The Angry Land

 *Another* shooting, begad. Not funny, though, people got killed, though not as many as at that school in Texas. This one happened at a hospital in Tulsa, and the cops got there licketty split, yet not in time, apparently, to prevent some deaths. When someone is intent on killing, they've usually thought it all through and made plans, and all the rest of us have is hope and guesswork and experience of other incidents that are not quite the same as the current one. Anyway.

In happier news, I have been mean on the Twitter. I'm not even mad, but there are things I have decided not to put up with any more. I am filtering out as much mention of a certain event in the courts between a couple of actors who I will not name, because I do not care about them beyond the usual "they're fellow humans, hope they get better from whatever their deal is, or shut up about it, whichever." But it's apparently this century's O.J. Simpson trial, because it's all about men treating women like shit, which I agree is bad and sucks and should stop, but I don't see what me rolling all over in this particular spectacle will do to make things better. Anyway, the male actor of the pair once was cute in that dreamy, man-child look that makes certain cis women turn to mush and dribble all over, but now he looks like a weird gnome. LMAO, as they say.

The covid, the Russia invading Ukraine thing, the other thing, the mass murder, the other mass murder, has had the effect on some people of making them infuriatingly Noble in that bragging sort of way where everyone pretends to be super caring and compassionate about some downtrodden class and I just don't believe it, sorry. This is pretty minor, but a discussion of why (apparently? I don't know anyone like this) some men won't complain if a restaurant gets their order wrong quickly devolved from "men are just stolid, aren't they" to "I would never complain because service people work HARD and don't need that extra burden!" My brother in Christ, it is literally their job to get you the meal you ordered, I don't see what the problem is. And I also don't believe these Gentlemen Jims: they don't care about these imaginary "service workers", they are remembering when they had to work in a restaurant, and being tired and put-upon. Also the idea, casually presented, that anyone who asks for their meal to be fixed in anyway deserves to have it adulterated by the body fluids of the staff (instead of simply being fixed, which seems to me would be easier) is rather alarming. This isn't how I was taught to get respect, but perhaps times have changed. I also commented that if they put something on a plate that was asked not to be put there because the customer was deathly allergic to it, and that customer died, that wouldn't look super great on a resume. So far no one has replied, my usual reward for pointing out the obvious.

Getting back to the gun thing, I find it kind of tiring to see the usual "take away guns!" nonsense trotted out. It's not nonsense because individual people shouldn't have personal arsenals that could start a war, I agree they shouldn't. One person, one gun, sounds about right to me. But it's a bit late for that, and I don't think it's the cause of the problem anyway. The cause is we refuse to confront certain behaviors that end up in too many of these mass-shooting situations, though not always. The sort of person who is obsessed with conspiracies, sees black helicopters outside every window and a man in black under every bed, and is antisocial and unpleasant at the very least, is often dismissed as a crank, or admired as "he knows what's really going on!" or just put up with, and while most of these people lead more or less peaceful lives, albeit ones decorated with photos of JFK getting shot, posters of Hitler, and way too many guns, enough of them turn into mass shooters. And most of them are male, and have the whole "men protect/save everyone else" thing also percolating in their heads. And at no point were we ever the sort of culture that would turn in all its guns like they did in Australia after that mass shooting. I think we need to really examine the difference and see what they got right (I mean, it's not like Australians aren't also a colonial enterprise of the former British Empire, with the whole racist, sexist history of genocide and war and so on just like us). 

OK that's all I can think of for now. Hmm, I may do this blogging thing every day.