I’m sure you’re probably really looking forward to reading more about Michael Jackson dying last week. I mean, its not like every single person on every single stupid fucking social network, cable TV news channel, blog, or street corner has been talking about it non-stop since it happened. Not to be a dick or anything, but I don’t really see what the big deal is. I mean, sure it sucks that he died right before he was about ready to redeem himself with a bunch of big arena shows or whatever, but he’s certainly not the first person to die before they did all the shit they planned on doing, and he definitely won’t be the last. Around 200,000 people die every day in this world, not to mention all the other worlds we don’t know about yet. And I’d be willing to bet that most of them probably had some shit left on their plate. So what if they didn’t make up a bunch of great songs or trademark dance moves. Maybe they did and you just never heard them. And besides, the fact that Michael Jackson was as famous as he was should make it far less tragic that he died. At least he got to do a bunch of badass stuff while he was alive, like bang all sorts of hot gash (or whatever he was into), have a pet monkey, buy the elephant man’s bones, and probably a million other things that were too cool to even talk about publicly. Where’s the tragedy in that. Most people are born into shit and die in shit, their own and other peoples. Shouldn’t we spend more time mourning them then some dude who lived life like the royalty of a bygone era, and probably died in part thanks to his gilded lifestyle? And what was it that people, other than his family and friends, really loved about Michael Jackson anyway? His music? His dancing? His larger-than-life persona? None of that went anywhere. It’s still recorded for posterity. That the source of it has died only serves to elevate to an even higher level of visibility; his death only makes his life seem all the grander. So what’s there to piss and moan about? Sure, he died. But everybody dies. You’re gonna die. Probably a lot sooner than you think. Now that’s something to get bummed out about. And ultimately, their own impending mortality is what people are really dealing with when they get all upset when Michael Jackson, or Billy Mays or anyone else mildly famous dies. After all, celebrities seem impervious to the sorts of threats that face mere mortals such as ourselves. A corollary to the American Dream is the idea that if you can just get rich enough, or powerful enough, you can transcend death. But even Walt Disney’s cryogenically frozen head is as dead as any mouldering skull in the Chico Cemetery or dead squirrel in the middle of the road. Rich and poor, famous and anonymous all die the same death. No matter our efforts, no matter our accumulated wealth or accolades, no matter how many Platinum Records hang on our wall, we all end up dust. There’s no escape, even for Michael Jackson. Or for you. Or for me.

As far as pissed of comments and hate mail and all that, go ahead and do it. Any time you talk about someone who just died, it’s de rigeur for at least a couple idiots to write in with some or another version of “Don’t you have respect for the dead?!” And the short answer is no. Because they’re fucking dead. Unlike most people, I try to worry more about respecting people who are still living. Likewise, when I die I hope they throw me out of the back of a truck somewhere up in the hills and let the turkey vultures and skunks and badgers eat my guts and eyeballs out. I hope someone comes along and pisses on my corpse and kicks me when I’m bloated and full up with maggots and desecrates me in any sort of lurid pagan ceremony they see fit. Know why? Because I’m sure whatever happens after I die doesn’t have shit to do with what people do here, especially since probably nothing will happen at all other than I’ll be dead forever. So have at it fuckers! Do your worst! Lambaste me in print; disrespect my memory all you want. It doesn’t matter. Unless it does, which would suck. But hey, you gotta pick a side when it comes to something like this, and Pascal’s Wager notwithstanding, I choose to not give a shit.

It’s been a long time coming, but I’m glad to hear that we finally won the Iraqi war… That’s what just happened, right?

From Reuters:

Addressing military leaders in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said: “Our sovereignty has started and … we should move forward to build a modern state and enjoy security which has been achieved.”

The government has declared June 30 a national holiday, “National Sovereignty Day”.

One more time, with feeling:

By the end of the day on Saturday, I’d seen and heard over twenty bands of music’s finest. White Rabbits and People Under the Stairs were the heroes of Thursday’s lineups, but the festival and its patrons were just getting their feet wet. With a merciless thunderstorm late on Thursday night, the feet of every Bonnaroo-er were not just wet, but downright slopped with mud. Nobody was fazed. Crowds were wild and packed for a hypnotizing Animal Collective ; thousands were cutting up the lawn with funky dance moves when New Orleans’ Galactic brought the noise… and the 10 minute horn battle; they swooned and screamed for Al Green , adorned in a proper suit and holding a bouquet of roses. In James Brown fashion he addressed the crowd, flirted with some Betty’s in the front row, then commanded “BAND!” and the spot-on quintet ripped into a hip-shakin’ funk number. The Mars Volta brought as much energy as anyone so far, brought new life to rock improv, and brought a new drummer who wins my percussionist of the day award.

The sun continued to sizzle, the crowds continued to down the local microbrews, and Friday was long from over. Increasing crowds made their way to David Byrne , whose combo of musicianship and showmanship was almost unrivaled. Piping hot back up singers and dancers joined him on stage, and participated in the choreographed band dances. Then when everyone thought they’d seen it all, he leaves the stage and reappears wearing a tutu. They hadn’t seen it all anyway though, because they hadn’t seen the Beastie Boys . Picture them as good as you’d think they’d be, and then try to imagine something better. Even with a few structural hiccups in the music, the Beasties stole the show for me… with Mix Master Mike taking the title of best individual performance. I would’ve liked to hear “The Sounds of Science” but hey, when they bring out Nas to do Paul Revere and a few others, you really can’t complain.

My legs and liver had had enough at that point so I went back and tried to catch some Zs. I managed to get more in than usual and woke ready for another day of a non-stop talent party.

Next up, Ambler 2 with his lens on the day. Enjoy ya’ll…

…and apparently so does the California Supreme Court. There is nothing new under the sun: humans still hate and discriminate against other humans for no damn good reason.

From SFist:

Prop 8 Upheld, Rules California State Supreme Court

As anticipated, the California State Supreme Court ruled to uphold prop 8, the same-sex marriage ban. That means that gay marriage in the state of California is still considered illegal, effectively stripping away civil rights of many GLBT Californians. The State Supreme court ruled that prop 8 is legal in a 6-1 ruling with justice Marino being the sole holdout.

Alas.

The 18,000 same-sex marriages, however, will remain legal, effectively creating two classes of people in the gay community, those who are married and those who are not. Vile.

Stay tuned for updates on public outrage, protests, comments, and what the GLBT community should to do next.

“A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind…Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.” -Thomas Jefferson

The Westwood Rifle Range on Highway 36 in Lassen County is a great place to exercise our Second Amendment rights and have some good old-fashioned fun. A few friends and I went up there for a little “therapy session” a few weeks ago. There’s nothing as inflating to the ego as the look of awe and trepidation on the faces of Westwood’s gun crowd when us city boys showed up with six shotguns (including 2 Winchester pumps and a sawed-off Mossberg 12 gauge “hallway special”), a .44 Magnum, a snub-nosed .357 Magnum, two Glock 9mm’s, two Chinese SKS assault rifles, a BFR Smith and Wesson .500 Magnum (the most powerful handgun in the world) 12 canisters of mapp gas, a stick of dynamite, 2,000 rounds and 750 clay pigeons.

We began with a light warm-up round of skeet shooting. But this soon devolved into two pigeons being thrown, and then blown into a fine powder by a thundering volley of shotgun fire, followed by us laughing loudly, congratulating each other for our fine marksmanship and firing our guns into the air in approval. Soon after, we moved to the handguns. The others at the range stared in disbelief as we let out blood-curdling screams and fired off 10-round clips at life-size posters of Alex Rodriguez, Spencer Pratt and Nancy Pelosi, or took aim at the mapp gas canisters with the .500 and .44 Magnums.

At one point, I almost got shot myself; I had just finished mounting a poster of CNN’s Rick Sanchez on a tree when I heard a blood-curdling scream behind me. I whipped around just in time to duck as a friend of mine started running at the poster, foaming at the mouth and a glazed look in his eyes as he unloaded two ten round clips from the 9mm’s and then pulled the .44 Magnum out of his belt, squeezed off six shots with stunning precision, then pulled out the sawed-off Mossberg, pumped three slugs into what was left of the poster and finally collapsed on the ground, moaning loudly and clearly sexually-aroused. I was a bit shaken by this episode and I considered toning it down a little as I watched the other visitors at the range quickly pile into their cars and pull out their cell phones. But then someone mentioned that this sort of fun would all be over if the Democrats, and President Obama in particular, got their way. I shrugged the comment off outwardly, but inwardly a dark pall fell over me and my shooting took on a desperate, frenzied nature.

I had never considered that a Democrat-controlled White House, Congress and Senate might lead to serious curtailments of the 2nd Amendment, but when I got back into town I began to ask people if they felt this way about the incoming administration.

The Tackle Box on Park Avenue was my first stop. I sidled up to the counter and asked a man named Phil if I could ask him a few questions for a possible article. He fixed me with an amused look in his eyes, leaned back in his chair and said, “Well, let me ask you a couple of questions first. Do you own a gun?” I smiled back at him, showing lots of teeth, and said I did, making sure not to mention the loaded .357 in my belt. He said to proceed, so I asked him if there was any truth to these sadistic rumors I had been hearing. He told me that the government in general has been trying to limit our right to bear arms virtually since it became a right. “But,” he said, “Obama’s scaring the shit out of everybody.” I offered to attribute that particular quote to an anonymous source, but he would have none of it.

We talked some more and he told me that gun sales had gone through the roof since November 4th, but also explained that in poor economic times gun sales tend to go up anyway. But he also estimated that roughly half the people who had bought guns since the election had done so in order to get all the guns they could while they still had the right to do so. To emphasize this point, he pulled out an absolutely gorgeous Springfield Arms .45 semiautomatic and told me that a woman had called the day after the election asking for a price on the gun ($750) as well as 100 rounds pre-loaded into 10 clips.

I pondered the significance of increased gun sales in a conservative, pre-dominantly white county after the election of a black Democrat to the White House while I headed to the next shop. Grim implications indeed. When I arrived and informed the owner why I was there, he agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. I shrugged, said why not, and began asking him about assault weapons such as the AK-47 and its less expensive cousin, the SKS. How do people justify using these guns? Aren’t assault weapons above and beyond what we need for home protection purposes? The glint in my eye must have scared him as I rattled off the names of various assault rifles, my voice rising with each one, because he slowly backed away with his hand on the pistol in his hip holster. When he finally answered, he told me that the NRA fought to keep such guns legal so that anti-gun activists did not have any legal precedent to begin banning even more guns. Or, as several of the people I talked to outside the shop said, it isn’t about protecting people’s right to own assault weapons specifically, it’s about protecting the right to own guns in general. If anti-gun activists were to get their foot in the door regarding assault weapons, they surely would not stop there; gun lovers have no intention to find out just how far anti-gun activists will take their crusade.

I had set out to see whether there was any legitimacy to the dark rumors I had heard concerning the Obama administration and future gun control measures. I suppose I had always known that gun lovers would harbor some sort of concern about gun rights when a Democrat moves into the White House, but I wanted to gauge the paranoia level and compare it to my own. But the paranoia simply wasn’t there. What I discovered instead were people who were indignant, angered and exasperated by repeated attempts to limit a very basic right of theirs. In tough times like these, gun control is not high on the government’s list of priorities. But when things are better, the government now in place will have the will and the werewithal to enact harsh anti-gun legislature if they choose to.

When considering that gun sales in California have gone up roughly 50% since November, it’s hard not to think that gun owners have become gripped with unnecessary fear and paranoia at the remote possibility that their gun rights will be taken away. But these people are not paranoid; they simply understand that their vigilance in protecting their rights might have to become a little more focused now. It is the effort of these “paranoiacs” that spearhead the fight to preserve what has been a basic American right for more than 230 years. Free speech advocates must protect even the rights of pornographers if they want to preserve free speech, and gun lovers face the same situation in their fight. Are there some horribly paranoid gun freaks out there who are convinced that Obama’s out to get them and their guns as the first step in turning this country into a totalitarian police state? Sure, but those people are far and few between, even if they are the ones who get plastered all over the cable news networks as “gun advocates”. Besides, those uneducated inbreds don’t even realize that it’s the Dick Cheneys of the world, not the Obamas, that are most likely to turn this nation into a modern day 1984.

I also noticed another interesting trend at the gun stores I visited. Without exception, every shop is completely out of ammo, aside from .22 caliber bullets (which may as well be pellets) and shotgun shells. Gun prices have also gone up by as much as 50%. (A Glock 9mm a few months ago went for around $500 but now start at $700) Given that I didn’t find any ramped up levels of panic or paranoia about Obama’s gun control intentions, I think it is entirely possible that some of the hysteria caused in the media recently may have been at the behest of gun and ammo companies. Are they looking to jack up the hysteria to boost their profit margins? I wouldn’t put it past them.

Although my own behavior has done little to dispel this notion, people with guns are not homicidal maniacs trying to preserve their right to act in such a manner. Every gun owner I spoke to readily acknowledged that assault weapons are severely pushing the boundaries of good taste, but they also fear that banning such guns would be the first step toward banning ALL guns. Many also readily accept that protecting the right to own guns means protecting the right to own guns that they personally feel should be illegal. But they will gladly fight to protect your right to do something, or own something, that they may not agree with because they fully expect you to do the same for them and their rights.

Chico State’s Mechatronics Department is cranking out some pretty wild shit. Here are a couple of videos to check out.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zkKqeAk4uo&feature=channel_page

The MRCR: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5H5Dz-PAPs&feature=channel