I was in Stephanville, Texas the other day, and I'd gotten a nice Bacon Ranch Monster Taco and a Coke to wash it down, and I sat down to eat and enjoy the air conditioning, and I laid out my meal, and slapped my Glock 17 9 mm short-recoil-operated locked breech semi-automatic pistol on the table, and I thought I was in heaven, with that taco and my Glock there-- food for my belly and food for my soul-- and I praised the Lord and only when I glanced around did I notice that something was wrong.
I'd heard little whimpers and my peripheral vision had caught the movement all around but it had been stealthy movement, so only when I glanced around did I notice the abandoned burgers and whatnot on the tables, and the mom's running outside with their children in their arms, and dad's behind them, sheltering them, or ahead of them, already in the driver's seat of their cars. Then I saw employees of the very same Jack in the Box in which I had been savoring my good fortune sprinting out the doors. Why, I even saw that pleasant young lady who had served up my taco running with fear on her face and tears in her eyes.
Now, I am a veteran, the reader should understand, so I am prepared for these kinds of things at all times. And as a firearms owner, I mentally run it through my mind how I will react to situations like this. I drill myself constantly, asking myself questions like, "If they come in through the window, where is it best to place my Glock so that I can get it quickly and discharge the weapon?" or, "If they come in at night and I am sleeping, is it best to have my Glock loaded and under my pillow?" or even, "If I am having a monster taco at Jack in the Box, where is the best place to sit so I can see when they come in to rob the place or to do a mass shooting"? And having rehearsed that particular question in my mind a dozen times, and answered it, I was now seated in that very spot-- yet, I did not see the armed gunman who had come in to commit his foul deed, and who had caused everyone to run for their lives.
I picked up my Glock and held it gently in my right hand while using my left palm to support the weapon from beneath its handle. I crouched and scanned the empty restaurant. Where was the bastard? I felt myself flush with... fear? No. Adrenalin. Adrenalin tempered by the knowledge that I had my weapon. I had trained with it for this very moment. It was up to me. It was all up to me. I stood just for a moment to wave to a few people in the parking lot, who were peering from behind cars. I wanted to let them know they were safe, that I had everything under control. I wondered how many of them were gun control liberals, and I wondered if they would change their minds now.
There was a noise on my right, movement, a door. I swung towards it and discharged my Glock, all 28 rounds from my G17 magazine. There was silence after the eight second barrage. I was sure I had got him. Then, a whimper.
"I surrender! I surrender!" a voice called out from behind the waste bins. I knew by the voice that the bastard was scared. I ejected my clip and inserted my smaller 10 round reserve clip. I chambered a round and I cautiously approached the waste bins, weapon extended, finger on the trigger.
"Please don't shoot me," said the coward.
"Slide your weapon out across the floor," I said evenly.
"I haven't got a weapon," he said with a trembling voice. Yeah, right, I thought.
"SLIDE YOUR FUCKING WEAPON ACROSS THE FLOOR NOW OR YOU'RE DEAD!" I said.
Then he began to sob like a baby.
"It's me, it's me..." he said.
What was that supposed to mean-- It's me. Who?
Then, the sirens. As always, the cops are way too late, I thought. This is why, I thought-- this is why we have our right to bear arms.
Then, two furry arms raised high above the waste bins.
"I surrender," said the sobbing voice. "It's me, Simeon, don't shoot."
"Simeon?" I asked.
And Simeon's chimp head appeared from behind the bins.
"It's me," he said.
"Simeon!" I shouted. "Get down! There's a gunman in this place! Get out! Get out now!"
"It's you," he said, almost crying. "You. You are the gunman."
"What? Are you deluded?" I asked.
Then the police barged in with their own drawn weapons. And they were pointing them at me.
Sigh.
What is the matter with these people?
Friday, June 6, 2014
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Me an' My Gun
I was once a gun owner.
My dad bought me a .22 rifle when I was 12. It was a Marlin, with micro-grooved rifling, and it looked like an M1 carbine from World War 2. Though my dad was an engineer for companies doing projects for the space program, he had been raised as a farm boy in North Dakota, so he thought I should learn to shoot a gun. And I liked it. I loved my .22. I kept it oiled and I wanted to get lots more guns once I was older. I wished I could have lived in the Wild West so I could carry a gun around with me.
I also had a little .410 shotgun. I traded an old drum set for the shotgun and a broken Japanese sword someone's dad had picked up in the Pacific in World War 2. My mom sighed when she learned I had a shotgun now too.
We lived in the suburbs, in Florida. We weren't country people. We had a swimming pool. We were middle class. I didn't hunt. But I had a .22 rifle and a .410 shotgun.
Just a year or so earlier, a kid I knew from school had been shot in his sleep by his dad. The kid's name was Buck. He lived on the same street that we did. His dad had recently come back from Viet Nam, and at 4 in the morning had shot his wife and kids and them himself. All this in a middle class suburban Florida beach town.
Buck being murdered in his sleep-- shot in his sleep by his dad, really scared me. I made my dad promise he wouldn't murder us in our sleep. I felt pretty safe at night with my .22 and .410 shotgun, though, even though there was no ammo for the shotgun. I ran it through my head how to get to the .22 on the desktop and load it through its tubular magazine and then shoot whoever was coming to murder us in the night, and it seemed like it would take too long, and I wished I could sleep with my .22, already loaded. Also, if someone came in through the window, they would be between me and the .22, and that would be a problem. And if they came in and I didn't wake up in time, that would also be a problem. Then I started thinking my .22 wouldn't be much help when someone came in the night to murder us.
But I had this .22 lying there, on my desktop in my bedrrom, and I wanted to do something more with it than shoot at targets at a gun range. I wanted to shoot something. When I was 16, I had my driver's license and I had a .22 and a friend and I went out to shoot something. We found a spot near the beach with some pine woods. There were houses beyond the woods, though. I decided I wasn't going to shoot at things, because of the nearby houses. My friend wanted to shoot something, though, so he shot at a bird on the branch of a tree. He missed, and the shot popped and hissed-- .22's don't go Bang!-- they pop and hiss-- and a flock of birds flew up making a racket, and he handed me the gun and ran back to the car, and we sped away.
Not long afterwards, we moved to upstate New York. We lived out in the woods, by the Black River. My step brother took me deer hunting in a car. We drove around through the woods looking for deer. We had a 12 gauge shotgun he had borrowed from a friend, loaded with slugs for killing deer. It was illegal to hunt that way, but that was how it was done, he told me. When we couldn't find any deer we shot at trees in the woods.
When I left home to join the navy, my guns disappeared. My mom got rid of them. I shot guns every once in a while in the navy though. I qualified on the 1911 Colt semi-automatic pistol. I shot an M-14 a few times. I shot a 12 gauge once. I even fired a few bursts from a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the signal bridge of the USS Tattnall.
Then I got out of the navy and I had pretty much detached myself from guns until I got married and met my father-in-law. He really liked guns. He took me deer hunting and I liked it and I got a deer using his 30/30. I lived in the countryside now, so I decided I had to have guns again. My father-in-law gave his old 20 gauge shotgun to my wife. I borrowed his 30/30 every deer season, and he loaned it to me because he had a new .30-06, with a higher muzzle velocity, which made it more accurate at long range, and more deadly.
My father-in-law took me coon hunting a few times too. I came along as an observer because I wanted to stomp around the woods at night. We went on one coon hunt-- a competition coon hunt-- without any guns. It was a competition to see whose dog was the best coon dog, not to kill the raccoon. Our group was walking across a corn field when a big pickup with searchlights mounted on its roof came bouncing and roaring at us. It stopped, illuminating all of us in its lights. I turned and saw a silhouetted figure holding a gun.
"What the hell you doin' on my land!?" the silhouette shouted.
A little hillbilly in the group shouted back, "Fuck you!", and I cringed a little, waiting for a shotgun blast.
Then the judge of the competition called out to the man with the gun, and they knew each other, and everything was okay.
On another coon hunt, this time with guns, my father-in-law and his friend took us out onto someone else's farmland. The farmer cornered us in the woods, shining a high beam flashlight at us. He had a pistol in a holster, and warned us to get the hell off his land. We did, and continued the hunt, and the dogs got the scent of a raccoon, and it went up a tree, and my father-in-law and his friend got the raccoon in the beams of their headlamps, and you could see the big coon huddled on a limb, its eyes shining from the reflection, and they fired shot after shot at the coon with their .22's, and at that moment I thought about where those bullets that missed might be heading, because though it was countryside it wasn't all countryside, but mostly I marvelled that an animal could be so full of .22 caliber rifle slugs and still manage to stay up in the tree, and I thought also that that animal was going through a living hell, and it finally dropped to the ground, and the dogs ripped into its belly and pulled out its intestines, and it was still alive enough to fight, and I watched in horror until one of them finally put a bullet in its head. That was my last coon hunt.
I had a nice neighbor there, out in the countryside in Maryland, who had a 16 year old son who wasn't so nice. His son shot the other neighbor's dog from his bedroom window with his .22, and killed it. The kid told us he had gut shot it, and it had died slowly, and he had had to apologize to the family. I told him he had better not shoot Clyde, my beagle-- that I wouldn't just accept an apology-- and he told me not to worry-- he wouldn't shoot Clyde because he liked us. Later he told us about the people living in a trailer with stray cats everywhere, and how he had offered to shoot the cats, and they had agreed, and he had had a big day hunting and killing stray cats.
The next door neighbor whose dog had been shot also had a gun. We didn't know he had a gun, though, until he used it late one night. We'd been awakened by a loud argument between the man and his girlfriend. Then there was a gunshot and frantic sobbing from the woman. We peered out the window at their house, crouching down. It seemed to be quiet now.
"I'm calling the cops," I said, whispering for some reason.
"Okay," said my wife, also whispering.
I called 911, the emergency number, and I told the lady a gunshot had been fired at the home next to ours. I also explained the circumstances. She said that state troopers would be sent out right away. Back in our bedroom, I crouched low to peer out the window again, where my wife was still peering.
"They've made up, they love each other again," she said, no longer whispering.
On their front lawn, the man and his girlfriend were hugging and sobbing. I called the highway patrol and reported the new development, telling them they needn't come.
Meanwhile, I was hoping to save enough money to buy a few more guns. A 20 gauge shotgun is kind of a wimpy gun, really. I wanted a 12 gauge shotgun, and a lever action .45 rifle using the same shell used in a .45 pistol. I killed all my deer at short range, so the rifle would be good for that, with a lot of short range knock down power. Also, I could later buy a .45 pistol for home defense, because of all the whackos around carrying guns.
When we lived there, in Cecil County, Maryland, everybody had a gun. You really had to be careful who you offended. Once, while driving my GMC pickup truck, I cut somebody off in traffic. They held down the horn behind me. I put my hand out of the window and gave them the finger. They gunned their engine and roared past me and cut me off and hit their brakes a little, forcing me to hit my brakes and slow down. The guy in the passenger seat held a pistol out of the window and waved it around. My wife was afraid I would stop to confront them, but I was as scared as she was, and I thought about how to get away from these guys when they roared away instead.
Dan Hanby also had a gun, a 12 gauge shotgun. He was a driver for Maryland Portable Concrete, where we both drove concrete mixers. He was a quiet guy-- polite. He was having some problems at home, though. He'd been caught driving drunk, so he couldn't work as a driver for a while. I saw him hitchhiking as I came home from work, and I gave him a lift, and he explained that he'd just bought the shotgun from K-Mart.
"Going hunting?" I'd asked, and he'd said no and then been quiet. He explained that he had had a vasectomy, but his wife had a little girl when the vasectomy should have prevented that from happening, and I had joked that he'd better sue that doctor. I hadn't understood where his mind was, telling me about that out of the blue. I had taken him to his house, not far from mine, and I'd wished him a Merry Christmas.
A couple of weeks later I drove my mixer into the lot after having done the final load of the day, and I heard the boss on the company radio say something about Dan, and hostages. When I went into the dispatch office all the drivers were there, listening to the boss talking to Dan on the telephone, telling him not to do anything crazy. As we all discovered later, though, it had been too late. Dan had used his new 12 gauge shotgun to shoot his wife and little girl. Apparently, he'd suspected the little girl wasn't his. After murdering his family he had gone out onto the front lawn and shot himself in the stomach, but he had botched it-- he was still alive. His wife's family lived next door and her brothers came over and tried to beat him to death as he lay on the grass but the police came and then the ambulance and he was taken away.
A few days later I was pouring concrete and the construction crew, who had known Dan and all the other drivers, was talking about what had happened.
"I kin see shootin yor wife, but not yor little girl," the foreman said. And the others all agreed very solemnly.
Dan eventually recovered from his wound, and he was sentenced to life in prison, and though he was considered a suicide risk, he managed to hang himself after only a few months in prison.
We had a baby-- a little girl-- not long afterwards. My wife had some roots in Portugal, so we moved there to live. We had a little girl we wanted to raise. I haven't had a gun since.
My dad bought me a .22 rifle when I was 12. It was a Marlin, with micro-grooved rifling, and it looked like an M1 carbine from World War 2. Though my dad was an engineer for companies doing projects for the space program, he had been raised as a farm boy in North Dakota, so he thought I should learn to shoot a gun. And I liked it. I loved my .22. I kept it oiled and I wanted to get lots more guns once I was older. I wished I could have lived in the Wild West so I could carry a gun around with me.
I also had a little .410 shotgun. I traded an old drum set for the shotgun and a broken Japanese sword someone's dad had picked up in the Pacific in World War 2. My mom sighed when she learned I had a shotgun now too.
We lived in the suburbs, in Florida. We weren't country people. We had a swimming pool. We were middle class. I didn't hunt. But I had a .22 rifle and a .410 shotgun.
Just a year or so earlier, a kid I knew from school had been shot in his sleep by his dad. The kid's name was Buck. He lived on the same street that we did. His dad had recently come back from Viet Nam, and at 4 in the morning had shot his wife and kids and them himself. All this in a middle class suburban Florida beach town.
Buck being murdered in his sleep-- shot in his sleep by his dad, really scared me. I made my dad promise he wouldn't murder us in our sleep. I felt pretty safe at night with my .22 and .410 shotgun, though, even though there was no ammo for the shotgun. I ran it through my head how to get to the .22 on the desktop and load it through its tubular magazine and then shoot whoever was coming to murder us in the night, and it seemed like it would take too long, and I wished I could sleep with my .22, already loaded. Also, if someone came in through the window, they would be between me and the .22, and that would be a problem. And if they came in and I didn't wake up in time, that would also be a problem. Then I started thinking my .22 wouldn't be much help when someone came in the night to murder us.
But I had this .22 lying there, on my desktop in my bedrrom, and I wanted to do something more with it than shoot at targets at a gun range. I wanted to shoot something. When I was 16, I had my driver's license and I had a .22 and a friend and I went out to shoot something. We found a spot near the beach with some pine woods. There were houses beyond the woods, though. I decided I wasn't going to shoot at things, because of the nearby houses. My friend wanted to shoot something, though, so he shot at a bird on the branch of a tree. He missed, and the shot popped and hissed-- .22's don't go Bang!-- they pop and hiss-- and a flock of birds flew up making a racket, and he handed me the gun and ran back to the car, and we sped away.
Not long afterwards, we moved to upstate New York. We lived out in the woods, by the Black River. My step brother took me deer hunting in a car. We drove around through the woods looking for deer. We had a 12 gauge shotgun he had borrowed from a friend, loaded with slugs for killing deer. It was illegal to hunt that way, but that was how it was done, he told me. When we couldn't find any deer we shot at trees in the woods.
When I left home to join the navy, my guns disappeared. My mom got rid of them. I shot guns every once in a while in the navy though. I qualified on the 1911 Colt semi-automatic pistol. I shot an M-14 a few times. I shot a 12 gauge once. I even fired a few bursts from a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the signal bridge of the USS Tattnall.
Then I got out of the navy and I had pretty much detached myself from guns until I got married and met my father-in-law. He really liked guns. He took me deer hunting and I liked it and I got a deer using his 30/30. I lived in the countryside now, so I decided I had to have guns again. My father-in-law gave his old 20 gauge shotgun to my wife. I borrowed his 30/30 every deer season, and he loaned it to me because he had a new .30-06, with a higher muzzle velocity, which made it more accurate at long range, and more deadly.
My father-in-law took me coon hunting a few times too. I came along as an observer because I wanted to stomp around the woods at night. We went on one coon hunt-- a competition coon hunt-- without any guns. It was a competition to see whose dog was the best coon dog, not to kill the raccoon. Our group was walking across a corn field when a big pickup with searchlights mounted on its roof came bouncing and roaring at us. It stopped, illuminating all of us in its lights. I turned and saw a silhouetted figure holding a gun.
"What the hell you doin' on my land!?" the silhouette shouted.
A little hillbilly in the group shouted back, "Fuck you!", and I cringed a little, waiting for a shotgun blast.
Then the judge of the competition called out to the man with the gun, and they knew each other, and everything was okay.
On another coon hunt, this time with guns, my father-in-law and his friend took us out onto someone else's farmland. The farmer cornered us in the woods, shining a high beam flashlight at us. He had a pistol in a holster, and warned us to get the hell off his land. We did, and continued the hunt, and the dogs got the scent of a raccoon, and it went up a tree, and my father-in-law and his friend got the raccoon in the beams of their headlamps, and you could see the big coon huddled on a limb, its eyes shining from the reflection, and they fired shot after shot at the coon with their .22's, and at that moment I thought about where those bullets that missed might be heading, because though it was countryside it wasn't all countryside, but mostly I marvelled that an animal could be so full of .22 caliber rifle slugs and still manage to stay up in the tree, and I thought also that that animal was going through a living hell, and it finally dropped to the ground, and the dogs ripped into its belly and pulled out its intestines, and it was still alive enough to fight, and I watched in horror until one of them finally put a bullet in its head. That was my last coon hunt.
I had a nice neighbor there, out in the countryside in Maryland, who had a 16 year old son who wasn't so nice. His son shot the other neighbor's dog from his bedroom window with his .22, and killed it. The kid told us he had gut shot it, and it had died slowly, and he had had to apologize to the family. I told him he had better not shoot Clyde, my beagle-- that I wouldn't just accept an apology-- and he told me not to worry-- he wouldn't shoot Clyde because he liked us. Later he told us about the people living in a trailer with stray cats everywhere, and how he had offered to shoot the cats, and they had agreed, and he had had a big day hunting and killing stray cats.
The next door neighbor whose dog had been shot also had a gun. We didn't know he had a gun, though, until he used it late one night. We'd been awakened by a loud argument between the man and his girlfriend. Then there was a gunshot and frantic sobbing from the woman. We peered out the window at their house, crouching down. It seemed to be quiet now.
"I'm calling the cops," I said, whispering for some reason.
"Okay," said my wife, also whispering.
I called 911, the emergency number, and I told the lady a gunshot had been fired at the home next to ours. I also explained the circumstances. She said that state troopers would be sent out right away. Back in our bedroom, I crouched low to peer out the window again, where my wife was still peering.
"They've made up, they love each other again," she said, no longer whispering.
On their front lawn, the man and his girlfriend were hugging and sobbing. I called the highway patrol and reported the new development, telling them they needn't come.
Meanwhile, I was hoping to save enough money to buy a few more guns. A 20 gauge shotgun is kind of a wimpy gun, really. I wanted a 12 gauge shotgun, and a lever action .45 rifle using the same shell used in a .45 pistol. I killed all my deer at short range, so the rifle would be good for that, with a lot of short range knock down power. Also, I could later buy a .45 pistol for home defense, because of all the whackos around carrying guns.
When we lived there, in Cecil County, Maryland, everybody had a gun. You really had to be careful who you offended. Once, while driving my GMC pickup truck, I cut somebody off in traffic. They held down the horn behind me. I put my hand out of the window and gave them the finger. They gunned their engine and roared past me and cut me off and hit their brakes a little, forcing me to hit my brakes and slow down. The guy in the passenger seat held a pistol out of the window and waved it around. My wife was afraid I would stop to confront them, but I was as scared as she was, and I thought about how to get away from these guys when they roared away instead.
Dan Hanby also had a gun, a 12 gauge shotgun. He was a driver for Maryland Portable Concrete, where we both drove concrete mixers. He was a quiet guy-- polite. He was having some problems at home, though. He'd been caught driving drunk, so he couldn't work as a driver for a while. I saw him hitchhiking as I came home from work, and I gave him a lift, and he explained that he'd just bought the shotgun from K-Mart.
"Going hunting?" I'd asked, and he'd said no and then been quiet. He explained that he had had a vasectomy, but his wife had a little girl when the vasectomy should have prevented that from happening, and I had joked that he'd better sue that doctor. I hadn't understood where his mind was, telling me about that out of the blue. I had taken him to his house, not far from mine, and I'd wished him a Merry Christmas.
A couple of weeks later I drove my mixer into the lot after having done the final load of the day, and I heard the boss on the company radio say something about Dan, and hostages. When I went into the dispatch office all the drivers were there, listening to the boss talking to Dan on the telephone, telling him not to do anything crazy. As we all discovered later, though, it had been too late. Dan had used his new 12 gauge shotgun to shoot his wife and little girl. Apparently, he'd suspected the little girl wasn't his. After murdering his family he had gone out onto the front lawn and shot himself in the stomach, but he had botched it-- he was still alive. His wife's family lived next door and her brothers came over and tried to beat him to death as he lay on the grass but the police came and then the ambulance and he was taken away.
A few days later I was pouring concrete and the construction crew, who had known Dan and all the other drivers, was talking about what had happened.
"I kin see shootin yor wife, but not yor little girl," the foreman said. And the others all agreed very solemnly.
Dan eventually recovered from his wound, and he was sentenced to life in prison, and though he was considered a suicide risk, he managed to hang himself after only a few months in prison.
We had a baby-- a little girl-- not long afterwards. My wife had some roots in Portugal, so we moved there to live. We had a little girl we wanted to raise. I haven't had a gun since.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
On the Second Amendment, and Gun Freaks
More gunplay in
the Old Country. The gun freaks say the
problem ain’t the guns, it’s the crazies. But if the USA is a country full of
crazies, why do you want to arm them, gun freaks? And why do you want to arm them with assault weapons, weapons of mass destruction?
Sigh.
Anyway, the Second
Amendment:
'A well
regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right
of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'
‘A well
regulated militia,’ is how this amendment begins.
‘A…well…regulated…militia…’
Not, ‘An
unregulated bunch of gun freaks…’, but, ‘A well regulated milita…’
Reading
comprehension problems.
Like a redneck
with the Bible. He just don’t get it.
Sigh.
Anyway, from
Wikipedia (look up 'second amendment' to check references):
'Early English
settlers in America viewed the right to arms and/or the right to bear arms
and/or state militias as important for one or more of these purposes (in no
particular order):
enabling the people to organize a militia
system.
participating in law enforcement;
deterring tyrannical government;
repelling invasion;
suppressing insurrection, allegedly
including slave revolts;
facilitating a natural right of self-defense.'
Some 230 years
later, let us examine how things have changed since the settlers lived in log
cabins in the wilderness of North America.
For starters, every
state now has a militia in its National Guard. And I don't want a bunch of gun
freakos drilling with their assault rifles in my neighborhood. I wouldn’t feel
safe. The militia formed by gun freakos would make me feel very unsafe and
surely that is contrary to the purpose of the amendment.
Second, law
enforcement has enough participants. I would feel even more unsafe with a bunch
of gun freak vigilantes patrolling the streets. The angst-filled teenagers
would surely stop breaking beer bottles and spraying graffiti but I would
rather have them lurking the streets than gun freakos with guns. No. The
vigilante era is done. Enough cops already.
Third, we can
deter tyrannical government with elections. Even if we have to wait a little.
For example, if you believe Obama is the Antichrist, or that he is Hitler, or
Stalin, or all of them at once, just have a little patience and he'll go away, in the same manner that that shit-for-brains, Bush, went away. The system still works, at least in
that regard.
Next, regarding
the repelling of invasions… please. The
Canadians are massing troops along our northern frontier! On the southern
front, the Mexicans have advanced all the way to Colorado! Ay caramba! We have
a huge military to repel invasion. In fact, our military is so big we can do
the invading, so that the citizenry in other
countries has to bear arms.
As for suppressing
insurrection, such as slave revolts, there are no more slaves to revolt. And if
there were still slaves, I would want their revolt to be successful. Also,
those militias formed by gun freakos to prevent tyrannical government? Well,
their armed opposition would amount to insurrection. So then we would have gun
freakos mounting an armed opposition to the tyrannical president, on the one
hand, and other armed gun freakos putting down the insurrection. Or maybe not,
as the gun freakos seem to be united against ole Antichrist-Hitler-Stalin
Obama.
As for self defense,
don’t be such a wimp. Any wuss can pack an assault weapon. Learn an effective martial art,
or keep a big dog in the house. A big
dog is a much better home defense system than a gun, which can be used against
you. As for learning a martial art, become the Black Belt that has the wisdom
to avoid and prevent confrontation, but in a pinch, can disarm and disable
whoever is stupid enough to pose a real threat, such as a gun freak in a
militia. Or better yet, learn the highest wisdom of non-violent resistance. Ghandi
may have been murdered by a freako with a gun, but Ghandi won that contest.
Ghandi’s ideas are still around. The freako with the gun is just another freako with a gun, gone, lost in obscurity. What was his name? What
was his life all about? Who gives a shit.
In the meantime,
let us pry the assault weapons from the warm, living hands of every NRA
member who owns one. The very ownership of an assault weapon or a pistol-- which are guns meant to kill people-- I take personally as a threat to humanity, which I tend to identify with, so I think it's okay to disarm them. It's being a good American to disarm them. It's being a good human being to disarm a person who is carrying weapons meant to murder, even if they claim they just want to murder other murderers. Then let's melt down the assault weapons and hanguns and find something
useful to do with the steel. Make art with
it. Use it in the construction of schools.
Then let's help these people develop their self esteem without having to find it in a weapon of mass destruction.
Then let's help these people develop their self esteem without having to find it in a weapon of mass destruction.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Brawl Day on Capitol Hill
Whilst having my morning coffee and reading the morning computer I was hit by the news of brawling in parliament in Ukraine. A communist was going on about how they never should have ousted Yanukovych, and a couple of Ukrainian nationalists pushed him around-- always the feckin nationalists, of whichever country, starting the violence-- and a brawl broke out, and I thought, wouldn't a lot of tension be relieved if a big brawl broke out in our American legislative branches?
Here are some photos of Ukrainian parliament:
Whoops! Sorry, wrong photos. Those are photos of extremely violent 'cage rage.'
Let's try again:
Hmmm,yes, those are the right photos.
Did I say that Cage Rage looked extremely violent?
Yet, there is an element of black comedy in fighting politicians not found in cage rage.
Anyway, brawling legislators on Capitol Hill-- it is not a completely novel idea-- it has happened before:
This was a fight, literally, about immigration. The battle goes on, though now it is only tongues lashing out at one another.
Here's another:
This was a fight over slavery. This good ole boy pro-slavery South Carolina senator beat an anti-slavery Massachusetts senator unconscious. Note the chuckling faces in the background.
You can find the other fightin legislators stories here:
http://voices.yahoo.com/ready-rumble-greatest-fistfights-us-congress-2129050.html?cat=9
But alas, the last of these brawls seems to have occurred in 1902. So I ask, "What if a brawling day could be organized in Congress or the Senate?"
That boring as hell channel that watches our legislators all day long would get a huge boost in ratings.
But rather than just having a legislative cage rage match to act as 'circuses' for the masses, and as a sort of catharsis for the legislators, there could be some meaningful outcome from the match between Democrats and Republicans. If the Democrats won, for example, a certain law would be passed that they've been pushing. If the Republicans won... you get the picture.
We've all had this idea before, but we usually think of it in terms of world leaders fighting, like George W. duking it out with Sadam. But that gives individual world leaders way too much power. And Putin would dominate the world for sure. He would kick everyone's ass. Merkel might give a good run for the money-- a knee to Putin's groin once or twice-- she might have Putin turning red with frustration at the humiliation he'd be suffering at her hands, but in the end he would probably have her pinned down.
I might like to see Kim Jong-Il in a match with somebody though, if he were still alive. His chubby son might be fun to watch in a Sumo wrestling match.
Anyway, while the leader-to-leader matchup might be entertaining, the results would be too decisive and ill matched.
But a team of House and Senate Republicans and Democrats pummeling one another? That would be good. There would be no more hypocrisy. Just savage beatings. Honest. And the result would only be for this or that particular law, not for world domination. And even if one side out-muscles the other, teamwork and superior strategy could win the day over muscle. For example, the Democrats, who I think are probably a bit less muscular, a bit less savage by nature, might outflank the Republicans, or do a pincer movement, or manage to divide the enemy, or something.
There would have to be some rules.
1. On Brawl day in the House and Senate, all legislators must wear their typical going to pseudo-work attire. Suits and dresses. Ties. There is nothing more entertaining than watching formally-dressed middle-aged people brawl with each other.
2. All legislators must participate. If they choose to cower in a corner, they may-- perhaps there could be a 'cowards corner' designated for the less robust, but the news crews would surely have a camera set up there to show the world exactly who is cowering.
3. No weapons except as would be considered normal wear. Rings, for example, but not brass knuckles. Canes for those who always have a cane anyway. Belts of course. A belt can be a nasty weapon, but it would be permitted.
4. The brawl would last either until one side or the other side is sprawled on the floor unconscious or has surrendered by withdrawing to their respective coward's corner. (To make it more interesting, the 'coward's corner' could have limited space, say, for only 2/3 of the legislators of a given side to cower in. That way, if the whole team-- say, all of Team Democrat-- wanted to cower, they would have to fight among themselves to squeeze in to the 'coward's corner'. So behind them would be Republicans thrashing them with their belts, and in front of them their own teammates clawing and kicking, trying to push them out.)
5. The winning side would get the law of the day passed. So if Team Republican won the day, beating half of Team Democrat into unconsciousness, and driving the other half into the 'cowards corner' , they could get a law passed that makes the poor poorer and the rich richer, or they could invade Syria and Russia and North Korea and France. Something like that.
6. All legislators must show up for work the next day, not to legislate, but for reconciliation. They could sit down and chat about the battle the previous day. One legislator, for example, marked with black eyes and belt buckle cuts, could sit with the guy who thrashed him, who is perhaps less badly beaten, and could say things like, "Johnny B., you swing a mean belt," and Johnny B. could say, "It took you forever to go down, man, I respect that." Or maybe there would be a Team Republican guy in pretty bad shape sitting with one of the few Team Democrat legislators who came out of the battle unscathed. He might say, "Damn, Nancy, did you have to bite so hard?" and she might chuckle a little and say, "No hard feelings?" and he might wink.
7. The most important rule of all would be this one: non-violent resistance would be absolutely prohibited. Non-violent resistance would destroy the event. To have one side, say Team Republican, thrashing non-violent resisters with belts would just... well... mess it all up. You might cheer for a while if you were a Republican, but then you'd say, "whoa man, that's enough, look, they aren't thrashing back, shit, they don't even look angry, whoa guys, back off, damn," and then the whole Brawl Day would come to an end. So-- no non-violent resistance. Fight or flight only.
Here are some photos of Ukrainian parliament:
Whoops! Sorry, wrong photos. Those are photos of extremely violent 'cage rage.'
Let's try again:
Hmmm,yes, those are the right photos.
Did I say that Cage Rage looked extremely violent?
Yet, there is an element of black comedy in fighting politicians not found in cage rage.
Anyway, brawling legislators on Capitol Hill-- it is not a completely novel idea-- it has happened before:
Here's another:
This was a fight over slavery. This good ole boy pro-slavery South Carolina senator beat an anti-slavery Massachusetts senator unconscious. Note the chuckling faces in the background.
You can find the other fightin legislators stories here:
http://voices.yahoo.com/ready-rumble-greatest-fistfights-us-congress-2129050.html?cat=9
But alas, the last of these brawls seems to have occurred in 1902. So I ask, "What if a brawling day could be organized in Congress or the Senate?"
That boring as hell channel that watches our legislators all day long would get a huge boost in ratings.
But rather than just having a legislative cage rage match to act as 'circuses' for the masses, and as a sort of catharsis for the legislators, there could be some meaningful outcome from the match between Democrats and Republicans. If the Democrats won, for example, a certain law would be passed that they've been pushing. If the Republicans won... you get the picture.
We've all had this idea before, but we usually think of it in terms of world leaders fighting, like George W. duking it out with Sadam. But that gives individual world leaders way too much power. And Putin would dominate the world for sure. He would kick everyone's ass. Merkel might give a good run for the money-- a knee to Putin's groin once or twice-- she might have Putin turning red with frustration at the humiliation he'd be suffering at her hands, but in the end he would probably have her pinned down.
 |
| Takin you down Vlad |
 |
| Uhhh... (hard swallow) |
I might like to see Kim Jong-Il in a match with somebody though, if he were still alive. His chubby son might be fun to watch in a Sumo wrestling match.
 |
| Kim just before other world leader rams big stick up his butt |
Anyway, while the leader-to-leader matchup might be entertaining, the results would be too decisive and ill matched.
But a team of House and Senate Republicans and Democrats pummeling one another? That would be good. There would be no more hypocrisy. Just savage beatings. Honest. And the result would only be for this or that particular law, not for world domination. And even if one side out-muscles the other, teamwork and superior strategy could win the day over muscle. For example, the Democrats, who I think are probably a bit less muscular, a bit less savage by nature, might outflank the Republicans, or do a pincer movement, or manage to divide the enemy, or something.
There would have to be some rules.
1. On Brawl day in the House and Senate, all legislators must wear their typical going to pseudo-work attire. Suits and dresses. Ties. There is nothing more entertaining than watching formally-dressed middle-aged people brawl with each other.
2. All legislators must participate. If they choose to cower in a corner, they may-- perhaps there could be a 'cowards corner' designated for the less robust, but the news crews would surely have a camera set up there to show the world exactly who is cowering.
3. No weapons except as would be considered normal wear. Rings, for example, but not brass knuckles. Canes for those who always have a cane anyway. Belts of course. A belt can be a nasty weapon, but it would be permitted.
4. The brawl would last either until one side or the other side is sprawled on the floor unconscious or has surrendered by withdrawing to their respective coward's corner. (To make it more interesting, the 'coward's corner' could have limited space, say, for only 2/3 of the legislators of a given side to cower in. That way, if the whole team-- say, all of Team Democrat-- wanted to cower, they would have to fight among themselves to squeeze in to the 'coward's corner'. So behind them would be Republicans thrashing them with their belts, and in front of them their own teammates clawing and kicking, trying to push them out.)
5. The winning side would get the law of the day passed. So if Team Republican won the day, beating half of Team Democrat into unconsciousness, and driving the other half into the 'cowards corner' , they could get a law passed that makes the poor poorer and the rich richer, or they could invade Syria and Russia and North Korea and France. Something like that.
6. All legislators must show up for work the next day, not to legislate, but for reconciliation. They could sit down and chat about the battle the previous day. One legislator, for example, marked with black eyes and belt buckle cuts, could sit with the guy who thrashed him, who is perhaps less badly beaten, and could say things like, "Johnny B., you swing a mean belt," and Johnny B. could say, "It took you forever to go down, man, I respect that." Or maybe there would be a Team Republican guy in pretty bad shape sitting with one of the few Team Democrat legislators who came out of the battle unscathed. He might say, "Damn, Nancy, did you have to bite so hard?" and she might chuckle a little and say, "No hard feelings?" and he might wink.
7. The most important rule of all would be this one: non-violent resistance would be absolutely prohibited. Non-violent resistance would destroy the event. To have one side, say Team Republican, thrashing non-violent resisters with belts would just... well... mess it all up. You might cheer for a while if you were a Republican, but then you'd say, "whoa man, that's enough, look, they aren't thrashing back, shit, they don't even look angry, whoa guys, back off, damn," and then the whole Brawl Day would come to an end. So-- no non-violent resistance. Fight or flight only.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Cookies and Consciousness
I am reading
‘The Divine Romance’, by Paramahansa Yogananda while drinking coffee and
eating triple chocolate cookies. Elke is eating an apple. I am
devouring cookies after dipping them in my coffee, northern Italian style, and
Elke is devouring her apple, all of it, even the core, and I am reading about the opposite modes of
material and spriritual consciousness, and about how I can test myself to see
which consciousness I have, and I read these lines:
Material consciousness says to eat your apple and
cookies yourself. Spiritual consciousness says to divide and share with someone
else.
I freak a little and I turn
around to see if Paramahansa Yogananda is in the room, watching us with our
cookies and apple, and there is no one there, and I look up and in other
directions but the yogi is not there, and I am about to tell Elke to stop but
it is too late; the apple is gone.
He wrote this book when my mom was a kid. How does he know we are eating an apple and cookies?
He wrote this book when my mom was a kid. How does he know we are eating an apple and cookies?
The apple is gone, but I have
cookies still. There are six left.
“Cookie?” I offer, though I know Elke will refuse because she doesn’t eat cookies.
As expected, she says "Nein,
danke."
I am still
scanning the room for traces of the yogi. He is on the astral plane, hovering over my shoulder.
If I read the
same lines tomorrow, and I am eating toast instead of cookies, will it say in the book,
Material consciousness says to eat your apple and toast yourself. Spiritual consciousness says to divide and share with someone else. ?
Material consciousness says to eat your apple and toast yourself. Spiritual consciousness says to divide and share with someone else. ?
This is a test
indeed, and the yogi knows it, because I am selfish about cookies.
Spiritual consciousness says to divide and share with
someone else.
Elke bought me
the cookies, and said, “These are your cookies, just yours,”
and I had kept
them all to myself, knowing that here they would be safe
from the boys.
For you see, the
boys are also cookie monsters. They also devour cookies as if they were potato
chips.
The other day I
found cookies in the kitchen, and I ate two of them with my coffee, dipping
them into the coffee as they do in the north of Italy. I only ate two because
they were the last two cookies. Then, later that evening, as I was strumming on
the guitar, they came into this very room, and sat down together, smiling.
“Did you see
cookies on the counter in the kitchen?” asked Philipp.
“Because we can’t
find them, there were two cookies,” said Max.
“We are looking
for them, did you see them?” asked Philipp.
There was a
little uncomfortable pause as they scrutinized my countenance for a sign.
“Ah, you mean
those sandwich-like cookies, with chocolate cream in the middle?” I asked.
“Yes,” they said
in unison, smiling a little, scrutinizing.
“There were two?”
I asked.
“Yes, there were
two,” said Philipp.
“Two cookies,”
said Max. “We can’t find them.”
“Did you see
them?” asked Philipp.
A little pause,
and I believe I must have been blinking a lot and swallowing.
“Yeah, I ate
them with coffee this morning,” I blurted out. “They were sitting on the counter, you
know?”
The twins laughed
a bit, looking at each other and nodding, then back at me.
“Yes, of course,”
said Philipp.
“Yes, they were
on the counter,” said Max.
“There were only
two? I thought I had left some,” I said.
“No, there were
only two,” said Philipp. “Okay.”
“Yes, okay,”
said Max.
“Okay,” I said,
and I believe it was for this reason that Elke had bought me my very own pack
of cookies.
So now I have
these cookies, and the yogi is hovering over me somewhere in astral space, telling
me personally through his book that I should share the cookies.
Alas, as I have
been writing these words I have eaten two more cookies. There are now but four,
and I will have another cup of coffee, and I will require cookies with that cup
as well.
But… the test. Am I of a more spiritual or material
consciousness? Will I share my cookies?
Later in the day...
Max and Philipp have given me some cake.
I offered cookies so now I can't change my mind. There are three left. Three triple chocolate cookies and I will share. I will eat one more myself.
"Yo! Yogi Yogananda! I'm sharing my cookies!"
I am clearly a spiritual man.
Later in the day...
Max and Philipp have given me some cake.
I offered cookies so now I can't change my mind. There are three left. Three triple chocolate cookies and I will share. I will eat one more myself.
"Yo! Yogi Yogananda! I'm sharing my cookies!"
I am clearly a spiritual man.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Kamelle!
In Jülich, it is Carnival. Actually, it has been Carnival since 11:11 am, on the 11th of November-- it is what people in and around Cologne refer to as the Fifth Season, but it is peaking now, and I am in Jülich to watch the Carnival procession. I had no costume, so the neighbors have provided me with a hat for the occasion. It looks like the hat Marlon Brando wore in 'The Wild One', but it has all the colors of the rainbow on it, so I wouldn't fit in very well in a biker bar.
The crowd has gathered for the procession, and the costumes are mainly colorful and clown-like-- there is no imitation Rio de Janeiro here, as was the case in Portugal, which was ridiculous, given the Winter climate. No, the Germans of North Rhine Westphalia have their very own Carnival traditions that go way back to the Middle Ages. Prussian uniforms to mock the Prussian occupiers, for example.
With German efficiency, two cars edge along the path of the procession like lawn trimmers to force the crowd to back up a little, and the crowd remains back after the cars have passed. In most of the places I've been these past several years, the procession itself would have to force people out of the way, and if cars had passed to force the people back, the crowd would have moved in again just behind the cars, but this is Germany, and there is order. Or so I believe at that moment.
A band leads the way of the procession. The first big float is a sailing ship, towed by a farm tractor. The crowd begins to chant.
"Allah! Allah!" they are saying. And also, "Camellah! Camellah!"
There are many Turkish immigrants here, and clearly their faith has become a part of the Carnival tradition. I am impressed by the multi-culturalism.
"Allah! Allah!" I chant with the crowd. "Allah! Allah! Camellah! Bismillah! Inshallah!"
Allah is truly for everyone, as so many of my Muslim friends say.
I am then told that the chant is "Alaaf" rather than "Allah". It is the customary Carnival greeting.
"Ah, I see. And 'camellah'?" I ask.
"Kamelle. It's the Cologne dialect for 'candy'"
No matter, I change my chant to "Alaaf! Alaaf! Kamelle! Kamelle!" and I stretch out my arms, palms up, as the big ship passes by, and there are little children high above me on the float, and one of them hears my voice over all the others, and she is a child of perhaps seven years of age, and hearing my appeal to Alaaf, and hearing my plea for kamelle, she is merciful, and her tiny arm stretches out, and she opens her little fist, and candy flies through the air in my direction, and I stretch out my hand, and the mini Snicker's bar floats right to me, it is inches away, and another hand drifts into view, right in front of my face, and my mini-Snickers is intercepted, the wrath of Alaaf be upon him.
I had noticed the man who has stolen my candy as the crowd had waited for the procession. He is about my age, which for most people means a respectable age, and he looks like an accountant with children studying at the best universities. I glare at him but he gives me no acknowledgement. He pockets the mini Snicker's and ignores me, and I feel that I have suddenly been cast in shadow as the dark clouds of war pass overhead.
"Kamelle! Kamelle!" I roar, demanding now-- I will get my kamelle-- and once again the word creates an immediate response from the Kamelle angels passing by high above, and something-- a big candy bar possibly--arcs towards me-- it is rectangular, and it turns slowly as it arcs through the air as if it were on display-- and I reach out, and, almost, almost, and the hand-- the accountant's hand-- opens directly in front of my face-- and in that instant I see everything in slow motion-- the slowly turning rectangular object drifting to me, the hand wide open-- it is a pink, pale hand of average size with a wedding band on it-- and the hand closes on the object, my big candy bar-- closes and disappears from view. I glare at the accountant again, and again he ignores me. He hasn't been chanting the word--"kamelle"-- he has been standing there silently letting me make the appeals while he snatches the rewards from the air. I have an urge to flick the back of his ear as he inspects the object he has snatched away from me, and I've got my right middle finger in a circle, it's nail pressed hard against my thumb, cocked and ready to unleash against his pink ear when he hands the object over his shoulder, not even turning to see me-- just hands it back to me, and I take it-- he knows he was in the wrong-- I take it and I won't flick his ear after all-- and I look at the object, and it is not a big candy bar but a little packet of tissue paper.
"What the...?"
But I haven't got time to retaliate with an ear flick as the next float has arrived, and it is blaring that kind of music that makes you happy and want to dance, and those who are occupying it are dancing and throwing out candy, and I yell, "Kamelle! Kaaaameeeellee!", and the words are again answered by candy flying out, but not singly-- nay, not one candy but dozens of candies flying through the springtime-like sky, the cellophane glinting in the sun, a flock of candy, or a swarm perhaps, like a swarm of locusts, yet not locusts, but candy, flying to me, and yet, which candy to snatch out of the air? I want them all, haven't they been thrown to me? Mine! All mine! And an army of hands reaches out to snatch my candy away, yet some candy has gotten through the hands and they splatter like shotgun pellets on the ground, and I switch now to ground mode, bending down amidst the legs of the crowd, and I reach for a candy-- it is yellow-- lemony flavor, or butterscotch-- and it is snatched away by an elderly woman with a sack, and she puts it into her sack, and I glare at her but she acts as though I weren't there.
"What the...?"
But there, there is another, and I am down on all fours-- it is a long piece of taffy-- and I reach through someone's legs and grab one end of it but at the very same moment another hand has it by the other end-- it is another man my age, middle-aged-- a respectable age-- and he is well dressed, not even a funny hat to celebrate Carnival-- and we glare at each other for just a nano-second before the legs I am reaching through back up a bit and my head is pressing against a woman's rear end and she seems to be mildly panicking and I release my grip and the well-dressed man escapes with the taffy and I am sure at that moment that he drives an expensive Mercedes and cuts people off in traffic and gets away with it every time.
"Sorry," I say to the woman who looks very confused and does not reply.
But no time to reflect on this.
"Kamelle! Kaaameeelleee!" I shout with outstretched arms and it works again-- a child on the float is answering with a candy fired at point blank range-- a line drive straight to my head-- the accountant is distracted and the candy gets past him and I've got my hand out just in time and it's in my hand but I bobble it-- no! just like when I played second base in Little League baseball, I bobble it and it deflects from my hand to the ground and I haven't even managed to make a move for it when another hand snatches it off the ground-- "Kamelle! Kamelllllleeeee!"-- and a big rectangular object floats like a slow knuckleball and not in a predictable trajectory either, it moves left and right as if caught by the wind but I snatch it out of the air-- I've got it! It's mine! And it's a sponge-- the kind of sponge with a green scouring pad on one side, and I say again, "What the...?" and the accountant is facing me and he sees my prize and he seems to be mocking me.
Then two jumbo candy bars float through the air and a dozen hands reach for them and one hits the ground and a gray haired woman with a long-tailed coat and a tam-o-shanter on her head scrambles for the one on the ground and she gets it and hands it to me because she senses my suffering and I know there is hope for peace on Earth. She has converted me, this woman, and now I will gather candy to give it away, even to give to my enemy the accountant and that other bastard also wherever he is.
On a balcony there are people yelling "Kamelle!" and the more confident young men marching alongside a float in old Prussian uniforms hurl Snicker's bars to them but the Snicker's fall short of the mark and hit the pavement but no one below seems to have noticed them and I rush to fetch them-- not for myself, but to throw them up to those who have appealed to kamelle up on the balcony-- I have been converted and I will help promote peace in the world and I reach for one and a woman snatches it up-- she is in her thirties and not even watching the procession or making appeals to 'kamelle', just walking along-- and I scramble for the other one and she snatches it up too and she turns just enough to look at me contemptuously through the corner of her eyes and continues on her merry way and I've suddenly lost interest in the candy the same way I lost interest in making money which was also like seagulls fighting over fishheads.
But no matter, the neighbors I've come here with have a huge sack full of candy anyway and they give most of their haul to us and we go into a friend's house which is right where the procession is and we eat würst and drink beer and next year I will bring an umbrella bent the wrong way to catch all of the candy high above the merciless snatching hands and then I will hand it out to accountants and businessmen and mean old ladies and innocent children and throw it to people on balconies or maybe I'll just hoard it all for myself.
The crowd has gathered for the procession, and the costumes are mainly colorful and clown-like-- there is no imitation Rio de Janeiro here, as was the case in Portugal, which was ridiculous, given the Winter climate. No, the Germans of North Rhine Westphalia have their very own Carnival traditions that go way back to the Middle Ages. Prussian uniforms to mock the Prussian occupiers, for example.
With German efficiency, two cars edge along the path of the procession like lawn trimmers to force the crowd to back up a little, and the crowd remains back after the cars have passed. In most of the places I've been these past several years, the procession itself would have to force people out of the way, and if cars had passed to force the people back, the crowd would have moved in again just behind the cars, but this is Germany, and there is order. Or so I believe at that moment.
A band leads the way of the procession. The first big float is a sailing ship, towed by a farm tractor. The crowd begins to chant.
"Allah! Allah!" they are saying. And also, "Camellah! Camellah!"
There are many Turkish immigrants here, and clearly their faith has become a part of the Carnival tradition. I am impressed by the multi-culturalism.
"Allah! Allah!" I chant with the crowd. "Allah! Allah! Camellah! Bismillah! Inshallah!"
Allah is truly for everyone, as so many of my Muslim friends say.
I am then told that the chant is "Alaaf" rather than "Allah". It is the customary Carnival greeting.
"Ah, I see. And 'camellah'?" I ask.
"Kamelle. It's the Cologne dialect for 'candy'"
No matter, I change my chant to "Alaaf! Alaaf! Kamelle! Kamelle!" and I stretch out my arms, palms up, as the big ship passes by, and there are little children high above me on the float, and one of them hears my voice over all the others, and she is a child of perhaps seven years of age, and hearing my appeal to Alaaf, and hearing my plea for kamelle, she is merciful, and her tiny arm stretches out, and she opens her little fist, and candy flies through the air in my direction, and I stretch out my hand, and the mini Snicker's bar floats right to me, it is inches away, and another hand drifts into view, right in front of my face, and my mini-Snickers is intercepted, the wrath of Alaaf be upon him.
I had noticed the man who has stolen my candy as the crowd had waited for the procession. He is about my age, which for most people means a respectable age, and he looks like an accountant with children studying at the best universities. I glare at him but he gives me no acknowledgement. He pockets the mini Snicker's and ignores me, and I feel that I have suddenly been cast in shadow as the dark clouds of war pass overhead.
"Kamelle! Kamelle!" I roar, demanding now-- I will get my kamelle-- and once again the word creates an immediate response from the Kamelle angels passing by high above, and something-- a big candy bar possibly--arcs towards me-- it is rectangular, and it turns slowly as it arcs through the air as if it were on display-- and I reach out, and, almost, almost, and the hand-- the accountant's hand-- opens directly in front of my face-- and in that instant I see everything in slow motion-- the slowly turning rectangular object drifting to me, the hand wide open-- it is a pink, pale hand of average size with a wedding band on it-- and the hand closes on the object, my big candy bar-- closes and disappears from view. I glare at the accountant again, and again he ignores me. He hasn't been chanting the word--"kamelle"-- he has been standing there silently letting me make the appeals while he snatches the rewards from the air. I have an urge to flick the back of his ear as he inspects the object he has snatched away from me, and I've got my right middle finger in a circle, it's nail pressed hard against my thumb, cocked and ready to unleash against his pink ear when he hands the object over his shoulder, not even turning to see me-- just hands it back to me, and I take it-- he knows he was in the wrong-- I take it and I won't flick his ear after all-- and I look at the object, and it is not a big candy bar but a little packet of tissue paper.
"What the...?"
But I haven't got time to retaliate with an ear flick as the next float has arrived, and it is blaring that kind of music that makes you happy and want to dance, and those who are occupying it are dancing and throwing out candy, and I yell, "Kamelle! Kaaaameeeellee!", and the words are again answered by candy flying out, but not singly-- nay, not one candy but dozens of candies flying through the springtime-like sky, the cellophane glinting in the sun, a flock of candy, or a swarm perhaps, like a swarm of locusts, yet not locusts, but candy, flying to me, and yet, which candy to snatch out of the air? I want them all, haven't they been thrown to me? Mine! All mine! And an army of hands reaches out to snatch my candy away, yet some candy has gotten through the hands and they splatter like shotgun pellets on the ground, and I switch now to ground mode, bending down amidst the legs of the crowd, and I reach for a candy-- it is yellow-- lemony flavor, or butterscotch-- and it is snatched away by an elderly woman with a sack, and she puts it into her sack, and I glare at her but she acts as though I weren't there.
"What the...?"
But there, there is another, and I am down on all fours-- it is a long piece of taffy-- and I reach through someone's legs and grab one end of it but at the very same moment another hand has it by the other end-- it is another man my age, middle-aged-- a respectable age-- and he is well dressed, not even a funny hat to celebrate Carnival-- and we glare at each other for just a nano-second before the legs I am reaching through back up a bit and my head is pressing against a woman's rear end and she seems to be mildly panicking and I release my grip and the well-dressed man escapes with the taffy and I am sure at that moment that he drives an expensive Mercedes and cuts people off in traffic and gets away with it every time.
"Sorry," I say to the woman who looks very confused and does not reply.
But no time to reflect on this.
"Kamelle! Kaaameeelleee!" I shout with outstretched arms and it works again-- a child on the float is answering with a candy fired at point blank range-- a line drive straight to my head-- the accountant is distracted and the candy gets past him and I've got my hand out just in time and it's in my hand but I bobble it-- no! just like when I played second base in Little League baseball, I bobble it and it deflects from my hand to the ground and I haven't even managed to make a move for it when another hand snatches it off the ground-- "Kamelle! Kamelllllleeeee!"-- and a big rectangular object floats like a slow knuckleball and not in a predictable trajectory either, it moves left and right as if caught by the wind but I snatch it out of the air-- I've got it! It's mine! And it's a sponge-- the kind of sponge with a green scouring pad on one side, and I say again, "What the...?" and the accountant is facing me and he sees my prize and he seems to be mocking me.
Then two jumbo candy bars float through the air and a dozen hands reach for them and one hits the ground and a gray haired woman with a long-tailed coat and a tam-o-shanter on her head scrambles for the one on the ground and she gets it and hands it to me because she senses my suffering and I know there is hope for peace on Earth. She has converted me, this woman, and now I will gather candy to give it away, even to give to my enemy the accountant and that other bastard also wherever he is.
On a balcony there are people yelling "Kamelle!" and the more confident young men marching alongside a float in old Prussian uniforms hurl Snicker's bars to them but the Snicker's fall short of the mark and hit the pavement but no one below seems to have noticed them and I rush to fetch them-- not for myself, but to throw them up to those who have appealed to kamelle up on the balcony-- I have been converted and I will help promote peace in the world and I reach for one and a woman snatches it up-- she is in her thirties and not even watching the procession or making appeals to 'kamelle', just walking along-- and I scramble for the other one and she snatches it up too and she turns just enough to look at me contemptuously through the corner of her eyes and continues on her merry way and I've suddenly lost interest in the candy the same way I lost interest in making money which was also like seagulls fighting over fishheads.
But no matter, the neighbors I've come here with have a huge sack full of candy anyway and they give most of their haul to us and we go into a friend's house which is right where the procession is and we eat würst and drink beer and next year I will bring an umbrella bent the wrong way to catch all of the candy high above the merciless snatching hands and then I will hand it out to accountants and businessmen and mean old ladies and innocent children and throw it to people on balconies or maybe I'll just hoard it all for myself.
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