Missing the Mark + Some Horrendicity

Vol. 1 Issue 11
I’m not going to talk about anything academic, and by that I mean boring this week; I want to revisit horrendicity. I have been excelling in this department lately, so much so, that it needs to be discussed. In the words of the totally excellent Wayne Campbell: “What the hell's going on? I lost my show, I lost my best friend, I lost my girl. I'm being shit on, that's all, shit on” -Wayne’s World (1992). Replace show with band, best friend with job, and leave girl as-is. I didn’t have one to lose. Is this a positive or a negative? But yea, band and job, gone.

It’s kind of hard to whine about your life sucking when your existence is a well-fed, carefree, single one in New York, when kids, just miles down from road from you are being shot at school. I’m talking about the Connecticut shootings.

By now I’m sure most people have heard the NRA’s call to arms, literally; “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” I’m not really going to criticize this ingenious, and by that I mean terrible idea; in order to stop gun violence we need more guns (in the US). I figure I’m no expert, so I really can’t sound off and say that NRA’s recommendation is possibility the stupidest solution to a problem I’ve ever heard. No, but I have fired a gun a few times, legally and illegally.

I once fired an AK-47 in Vietnam. Anyone was allowed: fire five rounds for 10 USD. It must have actually been a gun from the war-era because for very round I got off, it misfired twice. It was very difficult to keep track of the amount of rounds I got off, compared to the ones that misfired, and come to think of it, I remember arguing that I got ripped off by one round in the misfiring confusion. Suddenly the worker spoke no English, and pretended not to understand me.  Also, there were assault rifles going off all around me; they are so effin’ loud it still makes my ears hurt.

In my last blog about Horrendicity from November 20^th I mentioned how terrible my Vietnamese was, that being, for those of you that did not read that edition, very. This was about 3 months into my study of the language, and still before I learned the one and only word I’d ever learn in 6 months of study. Not only was my Vietnamese horrendous, my aim with the AK was just as bad. I didn’t hit the target once.

They had a few other serious assault weapons there even bigger than AKs, but to shoot those cost more. I don’t even know what the names were, like I said, I’m no gun expert.

I am consoled to live in a city where at least the most powerful official elected official, Mayor Bloomberg rebuts the NRA statements:“ they offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe;” he’s pretty much condemned the NRA, but the situation of Piers Morgan, the CNN Talk show host and New York City fixture makes me feel less consolation. It’s actually pretty funny.

Piers Morgan is not an idiot. When he interviews people who are idiots, i.e. fake celebrities, reality show stars, right-wing extremists, he makes a point of portraying them as such on his show. He even bans idiot guests for year spans. It is no different with gun lobbyists, saying, “You're an unbelievably stupid man, aren't you?" in a recent interview with gun-man Larry Pratt.

Now it seems nothing gets the United States united like a foreigner insulting their guns. Morgan is British. So far 48,000 people have signed a petition to deport Morgan saying he’s insulting the American constitution…. insulting the constitution by demanding that the US protect its citizens from being shot. Technically he cannot be deported for such behavior, Morgan is a legitimate Green Card holder, but imagine if they did deport him for condemning gun violence?

Does that mean that if I am an aspiring Green Card Holder that I need to get a gun? Maybe I should, just to be safe.