Gun Control to Major Tom…

Posted on January 18, 2013 by borysSNORC

Well, I guess as the gun debate continues to rage (and outrage) in the US, we are going to see more and more stupid over the top representations of poor ‘Murricans losing their rights and being at the mercy of the massive criminal element present in their society. Unfortunately this ‘Gun Control for Dummies’ image depicts absolutely nothing that even remotely resembles what the Obama administration’s new gun control measures are proposing to implement. Maybe, just maybe… I’d have a little sympathy if there was some reality in the image.

We’ve got Mr Law Abiding Citizen with his 12ga shotgun and what looks to be a revolver in a holster. NEITHER of these types firearms are being targeted or proposed to be banned or restricted in anyway whatsoever. Unless of course Mr Law Abiding Citizen can’t pass a background check due to criminal history and/or mental health issues – in which case I can’t imagine anyone wants him to have any guns at all regardless of type, caliber, make, model or magazine capacity!

And then we’ve got Mr Criminal with his semi-auto pointed in what appears to be a safe direction but with rather poor trigger awareness. Nope… artist/author has missed the mark. Picture has zero impact and is obviously drawn by someone who knows nothing about the proposed restrictions.

Now maybe if the Mr Law Abiding Citizen was sporting a semi-auto military style rifle… then it might make sense as a protest or a piss take against the current proposals.

Captain America, Where are you?

Posted on January 17, 2013 by borysSNORC

So here is The Plan from the Obama White house to attempt to implement some modicum of gun control in the US with the vague hope it may save some needless death and slaughter of American citizens.

Major elements of The Plan involve:

Closing loopholes to keep firearms out of dangerous hands ie: improving background checks re: criminals, felons and the mentally ill.
Reimplement a ban on military style assault weapons and high capacity magazines, and take other common sense steps to reduce gun violence such as removing the sale of armour piecing bullets.
Make schools safer by providing more ‘school resource officers’, counsellors, providing trained and armed police officers if required, encouraging schools to have comprehensive emergency management plans.
Increase access to mental health services and remind health care providers that they are able to tell law enforcement agencies if they believe a patient is a threat to themselves or others. Allow health care providers to talk to their patients about gun safety (!?!?).

It also has provisions to remove the (Congress imposed) ban on research into gun violence in the US; hold Federal agencies accountable for information sharing to enable background check information to be more comprehensive; give law enforcement agencies greater assistance in prosecuting gun related crimes; appoint a Director of the ATF (he Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency has been effectively leaderless for six years), encourage gun owners to store their guns safely – not to make safes mandatory, just a suggestion, people. There are also a host of other sensible but essentially toothless provisions included in President Obama’s NOW IS THE TIME plan.

The response from the gun loby:

And you gotta love this video put out by the NRA (make sure you watch it, it’s kinda hilarious) where they makes themselves out to be second class citizens… let’s just ignore their huge amount of resources their decades of lobbying power and their stranglehold over the Republican Congress…. I do like the montage where they happily put together all La Pierre’s detractors for us though. Stephen Cobert, succinct as always, leaves us with the most memorable quote: “You sir, are fucked in the head”

From the political sphere, a diatribe against evil madmen and monsters:

“There are monsters out there every day, and we need to do something to stop them.”
– Wayne La Pierre, CEO National Rifle Assoc. (source)

“Guns require a finger to pull the trigger. There is evil prowling in the world… let us all return to our places of worship and pray for help.”
– Rick Perry, Republic Governor, Texas (source)

“There aren’t two sides in this issue, I don’t think any one who knows what we do, believe we are against such incomprehensible evil.”
– Steve Sanetti, National Shooting Sports Foundation (source)

“You are using innocent children killed by a mad man for own political agenda, you are actually making people less safe.”
– James Tedisco, Republican Assemblyman (source)

“Guns are not the problem; criminals with evil in their hearts and mentally ill people prone to violence are.”
– Marco Rubio, Republican Senator (source)

“Make no mistake about it, you aren’t under siege…. you are under attack.”
– Hayley Barbour, former Mississippi Governor and Republican Party head (source)

Evil, evil, evil. And we will goddamn well try anything to combat it – except gun control.

We could go on all day with quotes from people who think their way of life is coming to an end because the US President wants to reduce the thousands of gun related crimes and gun related fatalities each year. But most of them have a few common themes… there is EVIL in the world, so you better pray your way out of it. There are MADMEN in the world and making guns less accessible won’t fix that, and my favourite, we are under attack from our own government so it’s time for all you food hoarding, bunker building, gun toting red neck militia nuts to rise up against the government… and what? Wave your AR15s as the jets and self guided missiles fly overhead?

Why does it sound like all this talk of evil in the world and monsters and crazy men sound like they’re waiting for a superhero to come along and solve their inordinately disproportionate gun crime rates? America.. fuck yeah. 🙁

Wreck-It Ralph… yawn.

Posted on January 17, 2013 by borysSNORC

Took the Not So Small Child to see Wreck-It Ralph this afternoon. It’s holidays and there’s plenty of fodder out for the kids so we tend to see a lot of movies at this time of year. It’s just a bonus that we get to hide in the air con for a few hours too.

The trailer for this movie looked both fun and funny. The premise of the story promised to be unusual and creative too. The animation looked like it would be an interesting blend of 80s retro cool and top of the line digital animation and the voice cast sounded pretty solid too. So what went wrong? Cos quite frankly I thought this movie sucked arse.

Basically we’ve got Wreck-it Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) who’s suffering from situation depression due to his role as a ‘bad guy’ in his video game. Ralph then goes rogue, or in game parlance ‘goes turbo’, and decides he wants to be more accepted by the ‘good guys’ in his game by winning a medal to make him as popular as his game’s hero, Fix-it Felix (voiced by geeky and annoying, Jack McBrayer).

So Ralph goes off running amok in other games in hunt of validation in the form of some heroic medal, and starts off in Hero’s Duty where he’s thrown in the deep end of a modern first person shooter game and is way out of his element. His guide here is a very sexy steel capped breastplate, ball bustin’, drill sergeant type called Calhoun (voiced by the fabulous, Jayne Lynch). After finding the much coveted gold medal everything goes phenomenally pear shaped when he finds himself ejected from Hero’s Duty and into a sweet and puffy racing game called Sugar Rush.

Here he meets a very annoying, but I’m told ‘strangely attractive and arousing’ (don’t ask I wont reveal my sources), little kid who looks straight out of Despicable Me called Vanellope (voiced by the usually very saucy, Sarah Silverman which probably explains the strange comment from a friend who found her ‘attractive’ on some level). Anyway, Vanellope steals his medal to buy her way into some race game and…. well any more than that I have no idea, because I pretty much fell asleep at this point.

I imagine that the story probably ended up in typical Disney fashion, with Ralph back in his game and enjoying a new found respect and admiration from his ‘colleagues’ in Wreck-It Ralph. Order restored and all is well with the world… blah, blah, blah. Apparently there was an interesting little back story with Vanellope and the dude that was in control of Candy Rush Land, but the whole thing escaped me because I was napping.

Basically I felt this movie was trite, boring and so predictable as to be unwatchable and fail to watch it I did. Bit sad really, seeing the trailer showed quite a bit of novelty and promise… or maybe I’m just altogether too hard to please!

Out of my cold dead hands…

Posted on January 16, 2013 by borysSNORC

Are these people on crack?

I mean we all know they are a lot of monster raving loonies in the US when it comes to keeping hold of their guns. The recent mass murders in the US at the Aurora cinema in Colorado, the Oregon shopping mall incident and and the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut have just turned the heat up to potentially allow the Obama administration to make some huge sweeping changes to gun legislation in the US – should they choose to grab the third rail and go for it. Their main opponent in this of course is the NRA – them and that lunatic Alex Jones who really needs a Valium and a good lay down before he has an aneurism or something!

At a press conference after the Sandy Hook shooting (which by the way was interrupted by another mass shooting in Pennsylvania where nine more people were shot at and several killed by a random shooter firing from his truck at State Troopers), the CEO of the NRA, Wayne La Pierre said, and I quote, “There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people through vicious and violent video games.” This among his many other public statements mean we should be able to safely assume that Mr La Pierre is anti-violent video games and pro-gun. And that’s fine. A person can be both of those things… hell, I think I have been both of these things for many years myself.

BUT… he doesn’t get to be both of those things and then just in time for the one month anniversary of that horrible, unthinkable tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, be the NRA spokesman for a new first person shooter game application released by the NRA themselves, that enables users to download violent a shooting game to their smartphones! But wait, it gets worse. Let’s aim that NRA Practice Range shooter app at kids – just like the little ones who lost their lives at Sandy Hook…

“NRA: Practice Range is a video game about guns. It enables people ages 4 and up to shoot at coffin-shaped targets, where bull’s-eyes are where the human brain and heart should be. Now, for $0.99 more, users can upgrade to an MK11 sniper rifle — designed for ages 4 and up.”

Four and up. It took me a minute to digest those words. Four and up.

A four year old doesn’t have a grip of what is right and wrong.
A four year old doesn’t understand the difference between fantasy and reality.
A four year old can’t read or write or understand complex concepts.
A four year old can’t apply logic or reason or be expected to have a sense of social responsibility to his fellow man, so why the fuck would anyone make a first person shooting game and then market it to FOUR YEAR OLDS!?!

My son is nearly 12 and I don’t let him play first person shooters. Guns are tools that can be very dangerous if misused or treated flippantly. He’s nearly 12 and I dont want him to be confusing the seriousness of using firearms at the range with the so called ‘fun’ of engaging in violent video games. FOUR AND UP! While I was engaging in shock, horror and disbelief at the sheer idiocy of the NRA, Yaleman sent me this info from Apple iTunes which could explain how this game could have been automatically designated appropriate for this age group:

So apparently a video game designed to encourage preschoolers to shoot at ‘coffin/man’ shaped targets with bulls eyes painted on the brain and heart, with upgradeable semi-automatic weaponry is classified as containing ‘no objectionable material’.

Well, I for one, as a parent and a gun owner, find this material to be fucking objectionable, big time!

Bad! Frozen Coke! Bad!

Posted on January 15, 2013 by borysSNORC

I have one small harmless addiction (well only one, if you don’t count my other addictions, like prescription painkillers, sedatives and a compulsive need for order!).

FROZEN COKES!!!*

Which is one of the weirdest things for someone like me to crave. Mostly because I don’t generally like sweet things… I do not like cake (mud cake is the worst – sticks to the roof of your mouth), I do not like most biscuits (especially chocolate or cream biscuits), I like very few types of lollies/candy (like Fruit Tingles or raspberry liquorice bullets) and I tend to easily steer clear of sweet ciders, riesling, moscato and most dessert wines. I watch people fight or do deals over who gets the last Tim Tam or see kids’ eyes light up over a bowl of Malteesers or look on in amusement at my sister in law’s eyes rolling into the back of her head in ecstasy over a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup! But I just don’t get it. If I have a bit of chocolate, I’m immediately looking for a glass of water to wash it down. Someone once gave me a box of chocolates for my birthday in January a few years back that stayed in the cupboard until August… sitting there taunting the rest of the family, because they were my ‘birthday chocolates’ and not to be opened by anyone but me! Something to do with chocolate etiquette? There’s also a ‘thing’ about eating the last bit of the block apparently…? But I digress.

Additionally I don’t drink Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero or any of the Pepsi-Cola family. I also don’t like chocolate, I don’t like coffee and I’ll only reluctantly have a V or similar if I’m in desperate need to wake myself up… so I’m not big on caffeine either. But every summer or whenever I go on a road trip, I really want Frozen Coke. Problem is of course, they’re nothing but a pure sugar hit which is something that a chick with PCOS and insulin resistance really should be avoiding where ever possible.

Anyway in an effort to control my abnormal urges, I went and looked up the ‘nutritional information’, and I use the term lightly in regards to these particular products, and was less then impressed at what I found…

McDonalds:
Hungry Jacks:

7 Eleven Cola Slurpee:

So, either way you look at it, it’s all bad. Sugar, sugar and more sugar, and zero nutrition and I really shouldn’t go anywhere near them. EVER. But then I heard about the 7-11 Mango Zilched… which claims to have hardly any sugar in it at all! And I thought, somewhat skeptically, ‘Awesome! Must try!’ And so we did. And they weren’t bad but they weren’t great. They were however, freezing cold and lasted for half an hour thus fulfilling the major requirements of the frozen slushie drink quite adequately.

But, since my Dad passed away from MND in 2007 and lots of studies indicate that excessive consumption of artificial sweetners (especially aspartame) can lead to the onset of diseases like MS and MND, there’s no way I will knowingly consume something that has aspartame in it given I may have a genetic predisposition to such things anyway. Naturally, I went looking for the nutritional information on the Slurpee website and found nothing… nada… zilch (yeah bad pun, sorry). Undeterred, I emailed the Slurpee ‘Contact Us’ people to ask them ‘hey what’s in your orangey slurry goo that tastes very little like mango and considerably more like excessively sweet citrusy stuff?’ and I got the following response.

Hey Borys,
Thanks for your question.
The sweeteners contained in the Slurpee Zilched are: 968 – Erythritol; and 955 – Sucralose. Both sweeteners are commonly found in many diet soft drinks, gums and ice creams available in Australia. Both are approved as safe by Australia’s Food Standards authority.
Hope this helps!
Cheers
Team Slurpee

Why yes, Team Slurpee. Yes it does. So while no artificial nonsense in your food is best, sucralose and erythiritol are way lesser evils when compared to aspartame and shit like that. Still, with the bright orange 110 and 102, I wouldn’t go giving it to a kid with known food colouring issues. So now I feel like I can have my bi-weekly Frozen Slurpee guilt free knowing I’m not going to be assisting the early onset type two diabetes that most PCOS sufferers have to look forward to anyway! 🙂 And with plenty of time to slurp away over the rest of this summer too!

*For the record, I’m still not entirely convinced any Cokes are harmed in the making of said Frozen Cokes and have yet to see any evidence to support actual Coke content.