Home, Home on the Range

As a liberal, I’ve never understood the Democratic terror of guns.  Sure, I get the whole “people shouldn’t have fully-automatic weapons” bit, in the same sense that I’d prefer my neighbors not have access to tanks or bazookas.  But I’ve known a goodly number of friends who quailed in terror from a handgun, or the idea of anyone owning a handgun. They’d feel a lot safer if all guns were outlawed.
I guess I’m a crazy middle-man, because I think people should have access to handguns.  As Michael Moore (who is otherwise mostly sloshing with lies) says, other nations have almost as many guns and none of our gun deaths.  I’m not entirely sure what it is in our culture, but holy fuck we like to shoot each other.  The problem is not in the gun, but something in the way we treat guns and/or violence that spurs us to kill regularly.
Plus, guns aren’t that great a deterrent.  My Dad used to be a big  gun nut (he started after I was twenty, so I didn’t grow up around guns, in case you’re curious) because he liked the safety.  He got to be quite a shot.  But then he started taking courses on realistic gun shooting – not “Let’s stand twenty feet from the target in perfect position, feet shoulder-width apart,” but rather “The gun’s at your hip, you have to fire now as the mugger’s jumping you.”  And he found that even with all of his training, his accuracy went to hell.  In a real combat situation, his chances of hitting the mugger (and not hitting an innocent bystander) bottomed out, so much so that he came to the conclusion that guns really weren’t that much of an advantage.
But the gun itself?  I’d like to have more restrictions on who buys them and when – from my admittedly non-gunnish perspective, it seems like it’s a lot more trouble to get a car than it is to get a pistol, and that’s a shame.  I’d like some testing to ensure kooks and criminals don’t get the high-powered weapons, and yes, no laws will stop all criminals from getting guns but if you’re going to take that attitude then let’s legalize all drugs and prostitution and gambling and gay sex first, since those are less harmful than guns.  (Yes, go, libertarians.)
I would love to own a gun.  Can’t.  The fact that I’m suicidally depressive at least five weeks out of the year makes owning a gun a Very Bad Thing.  And I tend to treat guns like they were toys, as in “Hey, look at all the crazy fun this is, whee!” which probably contraindicates having one in the house.
All of this is a very strange way of saying, “I enjoy guns, but haven’t done much with them.”  But when my daughter Erin admitted she’d never shot a gun, nor had Gini, I said, “Well, why don’t we go down to the range and take a course?”
Erin clapped with glee.
It felt very fatherly.  My Dad had taken me down to the gun range for my twenty-fifth birthday so that I could know what it felt like to shoot, so escorting my daughter to the gun range felt like a rite of passage.  And we took a half an hour’s safety course, which wasn’t nearly as intensive as Connecticut’s, but the guy at the shop explained the ins and outs of the .22 pistol we had, how to place it on the table to indicate it was safe, how to handle it without putting anyone else in the line of fire, how to hold it to shoot without injuring yourself.  We practiced in the room for a while, dry-firing and setting it up…
…then it was out to the range.
Erin was very nervous and excited, so we let her go first – and the kid’s a natural.  She put all five of her first shots into the red zone, no questions asked.  (It was pretty close, but hey – she did a lot better than I did.)  And, as it turns out, she likes shooting guns.  There is something intensely satisfying about pulling the trigger and hearing that flat explosion going off in your hand, feeling the shock of recoil, the brass flying out of the chamber.
I myself was the worst in the family.  As it turns out, I can’t close my left eye, so I have to shoot using my right – which screws the alignment up.  And I can’t really close my left eye all the way without causing my right eye to water for a bit, so though my grouping was okay, I didn’t have nearly the accuracy of Gini or Erin.  But man, when you’re holding a gun in your hands, you’re shocked at how much your hands waver.  It seems still until you’re trying to get a bead on things, and then suddenly you feel like a palsy victim.
We burned through a hundred bullets, irritated by every misfire, and of course our family competitiveness got the best of us and we started crowing about who was the best shot.  Erin won, but they graciously gave me the title of “Most Improved,” which I’ll take.
We’re planning on going back next week.  Erin needs to know what a .38 and a .45 feel like in her hands.  And having stronger arms than she does, I might have a better shot this time…

Vote For Pedro

Last year, my “daughter-knifes-her-father-out-of-love” story “My Father’s Wounds” was published at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and I was pleasantly surprised when I found several people suggesting it as worthy on the SFWA leaderboards come Nebula Awards time.  Just in case you’ve forgotten the lead:

Father carries the knife, because I asked him to—but he keeps turning to look at me, earnestly, as if he hopes I’ll take it back.
It’s hard to believe he knows I’ll stab him with that knife. Even harder to believe he’s eager for me to do it. But that’s my father; he thinks the world of his precious daughter. He’s thin yet unbowed in his ascetic gray Blacksmith robes as he leads me up through a cold forest to the Anvil.
It doesn’t matter whether my father will live once I stab him. That’s not the point. The point is all the questions that no one thinks to ask after we’ve healed their fathers, their soldiers, their daughters. Nobody questions our magic, except for us, the loyal priests and priestesses of Aelana.
We can’t stop asking. We can’t sleep for asking.

Anyway, Beneath Ceaseless Skies is holding a poll to see which stories make it into “The Best Of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Year Three,” and if you think it’s worthy, then you should probably go vote.  And if you don’t vote, there’s a lot of other Very Cool stories over at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and reading them would probably be a very enjoyable use of your time.

I Thank You For Thanking Me

I was raised in a house of healthy confrontation. Have a problem?  Go talk it out.  Which means that arguing and debating and hashing out opinions is, quite literally, what I was raised to do. It’s a skill that probably made me the blogger I am today.
What I can’t do, however, is accept compliments.
People have noted that if you want my attention on-line, it’s easily gotten by striking up a disagreement.  But nice comments leave me dumbstruck.  Tell me you liked a story of mine, and I’ll shuffle my feet and stare at the screen and blush, which evinces itself as complete silence.
And in the wake of all the kind and supportive comments left wishing me well on my mother’s recent cancer scare, I feel inadequate to the love, support, and positive kindness you people have offered me over the years.  I’ve tried to pay it back when I could, mainly because you’ve largely been so kind that it’s impossible to really give back everything I’ve been given… but rest assured.  I do read every comment.  I do feel blessed every time someone says I wrote an essay well, or they wished they’d said that, or even just offers a hand in an hour of need. You folks give a lot of energy here, and I feel sometimes ashamed that I don’t give it back, but I assure you every nice word ever said gets cuddled and put into a handy sack that sometimes gets me through blue times better than you know.
So let me thank you.  For being kind.  And generous.  And surprisingly insightful as commentors, and willing to call me on my bullshit when I have it, and just much kinder to me than sometimes I can bear.
Thanks for lending your voice.  Thanks for being beautiful.  Thanks for being there.
 

Too Busy For Posts Today

But over the past couple of days, I’ve tossed off a couple of FetLife posts (they’re the Facebook for kinksters!) that might be of interest, even if I consider them a tad too sexually explicit for here:

• How Many Orgasms Does It Take To Get To The Center Of A Tootsie Pop?
• “You’ll Love It With Me”: On Things People Don’t Like Doing

As usual, you’ll have to register for an account for them if you want to read them, but otherwise they’re pretty much open.  Enjoy.

The Strange And Wondrous Adventures Of My Very Popular Vacuum Cleaner

I admit it’s unusual for my vacuum cleaner to have a Facebook account, but I assure you there are legitimate reasons.  But first, let me introduce you to my vacuum cleaner. I assure you, he doesn’t bite.

That is Opposite Cat, my cute little robotic vacuum.  He’s a Roomba, which means that I press a button and he goes off scurrying around the floor in a random pattern, beeping when he’s full.  We named him Opposite Cat because unlike a cat, he sucks up hair instead of shedding it.  We think Opposite Cat is really neat.
But that’s not why I made Opposite Cat a star.  I made him a star because I’m a web developer, and occasionally I have to program Facebook applications.  I’m often the admin for these apps, and so if I want to see what it looks like for a “normal” user, I need another account to log into.  I could have created a fake name, but instead I just created a toss-off email address and made an account for my vacuum, who I thought no one would ever see.
I did not count on Facebook’s relentless friends-making algorithm.
Within moments, Facebook had tracked down Opposite Cat’s email account, and decided that since its email address was also from theferrett.com and we both lived in Rocky River, it must be related to me.  So within seconds – eerily – Facebook provided a list of several people my vacuum might know, which included me, my wife, and several friends who had, in fact, met my robot.
My vacuum, being a solitary sort, opted not to friend them.  But Facebook contacted some of those friends, saying, “Hey, d’you know this robot?” and lo, two of my buddies sent friends requests.  (Ironically, neither of them had met my robot, apparently preferring its online presence.) And so a brief social network had been formed.
In the months to follow, Facebook has been very concerned about my vacuum cleaner’s lack of an online presence.  It sends emails, reminding me I have an account.  Once a day, it tells me what my friends are up to, summarizing their best posts in an email.  Occasionally, Facebook sends my robot a mail saying, “Here are some new people you might know!” and damn if they’re not good friends of mine.  And it keeps reminding me that I can log on, am I okay, how are you doing, Opposite Cat?
Today, I logged in, and Facebook immediately splooged all over, sending me a congratulatory email – “WELCOME BACK TO FACEBOOK!  Do you want to post some pictures?  Write an essay?  We’ll help you find some friends!”  In fact, Facebook is positively nicer to my robot than it is to me – one suspects that because, like a real cat, my vacuum cleaner is aloof.  It senses that my robot needs a little more connection in its life.
Which is funny, and creepy.  I know Facebook has turned down Native Americans for having “made-up names,” but perhaps it senses a kindred spirit in Opposite Cat’s mechanical nature.  And the way in which Facebook has successfully extrapolated much of Opposite Cat’s limited social life from a handful of data factors is an object lesson in how much can be gained from powerful computing sources.  It still wants Opposite Cat to friend me, and my wife, and Cat Valente, and Eric Meyer.  Facebook has got a good bead on who Opposite Cat is, and absent of the fact that knowing that Opposite Cat is in fact an inanimate object, it has a terrifying bead on who it usually hangs around with.
I wonder how far I could take it.  If I started posting appropriate statuses about Opposite Cat’s daily activities, would Facebook figure it out and start offering to sell Opposite Cat floor-cleaning products, replacement Roomba parts, offer rug-cleaning deals?  Facebook has done so much with so little, one wonders how much it’s collecting on me, who’s been freely giving it reams of data on a daily basis as I like things and comment and wonder.
If it knows my robot as well as it does, what sort of a profile does Facebook have for me?
It’s been suggested that I should hook Opposite Cat into Facebook – adding a webcam to take pictures, letting it post statuses (“I’m all done!  My bag is full!”), occasionally checking into FourSquare.  I’m too lazy to do that, but it’s an interesting idea.
Even if I was really into the hardware hacking movement, I probably wouldn’t make my vacuum Facebook compatible, though.  It’d be a string of sad statuses – because for Opposite Cat, life truly sucks.