Out Like a Lamb, My Ass

Well, it's been nearly a month since I've last posted. I actually hate this, because I like blogging. I think about snarky comments all day long. But I can't post at work because 1) I don't have the friggin' time and 2) I work for "the man." Couple this with the fact that I refuse to get a Crackberry and participate in the Verizon/Metro Love Fest and you get no time for posting.

Other than this damn flu I got (thus the title of the post) and moved-up deadlines for stuff at work, life has been pretty nice. It's weird, though, that I can simultaneously feel like I am both never home and always home. I've been having people over for dinner a lot and have also been getting up for the gym at 5:30am (dear lord!), not to mention I'm still going to orchestra. I actually had to sit first stand during a sight reading last week because noone came. That was painful. Very painful. For everyone, in fact. So I have all of these regular, weekly things taking up my time... then there's all the last minute movies or shows or happy hours or whatever and it's just go go go go. When am I supposed to blog? I guess it's just not as important to me now? I want to write and I want to vent, but I don't want to be a public writer for a living and I'd rather get a chance to actually read about the things that are annoying me. You know, in my attempt to be a well-informed, open-minded citizen instead of just a knee-jerk leftist. So instead of blogging I read my Mother Jones or I have a conversations with someone or I learn something new about this world I'm in. Maybe I can start making more time for this blog, make it a priority. Then again I've also starting painting again, so maybe this creative writing spurt is over and I'm needing a different form of expression in my life? I don't know. We'll see if this "once a month" update thing becomes regular once May is over since I won't be here for a lot of it. I'm off to Cleveland for a friend's masters recital and then to Chicago for a conference and then, well, I know I have somewhere I'm supposed to be...

Regardless, I didn't just get on here to get all philosophical about my blog. I actually have been rather bothered by the events of last week, but haven't quite known what to say. The Virginia Tech tragedy is really an awful thing and I can't believe that people are using the fact that someone, anyone, can get access to semi-automatic weapons and slaughter 30+ people as some sort of proof that we need MORE guns. Whatever, I'm from the South where lots of people have guns to go hunting, protect their "vast" properties of broke-down trucks and paranoid worldviews, and cause their daddies had them. I grew up in a gun culture. I know how guns work--my Grandpa had them and showed us what a safety was and how to load and clean so we wouldn't accidentally shoot ourselves or someone else.

That said, I don't like guns. I don't think they should be legal anywhere. I think that guns were created to exert violence and I don't think anyone can argue with that. There is no other use for a gun than to shoot something, be it alive or not.* And even though I know that, I also know that getting a gun-free culture is a losing battle in a country founded on a violent uprising. That doesn't mean we shouldn't work for it and it certainly doesn't mean we shouldn't all come together to ban certain weapons. If that kid had used a non-assault class gun* (or hell a knife), it would have taken him a hell of a lot longer and very good aim to kill all those people as he loaded and reloaded and cocked each round. Instead he had all the time in the world and all the ammunition he needed to murder en masse.

I'm sorry, but what happened at Virginia Tech does nothing to convince me that the American people need an assault weapon to keep the "ci-yotes" from their livestock or to stop a burglar or a rapist or even a school shooter. It just convinces me that we need to do something about the fact that we live in a culture where this happens again and again and again.


* So shove that stupid statistic about "cars killing more people than guns" up your butt because I happen to think that the fact that cars weren't created solely to kill is an important variable in this equation, k?
* yes, I know, I know, there's lots of debates about what these words mean... I don't want to get into it... In general, I mean the sort of guns that allow someone to put over a 100 rounds in 30 victims with little to no effort.