The Continuation of Genius is Madness

A direction of thinking is not unlike a direction of travel, in that distance often determines context. If you travel West long enough, you will inevitably arrive East of where you began; by an analogous condition, any line of thought will eventually follow the curve of human experience back to where it began, passing through what was originally a polar opposite position. This is why people who decry murder will murder to prevent it, why people who fear revolution will stage a coup to save the state, and why people who seek to protect the moral certainty of their position will invariably stray into immorality in the pursuit of that defense.

It is by this mechanism that idealists become extremists.

The Finite Nature of Doing

The outcome, on a long enough timeline, might be temporary; the event itself is always permanent.

New Ghosts For Old Hauntings

The similarity with which crises present themselves throughout the years is astounding.  At some point between November 15th and January 15th, something will randomly fuck with my serenity; it's been that way since I was eight years old.  A winter car accident, the showdown with the old man when I was ten, somebody dies, someone leaves, something breaks...whatever.  Something is going to suck.  Those kinds of things are fucked up enough on their own without being predictable; coinciding with a season that's supposed to be festive is one of those little kicks in the sack that lets you know there is a higher force at work in the universe, and sometimes he's a dick.

Ontological arguments for God aside, I've tried to decipher over the years whether or not these things were truly random, the result of some external machination, or whether perhaps I've somehow brought some of them to bear myself (via expecting the holidays to be fucked, and then subconsciously setting out to tank them because of that expectation).  Certainly more rational than the rather egocentric notion that the Almighty has decided that I have high billing in a retelling of the story of Job. 

In truth, some fall into each category.  This years is purely someone else's seasonal madness made manifest in my holiday, but it still sucks.  I don't blame them particularly; it's the silly season, and I've been there myself.  I'm actually far more pissed off at how it impacted other people involved than over any trouble it caused me,:

To all of humanity, RE: the whole major depression / self-destructive thing -- do your friends and family a favor and put that shit off until March next time.

Eulogy Redux

As referenced at: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ndn

NDN was the nickname of a great brown buffalo of a man from Tulsa, OK; like the eponymous Brown Buffalo of Hunter S. Thompson's works (HST's attorney, Oscar Zeta Acosta), NDN was one of God's prototypes - never intended for mass-production. With a legendary appetite for life, drink, food, and fun, NDN was an icon in several distinct national sub-communities of gamer-nerds, carnival geeks, chicks with blue hair, fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, nipple-piercers, the hirsuite, the corpulent, the French, the verbose, fans of certain touring bands named after famous firearms, and the ambiguously perverse. To this day, if you drink enough Jaggermeister to hallucinate, it is alleged that you will have a vision of The NDN...even if you've never met the man. He was a legend, and when he shuffled off this mortal coil it was as if the last of the great primeval beasts had roared once more to remind the world of his presence, and then faded into the obscurity of anecdote to sleep forever more.

Also known as Jeronimous MacFargyle to his dozens of besotted clanmates, and as Freight Train to people who may have shot at him in a mostly harmless sporting sort of way, he is remembered most fondly by people with similar jolly-pirate nicknames.

A real live Urban Legend. Yogi would be proud.

(Overheard from any number of random people without any logical connection)

"NDN? Big dude, looks like the Bodhisattva...only inebriated?"
"THAT'S HIM..."
"Hey, I think he delivered my sister's baby..."
"Dude he can spit fire! I love that guy."
"Indian?"
"No, dude N-D-N; the man is so hip he doesn't really require vowels."
"Like the tetragrammaton?"
"Yeah...kinda. 'IMDNDN' he used to say."

Over a year now, and it still sucks.

Rebel Without A Causal Link

Or, if you prefer, Cum hoc ergo WTF?

I listened passively to a debate over gun control over the weekend, amazed and appalled at the arguments presented from both sides. Central to my incredulity was the presentation of correlation as causality (a pet peeve of mine) by the proponents of gun control...essentially the "ugly gun" argument and the absurd notion that making handguns generally illegal will have any effect on the criminal use of handguns more meaningful than an accounting trick when it comes time to tally up the charges in court. That being said, I couldn't help but notice that those opposing gun control never presented what I feel is a key argument for keeping the populace armed. The usual things came up...the "sporting use", both in the sense of handgun hunting and competitive shooting, protection of life and property, etc...but nobody will approach the big one: protection from the state.

There may be a sporting use for a semi-automatic rifle for which a bolt-action rifle is simply inadequate. I can't think of one, but I'm willing to hear the argument. Maybe hunting with revolvers is a prized and cherished right founded on tradition and...whatever. Never mind the fact that nobody hunted with a wheelgun except in desperation before large caliber revolvers became suddenly in vogue. I'm willing to let that slide, but it doesn't represent me.

I have a gun so I can shoot people, period. I live in a city, I have supermarkets all around me, and hunting for meat would be more expensive than buying it from a store 99% of the time. The truth is, I simply don't enjoy hunting enough to justify the expense, so I rarely go. I go to the range to keep frosty, but I don't feel the need to compete. I have firearms so that I can shoot bad people. This includes, but is not limited to, people attempting to harm myself or my family, steal my shit, or violate any of my civil liberties. This group potentially includes a hostile government, frankly; 200 years is a long time for a society founded by dissidents to go without a revolution - we're overdue.

Safety, Control, & Related Delusions

I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the utter uselessness of the following concepts:

1) Firearms Safety

2) Gun Control

To the first point, the essential function of a firearm is unsafe, so I will propose that it is impossible to achieve anything that can be called "safety" in an unqualified sense without compromising utility. A "safe" gun is one that is innert, incapable of firing, and kept sealed in a container that is immovable and inviolate (so that you couldn't, for instance, bludgeon someone with it) and for good measure is located at least 100 yards from any living thing. That's "safe" in the unqualified sense: useless.  A gun is intended to cause harm, preferably mortal harm. It isn't a tool, it isn't a deterrent, and it isn't a toy -- it's a weapon, and there is nothing wrong with that...but call it what it is. You can make it "safer" to some in a relative sense, but to say that you can make one "safe" is absurd.

To the second point, the core concept of control is misapplied because there is no legitimate mechanism for "controlling" anything that can be produced by a half-competent handyman in his basement.  Hell, Girandoni made a military grade air rifle two hundred years ago, so you don't even really need a working knowledge of explosives to make an effective gun.  Regulate-shmegulate; all "gun control" does is make it slightly more difficult to obtain a good firearm by legal means, and frankly a motivated criminal only needs a shitty weapon long enough to kill someone who owns a better one.

And With Him, Something Of Me

The game is done at thine own behest,
my Invidia and my muse.
Whilst thou lived my pretentions toiled
at a carefully crafted ruse:
to feign both envy and accolade
at my meek distinctions writ bold,
and deign to measure my ambitions
as if in your success bestoled.
But no more shall Nemesis taunt me,
and no further ill shall be said;
Anonymous and heavy hearted,
The game is done if you are dead.

For years I joked that he was "my nemesis"; not only was he a scientist, a doctor, and an incredibly talented author, he was also taller than me at 6'10", which I was sure was a sign that he was sent to punish me by illuminating my shortcommings.

In truth, (quite selfishly, I admit) I will miss that motivation.