Gun Theory: Fashion over Function

What kind of gun is this? Is it worth crap? I'm far from an expert, but that thing looks like something built to look cool, while being dirt cheap to mass produce for people too dumb to distinguish "looks cool" from "actually useful."

Someone told me a story yesterday of an altercation her son had with her new husband. After "heated words," the next time her son came over, he was wearing his gun.

That is to say, her son, who had been an amateur boxer, did regular weight-lifting, felt so threatened by a man 30 years older than him, who had never in his life used a gun, that her son had to wear his gun to her house as a threat display.

You know what that says to me? Gun owners are chickenshit sissies. That's what it says to me. They need to grow some ovaries, woman-up, and not be so chickenshit.


(and while G+ still lasts, see also this original thread)

RIP Old Warhorse

Mic, I didn't know you well, but I learned a lot from you in a very short time.

Maybe next time around the wheel, I can take you up on that offer to hide in your basement, while you train me up on Marine Corp survival skills, during the ZomPoc.

RIP Old Warhorse. You earned it.

Self-worth today measured against the ZomPoc as a yardstick

I've thought about culture-shock and self-worth in general, but I like the ZomPoc scenario for juxtaposition and perspective. If you take a computer geek, and suddenly there are no computers, how does the geek define his existence? The carpenters, and the welders, and the bakers and the mechanics all have immediately ten times the value the geek did, and the geek is accustomed to having thought himself more valuable.

Even better, that seven figure financial market guy. Thought himself God on a high horse. Suddenly no financial markets, no computers, no spreadsheets, no golf, no yachts, no margaritas. Finance boy better hope he had some hobbies - like carpentry - or some warrior type will throw him on the front line as a meat shield.

Then again, Bruce Sterling remarks, in this excellent interview on "alien culture shock" (relevant to the ZomPoc, because turning the world upside turns everyone into a refugee):

"When people are humiliated, and they feel worthless, dishonored, and without some plausible role in society, they often become despairing, or violent."

So, maybe putting Finance-Boy on the front lines is both a useful way to channel his anger at loss of self-worth, and a bit of karmic justice for all the little people he screwed in his pursuit of money sex.

What's the Point Again?

My point really, isn't about the ZomPoc, but about self-worth. Too often we define our personal value against external measures. Do we earn "enough" money? Do we have a big "enough" car? Do other people think we have a "cool" job?

We forget to ask simple things like:

• "Is my house clean?"
• "Is my driving record clean?"
• "Am I paying my bills, despite adversity?"
• "Are my kids healthy and well-adjusted?"
• "Am I good at my job?"

I mean blow it, if your day job is bagging groceries, then get good at it and do it well.

If you do something worthwhile, someone will be pissed off.

At the end of the day,  shit still stinks. That means we all have equal value, even if we have unequal worth and unequal opportunities. Be the best you that you can be.

The only ZomPoc film that ever made me cry

I hate zombies. I hate them in fiction, I hate them in D&D, and I really hate ZomPoc movies and stories. I hate the creatures, I detest the premise.

There have been a few movies that I liked that happened to contain zombies, and I would have enjoyed them more without the zombies.

Those DC ZomPoc and Marvel ZomPoc stories? Bleah. Well-written, but zombies.

So, I say all that, because there is one ZomPoc movie I actually like. I can't quite say "love," but I have wacthed it seveal times over the last two years, and I keep coming back to it.

"Cargo" was a little indie short about a dad who saves his baby from the ZomPoc.

If this doesn't make you cry, then you have no heart

Cargo

Fictional Friday: Whom to Save in the ZomPoc

When the ZomPoc arrives, here is the order of priority of people to protect. Remember, the long-term goal is to save the human race, and the short-term goal is to keep the humans alive long enough to be saved. It’s a small, but vitally important distinction.

• Farmers (society needs a foundation, and the canned peaches won't last forever);

• Medical professionals (doctors, nurses, paramedics, pharmacists, etc., etc.);

• All other Doctors (this is the PhD group, and variants on the lettering, e.g. JD [lawyers], since this group is your reliable source of knowledge and solutions, e.g. history and the lessons that can be salvaged from it, and it's going to be the biochemists, not the medical doctors, that find the cure to the ZomPoc);

• Engineers, Artisans and Artists (you need engineers to design your fortifications and electrical power plants, artisans to actually build them, and artists to keep the people motivated and your oral history alive, since the paper is going to run out eventually, and unless your electrical engineers really have their shit together, you can totally forget about computers);

• Everyone else (warriors like to think they are important, but they are important only in the small picture of the daily grind, since warriors alone won't keep the soul of society alive, won't rebuild the infrastructure, and won't find the cure, thus won't be the salvation of humanity, even as they die every day to make sure humanity lasts long enough to be salvaged).

Here is a basic question to ask yourself: “If there was no gasoline, and no electricity, what would I do to contribute to society?” If you've got no answer, then when the ZomPoc comes, some warrior is going to recruit you as cannon fodder, or some farmer is going to recruit you to plow, so you might want to bone up on your chemistry or carpentry, so you can get a job away from the front lines ;-)

Contrary to popular belief, the function of warriors is not to kill things, it is to keep people alive. This is often best served by killing the enemy, but warriors that lose focus get themselves killed, and fail in their primary function of defending others. Many people misunderstand this. True warriors serve the greater good, not esteem themselves as the greater good itself.

And just for the record, this came from a friend of mine. He blessed my reposting of it (understanding someone my steal it), but strangely insisted I leave his name off.  People are funny ;-)

#Zombies

Corporations are not people; stop talking like they are

Language is important. Phrases like "Koch Industries would not talk to us" are logically invalid, since "Koch Industries" does not actually exist, except as a consensus acceptance of a body of laws, and therefore cannot make decisions, nor speak.

"Representatives from Koch Industries would not talk to us" is a logical construction, because people who are members of an organization can choose to talk or not talk.

By using the phrases "Bane Capital fired 1600 people today" we perpetuate the idea that non-existent entities can think logically, and we allow the human beings who make the decisions - and execute the decisions - to throw 1600 people to the wind, generally as a way of making a handful of people at the top of the food chain even more rich to hide behind a paper shield, operate without repercussions, as they hide behind shields made of smoke and mirrors.

Therefore, if we are ever to hold responsible - or give credit to, e.g. "Engineers at Apple have unveiled the iPhone XIV"  - the human beings that make decisions and accomplish things - for better and worse - we must reintroduce those few little words into the sentences we use. 

If we are ever going to escape the fallacy of "Corporations as people" and recover our civil rights - as HUMAN BEINGS - then we must demand that other human beings be called out. 

You can do this by telling the human beings that write news stories or press releases that you expect them to stop being lazy, and use proper sentences. Send an email to the humans at your news station that says "Microsoft cannot make decisions, because it does not really exist, but representatives of Microsoft made decisions, and by-the-way, those representatives have names, and who were they, exactly, so they can be held accountable for their decisions?"

Perception is Reality, and as long as we buy into the fiction that non-existent entities are real, then they are real. And we - as real people - have the power to reject this false reality and demand accountability of the humans behind the curtains.

Here is the litmus test: If the ZomPoc happened tomorrow, who could help you rebuild? "Puget Sound Energy" or "The engineers with skills and equipment who have pieces of plastic identifying a tribal entity (PSE) that doesn't fucking matter anymore, because the zombies are coming!"  I mean, really: In the ZomPoc, there is no "Microsoft," there is no "Fox News," there is no "Koch Industries," because the laws have changed, and anything that requires a law to exist doesn't really exist at all.

Change the language, change the reality, reclaim the world.

Edit: Here is a fantastic article on NPR which discusses how this bullshit came about, and reinforces that the class  warfare party line decision by the Supreme Court justices in 2010 threw out a century of legal precedent to further their neo-feudalist agenda.

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