That’s a
provocative question. Also ironic, for two obvious reasons: I’m a man, my
spouse is a man. Hardly the likely person to be asking the question.
Well, I
did, right there in my black armchair, as I was cheating at electronic Sudoku.
Yes, you can cheat—my version of iPad Sudoku allows you three wrong answers and
will still declare you a winner. So, hey, why not? And I give you this
tip—added value, as we used to say in Wal-Mart!—to help you along. Your guess should
always be for the little box that helps you the LEAST! If putting the 8 in the
lower-right hand box would give the next three answers—don’t. Put it in the
lower left box—which gets you nothing. Most of the time you’ll be right. If
you’re wrong, well, you have two more guesses AND those three other answers.
See?
By
cheating, I manage to play expert Sudoku (I say this with pride) and win most
of the time.
Today…I
lost.
OK, it
doesn’t make me a bad person, as Jeanne used to say. And then I wondered—maybe
it does. Not losing, but cheating. Jack wouldn’t have approved.
It was that
old rigid morality I wrote about in Iguanas. That fire and brimstone, sulfurous
hellfire, miserable sinner stuff. Didn’t believe in it, but he was still shot
full of it….
I wondered
about it because I was pondering an email Cousin Ruthie sent me—and when she
writes, you read! (She correctly diagnosed Santorum—“a lizard!”—and is bang-on
about Romney—“a snake in the grass!”) She had read a post about Lexapro 20mg po
qd. And then remembered her nursing days. (She held out three years, I managed
a decade….)
Well, both
of us remember some of the same stuff—the endless notes we had to do to cover
our asses, writing out medication charts at 3AM, those funny Latin
abbreviations: qd, qid, tid, PO, SQ. She also remembers the guy who tried to
grab her boobs every time she walked in the room….
She
asks—anyone try that on me?
Errr…no.
And she
mentions Clarence Thomas, and how her parents were shocked when she assured
them that of course he had come on to Anita Hill, and then told them about her
nursing days.
Well, her
father and mine were cousins. But
they both had that morality thing. And then I remembered the female colleague
of Jack’s who approached my mother on the day of Jack's memorial service.
“I want you
to know, John Newhouse was the only male reporter that EVERY woman felt
comfortable with alone in the news room at night….”
Franny was
shocked.
I’m
shocked.
And
Clarence Thomas? Well, I believe Anita for one reason.
I don’t
believe any woman could invent the story of a pubic hair on a Coke can.
Frankly,
the whole thing is drenched with testosterone. And only an androgen-flooded
mind could conceive of it.
So that
got me thinking about the four guns James Holmes purchased to kill the 12 / injure
the 71 in Aurora, Colorado yesterday.*
They were
purchased legally, and the vendors correctly performed the necessary background
check!
Well,
GREAT!
How
relieved the families of the 12 / 71 victims must feel! What solace to know
that your loved one had been slaughtered / maimed with legal weapons! One
imagines them at the graveyard, peering down six feet at the coffin. Mother
bursts into sobs, Father holds her, and whispers, “But at least the guns were
legal!”
She fishes
for the handkerchief, dries her eyes, squares her shoulders, and looks brightly
into the future!
And here’s
where I asked the question—should men be allowed?
Nor was it
the case that I asked the question because James Holmes is a man. (Although
name me, Dear Readers, one massacre committed by a woman….)
Yeah, he’s
a guy. He’s also emerging—I write this in case you’ve just come out of 24-hour
seclusion—as one of the most dangerous of the schizophrenics.
Bright,
tightly wound, wildly violent.
OK—circle
around. Is the US the only place
that produces this type of schizophrenic?
Don’t think
so.
We may be,
however, the one place in the world that reveres guns to such an extent that we
allow them on our streets.
That
delicate last sentence may be a disservice to the 12 / 71 of Aurora.
How’s this?
A man’s gun
is his dick. And nothing, nothing, NOTHING will take that away from him!
Breathe, Marc….
_____________________*These numbers correspond to the original figures and may have been updated since.
No, they should not be allowed. No woman with PMS has ever committed an atrocity like the mass shootings men have. (Nor should men be allowed to serve in government. Yes, there are some sane men, secure men, most of them are gay, but we can't take the chance that any man we elect won't be in the 80 - 90% of crazy ones.) My brother, one of the safe, secure men, has been known to say, regarding carrying guns, "How small IS his penis anyway?" Real men don't need guns.
ReplyDeleteDante must have a circle deep in Hell for members of the NRA and the sniveling Congresspersons who won't stand up to them. Unfortunately, our president, who should have stood up for gun control -- like REPUBLICAN Bloomberg! -- waffled in his address. I'm sick and tired of the hypocritical wailing and gnashing of teeth every time innocent people are gunned down because there's never the slightest effort to get guns out of our public spaces.
ReplyDeleteI was literally sitting in my car at a red light yesterday, listening to this horrendous news on my own radio station, when I looked up at the tailgate of the pickup in front of me and, as if scripted by Hollywood, there was the bumper sticker: "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." I wanted to ram my little minivan into the bumper, and yell, "You idiot! Don't you get it?!"
ReplyDeleteI have to throw up my hands around the whole issue of guns in America. I want to wipe them from the national canvas. But I have talked with people who so love their guns that they are beyond reasoning. It's waaaaay beyond any 2nd Amendment stuff. And they love the fact that Democrats make wimpy runs at gun control. Because nothing fuels the cause as much as when they are threatened politically. You can hear the NRA cash registers jingling.
I also felt that same irony as you, Marc. Well goodness, isn't it wonderful those were legally purchased guns? What a comfort. Even more so because, as we all know, guns don't kill people; people (with semi-automatic guns) kill people.
Cousin Brian
It's an outrage, isn't it? a million people have been killed by gunshots in the forty years since ML King was killed, according to the Brady group....
DeleteEvery time I hear someone mention a news article about assault/rape and conclude "women should not be out late at night," or were "in the wrong place," or such, I recall a clear prescription from my own favorite female (she may have gotten it somewhere else?) which is "if you want to reduce muggings, assaults and rape, put a curfew on MEN not WOMEN." How often --as previous people have said -- are the serial killers, psychotics, etc. women and not men? Colorado? Oslo? Pennsylvania?
ReplyDeleteWe need more class acts like John Newhouse and his sons. Some of us still remember the examples of how to live good and well, not how to live unaccountable lives.
I was thinking in church this morning as the readings were applied in the sermon to the Colorado killings: The reason we don't have gun control in the U.S. is that guns are profitable and life is cheap. True of our wars also -- war is profitable and lives are cheap. What an indictment of our oh-so-Christian nation! I'm not ashamed to call myself a Christian, but I'm deeply ashamed of those who call themselves Christians but whose attitudes and behavior are not.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you, though I'm not a Christian....I was thinking earlier how weird it is that having half an ounce of marijuana gets you seven years (or whatever it is) but having an semi-automatic weapon is fine. Maybe the weapons of mass destruction we never quite found are a little closer to home?
Delete