The Long Kiss Good Morning

One of my "additional duties" here at the little house that is the Fire Direction Center is Assistant S-4 (Class I resupply) along with Mess Sergeant. 

As such every weekend I do the marketing.

This morning I went to the ####### - I'll leave the name of the grocery off so as to preserve the anonymity of the person in the picture above - and there she was, looking drop-dead gorgeous in her "grocery outfit" complete with killer heels, skinny jeans, shirred-silk blouse, and pearls.

She was visibly a cut above the rest of us hoi-polloi in our scruffy jeans (or worse, pajama bottoms - I still don't get how you think it's okay to go out in public in pajamas. Seriously?) and go caps and the other shabby, bulky, utilitarian cold weather clothing that explodes across the Portland basin in late autumn.

When I came upon her, though, she was crossly surveying the desolate shelf-spaces in the "toilet paper" section. The COVID re-lockdown orders coming tomorrow in both Oregon and Washington states seem to have brought out the usual "OMFG-I'm going-to-be-wiping-my-ass-with-fallen-leaves!!!" nitwits who have begin hoarding the bog roll again. The woman was not happy.

So as seemingly out-of-place madam's outfit was, I totally get the fuck-me pumps - not so much a statement as a weapon. 

When you come limping up to the checkout it's because the one that was on your bare foot is buried in the heart of that fucking Charmin-hogging bitch lying back there in Aisle Eight.

 Here's your Plague Year writ small, small as a scroll made from quilted Northern; two shoppers enter. One shopper leaves.

Clackamas Slayride

Another shopping day 'til Christmas, another whackadoodle takes his his buddy's rifle to the mall.

We could blog the hell out of this.

But why bother?

We pretty much know already what stories will come out of this. The shooter will turn out to be either the scary loner with the gun collection (He used to scare the kids! We almost never saw him but when we did he was a freakazoid!") or the sweet boy who seemed so normal ("He used to mow our lawn." "He was always so polite...").

The police will conclude that there was nothing that could have been done that wasn't.

The usual suspects will fulminate about how the loon managed to get his hands on an AR-15. The other usual suspects will bloviate about how a sturdy yeoman with a Glock could have put one into his brain housing group and stopped the rampage before it began.

The usual ghoulish fascination will erupt through the daily fire-and-murder-news cycle for a day or so and be off the heavy rotation by the week's end.

And the sad reality is that we know, we simply know, how to make these random nutter shootings more difficult. Firearms, especially autoloading firearms, make it ridiculously easy to kill random strangers. If this zombie had to indulge his bloodlust with an axe, or a scythe, or even a bolt-action rifle it would have been orders of magnitude more difficult for him.

It's really that simple. Really.

But autoloading firearms are also just plain fuckin' fun to shoot, and we love our shooting fun, and we, We the People, are perfectly content to let others die or live with their wounds so that we may have our fun.

We're just too canny to come out and say it that way.

But, hell, y'all know that.

In fact, we discussed the hell out of it back in the spring when another nutter went and shot up a theatre in Colorado.

So. Silent Night Deadly Night. Chopping Mall. Whatever.

What else is new?

Couple of quick observations:

First, we really live in an extraordinarily safe time and place. As little as three hundred, five hundred, a thousand years ago we'd be shocked if most of the people we knew weren't dead of the Plague, or raped, butchered, then raped again in the latest fill-in-the-blank invasion/civil war/pogrom. I think that's why these random mad minutes make the news; they shatter the illusion we live in that our lives and our homes are so perfectly safe. They're a little teensy one-nutter Mongol Horde thundering in over the horizon to rape and pillage.

Then we really need to start accepting that so long as we're going to be okay with widespread private firearms that these occasional nutter-shootings are just going to happen. They are. And nothing short of a violent change in the way American society and public law works will change that.

And the final, simple, reality is that humans kill each other, always have and probably always will. Homo homini lupus; Man is a wolf to Man. This little fracas is just another in the unbroken line that starts back with the first australopithecus that went doolally with a camel thighbone and brained some of the gang around the waterhole and will continue on until the first flare of the solar nova bakes all humanity to a delicate crunch.

Really...what else is there to say?

Only what we say here in Portland; forget it, Jake; it's Clackamas County.

Update 1, 12/12 p.m.: Here's some more detail on the idiot who did the shooting. He apparently lifted the Armalite from a pal, and for the record here's the part that gets me: "...the rifle jammed during the 22-year-old's attack, but he managed to get it working again."

So this numbnuts steals what we'll have to assume is a weapon he's completely unfamiliar with, manages to get it to double feed (or either fail to feed or fail to eject, all fairly typical AR-15-type malfunctions) while he's capping sweet white-haired grannies and grampies, and then manages to do some sort of immediate action and gets it working again.

This is the thing about firearms; they're fucking easy. They're simple to work, especially modern military-style firearms which are designed to be used by deadhead draftees and Somali teenagers. They're quick to debug if they malfunction. And they're easy to use; just point at the nearest toddler and shoot.

It takes some strength, some determination, and some damn deadly difficult-to-learn homicide skills to kill someone with a nunchuck. Or a pickaxe. Or a bread knife.

But an AR-15?

Easy-peasy lemon squeezy, as the little ponies say.

Update 2: Charlie Pierce, as usual, has more, and better, to say.

The Price Is Right

Some random ruminations from WinCo as Baby Girl helps out with the week's Class I resupply run:

Like life, grocery shopping is a 24/7 deal.

Plastic is cheap and easy, but it takes about a gross to encompass what you need and makes you look like you don't care. Paper seems sensible and responsible, but it has hidden drawbacks. Reusable cloth is the most practical and conscientious but you come off as a bit earnest, which is just fine if you don't mind the looks you get.

If you check the labels you'll often find that many things described to you as "choices" are illusory.

Apples are always good.

The world has waaaaay too many "flavors" of dog and cat food when you consider that the end users involved employ their tongues to clean their asses.

The visual and auditory cacophony of our system of food supply is pretty intimidating when you just stop and let it overwhelm you.

Mind you, there's something to be said for fewer flies on your goat haunch.

If you're cute, you can take a lollipop right out of the bin and start licking it, and people will smile at you. The same goes for apples right off of the shelf.Which, when you think about it, explains a lot about cute people.

Looking around the meat and poultry aisle goes a long way towards explaining why most most of us can't connect the dots between the wars we see on TV and real slaughter and butchery, either.

Did you ever stop and think how strange it is to have salad greens, cob corn and oranges on sale in an Oregon June?

Small things matter. It's flip-flop season, gals, but a pedicure and $80 nails won't make you look deliciously attractive if you don't wash those feet. And guys? How about wearing clothes that cover your peniculum and your gluteal cleavage? I know it's only WinCo, but, really, what would it hurt?

Marshmallow Mateys?

It takes longer to get the shopping done with a little person to "help". But it's not as much fun without her.

No matter what, you almost always find that you forgot something when you get home.

No matter what it is you forgot, it's always good just to get home.