quadrennially yours...

february 29th doesn't come along every day, y'know.

which is good, since this year it coincides with me being sick. yes, i got the flu shot, therefore it isn't the flu. i insist. regardless, for the last 48 hours, maybe 72, my head hasn't been right. (far longer than that, you say? oh, very funny. ha. ha.)

while awake i've been sneezy, achy, dizzy, sleepy, and a couple more of the seven dwarves. while sleeping...i've had some really weird dreams.

he (disentangling from she): i'm going to have to get some sildenafil citrate to keep up with you.

she (still smiling): what's that?

he: generic viagra.

she: generic? why generic?

he: for what we're doing, cheap is more appropriate.

she: that was not nice. not nice at all.

he: you can't have tawdry without audrey.

she: yeah, well you can't have odd without todd.

he: my name's not todd.

she: my name's not audrey.

[pause]

he: i have to go.

she: me, too...

for the record, i was not the "he" in this dream. also, i don't know any "todd and audrey" couples. nor was i aware that i was aware of the generic name for viagra. who notices that kind of thing? and who has dreams like this? bizarre.

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since monday, i have experienced several episodes of back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back sneezes. much to my discomfort, and much to the amusement of those around me. to them i say one thing: snot funny. it's fortunate i wasn't operating heavy machinery during any of these sneezures.

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in other news...

the president of the california fish and game commission, daniel richards, recently traveled to idaho, where he hunted, killed, and ate a mountain lion. he couldn't do these things in california, because they're illegal there.

apparently dozens of california lawmakers have called for daniel's resignation, saying his actions aren't consistent with his position with the state. he has declined to quit, essentially telling the lawmakers to go fuck themselves. i may be slightly exaggerating that last part.

legally, daniel is correct. he participated in a legal (in idaho) activity, broke no laws in doing so, and seemed to really enjoy it. good for him.

me, i have no quarrel with hunters, mostly because they carry guns, and people with guns are dangerous. what i've never been able to understand, though, is why so many of them get so much joy from killing.

i bet they wouldn't enjoy it so much if the quarry were shooting back. which is kind of what's happening in afghanistan, where u.s. military personnel recently burned several copies of the koran.

this was bad form, and a bad idea, in that it set off riots and killings in that country. recognizing the danger that riots and killings pose to u.s. forces, barack obama apologized to the afghan president, and told him it wouldn't happen again.

unless of course one of the gop candidates wins the presidency in november. then there'll probably be koran burning parties at the white house every week.

rhetorical query: if afghan troops, occupying america for the last ten years, were burning bibles willy nilly, what do you suppose the reaction amongst christians would be? someone should ask the gop candidates that question, i think.

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disconcerting moment of the day: a tweet from someone named megan calhoun (@social moms) showed up on my twitter feed today. the tweet said, "I'm happiest when ________ (fill in the blank)."

the disconcerting part: i couldn't fill in the blank.

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grotesquely overrated: filling in blanks.

quietly underappreciated: weeding out the daily surfeit of choices.

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note to the lovely mrs. spaceneedl: i don't know if you bought it, or i bought it, or if it was a cruel gift with purchase...but we have to promise~~promise!~~each other never to buy this institutional-grade toilet paper again.

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seen today on facebook: "Collective sob ladies...Davey Jones has passed away. How come I always got stuck with peter?"

i have no further comment on this post.

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armed and genderous

Happiness is a warm gun
Happiness is a warm gun, momma
When I hold you in my arms
And I feel my finger on your trigger
I know nobody can do me no harm
Because happiness is a warm gun, momma
Happiness is a warm gun
Bang bang, shoot shoot...

~~john lennon

i don't mind guns.

it's people i don't trust.

people and guns are a bad combination. anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is lying. or foolish. foolish liars with guns are an even worse combination.

"chicks with guns" (the concept and the book) is only slightly less disquieting than "children with guns," or "monkeys with guns."

women, see, are the life-affirming, life-giving, life-worth-living side of humanity. our better half in more ways than one should attempt to count.

put 20 million guns in their hands, and what do they become? what do we become? irredeemably dangerous. frightening. and, best avoided by creatures that prefer their bodies unpunctured by fast-moving metal.

"but, guns are for protection! women deserve to feel safe from other people with guns. people with bad intentions. you know, men!"

this argument seems valid, until you look at the fine print. the part about 30,000 u.s. gun deaths each year. the 17,000 suicides, and the 1,000 accidental deaths-by-gun.

when you put it that way, being anywhere near a gun doesn't sound like such a good idea. it sounds about as safe as petting a ravenous mountain lion. or befriending a masked man with a chainsaw. or fracking a volcano.

or indoctrinating the next generation of gun-toting tots...

Some of the more haunting images are those of moms with their kids.

In one image, a woman who lives in Healdsburg is seated on her bed with her daughter. The woman, named Lake, holds a stainless-steel Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum. Her young daughter, Ruby, sits behind her and holds a vintage cap gun. Both stare impassively at the camera. Another portrait shows a woman in Houston, cradling her naked young son in one arm and holding an Ithaca 20-gauge side-by-side in the other. The woman told McCrum, "I'm eager to teach my boys everything I know."

if she gets started on that lecture now, those boys should be ready to go out and shoot living things any minute. heads up, y'all.

if we're being honest here (and we are), we should agree that guns are made to kill and maim animate objects. and if we can agree on that, we can also feel the dissonance of turning women into steely-eyed weapon wavers, a hair-trigger away from something horrifying and permanent.

men, historically, are the hunters and killers of all things with a pulse. back in the days of mammoths and saber tooth tigers, you could make a case for weaponizing the males, so the women could focus on perpetuating the species. now? not so much. the threat of extinction is no longer imminent, so men with guns kill things for fun, or because they're drunk, or because they're stupid.

until proven otherwise, we should agree that men can't be trusted with anything more dangerous than a plastic butter knife. and that the women are too smart, too civilized, too invested in the future of humankind to set their sights that low.

or maybe that's just whistling past civilization's graveyard.

Author and satirist Christopher Buckley called the book "a serious work of cultural iconography, and visually stunning, alternately sexy, arresting, haunting and mesmerizing."

visually stunning and haunting, certainly. indicative of our culture's cheerfully homicidal nature? definitely. sexy? um, right. nothing says "sexy" like a woman with a gun in her hand and a look of vacuous indifference or calculated menace in her eyes.

upon further review, it occurs to me that if you mentally photoshop out the guns, most of the women in "chicks with guns" actually are sexy. but then, they'd have to change the title of the book to something like "random chicks in fields," or just "chicks." which would be kind of odd.

the conclusion, then, is that that the chicks with guns should stay far afield~~farther...no, really, farther~~and i'll stay over here with the living things that don't care to be shot or shot at or even have a gun anywhere near them.

we can agree to that, yes?

thanks.