Jul 12, 2014

Guns and Morons, plus Chase Twichell's "Stripped Car"


aka Peace and Wisdom Party
Thirty seconds of this video conveys plenty, but I’m a masochist and watched all four minutes. The film wants to be funny, and sometimes it may be, but I find it a troubling sequence too. When I caught myself smiling a few times, I didn’t like myself. So I wrote the snarky treatise below.

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/07/155132-hilarious-gun-fails-will-make-wonder-lost-cause-shoot-firearms/

What’s the moral of the story in the video, which is passed off as humor?

1.  Guns don’t shoot themselves. Unequivocally true.

2.  In spite of some delusions, people can’t fire bullets from their fingers or genitalia. Unequivocally true. 

Solutions: 

1.  Eliminate gun control for people who have never made a mistake of any kind.

2.  Hate
each other over the two unequivocal truths above.

3.  I'm pretty sure  there are 8 billion mountain tops on Planet Earth.  Give each human a mountain top and all the firearms he can carry, which will lead to all the ammo-orgasms he has time for. Or energy. And alone on a mountain top, that’s a lot of time. Food? With all that weaponry, if they can’t find enough to kill, fuck ‘em. Shelter? Ammo-orgasms will keep ‘em warm.

4.  Uh-oh. My research team isn't sure there are 8 billion mountain tops.

5.  Someone also asked about propagation of the species?  Uh-oh.

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/07/155132-hilarious-gun-fails-will-make-wonder-lost-cause-shoot-firearms/

Then I went to Poetry Foundation, typed “guns” in the search box, and was offered “Stripped Car” by Chase Twichell. I’ve liked her work before, so I read it, though it's a little longer than what I usually post here:

    http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181522

Notice white fuzz ball in nest
    I’m not sure every line needs to be there, but the style is breezy, and some of the images were poignant,

    so I stuck with it. Do you like the poem? Respect it? Do you have some favorite lines, images or ideas? How about a “sulking adolescent” . . . “with a silky little shadow-moustache/and a gun”? Or the play of fruit and gardens against the images of metal and violence?

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181522



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6 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 13, 2014 at 9:34 PM

    I was good for about a minute, maybe less. And you're right, I did smile sometimes, but I think it was one of my icky smiles. The poem was clever in that the targets were not hims or hers or thems, but its. I think you can only kill an it. Only a guess on my part, having no experience.

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  2. Banjo52July 14, 2014 at 5:45 PM

    AH, surely you will be remembered in the annals for many things, but including, "You can only kill an it." Others have had the idea, but surely no one has said it with such vigor and succinctness! Also and by the way, I bet you're right.

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  3. Stickup ArtistJuly 15, 2014 at 2:29 AM

    Great observation AH. As for the vid, lasted about 30 secs. If I ever wonder why I don't have scads of friends, it's because I'm hiding from the likes of what I just witnessed. It sucks because I'm sure I'm missing out on a lot of good stuff, but it's a tradeoff I'm willing to make...

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  4. Banjo52July 15, 2014 at 10:27 AM

    Stickup, yes, and some tradeoffs are more painful than others. So many compromises . . .

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  5. Pasadena AdjacentJuly 23, 2014 at 8:15 PM

    I watched the whole thing. Guess I must be sick.

    Did like the line about the earth under the sidewalk. The images she conjured up made me think of Arnold Schwartznegger

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  6. Rune EideJuly 25, 2014 at 8:12 AM

    The gun-lover's arguments reminds me of what a Norwegian comedian once said: "It isn't the car's speed that kills - it is the sudden breaking".

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