brain when the script he'd been writing and playing for months suddenly fell apart.  In Hollywood they edit and rewrite, he didn't have time.

I am the egg man, I am the Walrus, I am the Joker

Had his plan succeeded one can only wonder where he planned on going.  Does he have a hideaway somewhere, a lair from which he was planning on watching the chaos he had created.  Being as meticulous as he was, I would think so, and one can only wonder what horror he has hidden there.

Aurora and the stupidity that follows

What happened there was tragic, an aberration of what is normal.  With a populations of over 300 million we are going to experience aberrations from time to time.  How we deal with them is what is important.  This shooter was going to do what he was going to do, additional gun restrictions may have slowed him down somewhat, but they would not have stopped him.  One commentator mentioned metal detectors, how stupid,  Holmes entered through the front without weapons, left through an exit and came back in.  Another commentator noted that the "klaxon" did not go off when Holmes went out and I'm thinking, people use those exits all of the time when the movie is over.  I use them.  I used one to leave the theater after Snow White and the Huntsman.  Perhaps the stupidest thing I heard of were the comments by Louie Gohmert, an asshole from Texas.  He opened his mouth and shit bricks of stupidity fell out.

This is pure stupidity:  “Well it does make me wonder, you know with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying that could’ve stopped this guy more quickly?” Gohmert said.  Evidently he doesn't understand what "full body armor" consists of, other wise he would have realized that taking a shot at a shooter wearing "full body armor" is a waste of bullets.  He evidently has no conception of what it must have been like to have been in that theater, with pepper spray or tear gas burning  your eyes, and probably 250 plus people screaming in panic and trying to get out, and bullets flying bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.  I suspect Louie Gohmert is as much of an aberration as James Holmes and we're just going to have to deal with him.