Roses Are Read – So Are These Books

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down the pants….

Some books that are good for the mind, some books that are good for the soul, and some books that are good for just passing time.  I read ‘em all last year.

1491
A description of indigenous societies and empires in North and South America before the white man arrived.  Aside from the lack of iron and steel, many of them were as complex and technological as anything in the Old World.

A Harvest of Short Stories
A 1960 Ontario English textbook, complete with notes and questions, and the names of three girls who had owned it.  16 short stories, mostly Canadian and British, including a couple of O. Henry ironies, and Poe’s A Cask of Amontillado.  I didn’t have to download a free PDF.  Two Sherlock Holmes, including The Speckled Band, where I found three errors.  You can’t train a snake.  They do not drink milk, and they are deaf, and will not respond to a whistle.  The notes found one more, where Holmes refers to Watson’s pistol by a company which only ever produced ammunition.

A History of the World In 10 ½ Chapters
Not what it claims to be.  A collection of short stories intended to make fun of blind religion, especially Christianity.

Count Zero
Book number two of a trilogy about surfing the internet, but written 40 years ago, when most of us didn’t know the internet existed.

Dead Moon
A premise that large areas of the moon are used as cemeteries.  Seemed energy-inefficient to me.  Along comes a space rock which re-animates the dead, with no explanation of how, or why.  Still, escapist fun.

Even
Lee Grant’s (Jack Reacher) younger brother writing in the same genre.  Heavy on the thinking and planning, but not averse to a little required violence.
Genellan – First Victory
Again, the second of three sci-fi books about three, then four, then five alien races, including us, who band together to defeat another powerful one, intent on controlling the galaxy.  Think Star Trek Federation versus The Borg.

Gilgamesh
A book written before you were born:  This one was written before almost anyone was born – 5000 years ago.  Book review to follow.

Kingdom of Bones
An excuse to while away some time in retirement.  This one shows a place in darkest Africa where Gaia-energy caused animal life and intelligence to develop.

No Plan B
While ‘Lee Child’ is busy developing the Jack Reacher TV series, (They’re filming the third season in Toronto, where the lead actor, from Minnesota, complains about the cold weather) it falls to his younger brother (see Even above) to keep pumping them out.

One Minute Out
Another Gray Man time-passer.  In the first novel. he got so beat-up and shot-up that I didn’t see how he, or the series, could survive.  This is the ninth, and they both seem to be feeling their age.

Rasputin’s Shadow
Many people are still fascinated by Rasputin.  Even a hundred years later, he’s a good MacGuffin to hang a modern action/suspense novel on.

Relentless
This is number 8 in The Gray Man series.  Same as above – only slightly different.

Run
Same basic plot as Even, above.  An innocent bystander gets screwed over, and works like Hell to get his life back.  Good for a week of casual reading.

Sapiens
A description and illustration of how humans climbed down from the hominid evolution tree.  We – the race  – may have made a great mistake in inventing farming and technology to feed an ever-increasing population.  Hunter/gatherers spend only 18/20 hours a week feeding themselves, with much less stress.

Shatter War
Number two of a trilogy about how areas of Earth are jumbled from different time periods, ranging from ice age, to 200 years in our future.  With a canvas that broad and blank, anything is possible.  From a husband/wife team like the Childs.  He determines the plotline and story arc, and she provides the development prose.

Sierra Six
This is number seven in The Gray Man series.  I’m presenting my titles in alphabetical order, but that inverts the published order.  This book is out of plotline order.  It’s a flashback story to explain how it all started.

Target Acquired
Ghost writers help the ghost of Tom Clancy-past to keep pumping out these Jack Ryan Junior, second-generation novels.

The Kaiser’s Web
If Raymond Khoury can hang a tale on Rasputin, then Steve Berry can hang one on the German Kaiser.  Everything old is new again.

The Kill Clause
A police detective, whose young daughter is raped and murdered, is offered a spot on a vigilante squad to bring justice to those who escape on technicalities.

The Last Orphan
A Jason Bourne-type agent is finally showing some signs of being human.  I am hoping for more books in the new direction.

The Program
The above vigilante policeman, (temporarily) off the force, rescues a rich man’s daughter from a Scientology-type cult.

The Runaway
A missing,16-year-old, female agent trainee, and the possibility of a relationship with a lady DA and her young son, help scrub a few letters off behind his assumed name –  ADD, ADHD, OCD, PTSD.  He may become part of civilized society, even while he’s still knocking off bad guys.

The Span of Empire
Similar to the Genellan book, again, there are more and more interstellar races, joining together to resist the galactic bully, who would ‘cleanse’ them all out of existence.

There Is A God
Lies!  Damned lies, and more desperate Christian Apologetics lies.

The Origin Of Woke

How do you get a guy to stand in a closet, while you seal him in by bricking up the door??

Strictly a hypothetical question!  That odd-shaped portion on my basement wall is where the electrical panel used to be…. and I have no idea where that irritating neighbor got to.

And Google is no damned help.  I hate that auto-complete!  I type in How do you…. and I get back
….do the Hokey-Pokey?
….get picked up at a gay bar?
….serve curried Iguana?

I believe I found the birth of Woke, and it’s further back than you might think.  I woke from a refreshing afternoon nap, wondering how the narrator in Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, kept his victim from just breaking out.  It turns out that he chained the loathed sot to the back wall, tightly enough so that he could not get loose.

I studied the tale in Grade 12 English – old enough to deal with some of the darker themes.  Living out in the boondocks, the teacher only explained a bit of the story motivation, and being an Anglophone-Canadian, managed to mispronounce the Spanish name.  He spoke ah-mon-tee-yad-oh like ah-mon-till-lay-doh.

I re-read the tale on the Internet recently, and was discussing it with the son.  Poe’s works have always been classified as horror.  That’s how my teacher presented it.  Like Romeo and Juliet, this was a valid story of Renaissance, upper-class hatred and competition between families and commercial groups – possible, even likely to happen, given the opportunity.

The son said that, when he studied it, approximately 1988, his (female) English teacher explained that it was all allegory.  The story-teller was just an alcoholic, who was symbolically imprisoning his weakness, and getting sober.  So I guess, no AA back then??!  The dark horror story had been changed into a bright, kind, redemptive one of rehabilitation and personal triumph.

Personally, I find that interpretation to be ridiculous, but I wonder if any of you were presented with it.  😕   😳

There’s always tomorrow.  CU then.

Fibbing Friday VII

With Pensitivity101 staring aghast, I have prefabricated some prevarications for another list of her Purloined Patented Posers ©

1. Where will you find a pushme-pullyou?

At any K-Mart Blue-Light Special.  It’s the main reason that there are no more K-Mart stores in Kinder, Gentler Canada anymore.  Only in the U.S. do they combine cheap clothing sales with MMA death matches.
2. What is meant by the term ‘chocolate box’?

I’m not sure.  I’ve never seen a chocolate box.  I’ve seen a cracker box.  A tomato can.  I’ve seen a horse fly, but I’ve never seen a deer fly.  Bonnie May, but Donna Wood.
3. Who lived in the house made with gingerbread, cake and pastries?

The guy who is Public Enemy #1 on the Weight-Watchers Most Wanted list.  Since I cut back a bit on my snacks, and lost 20 American pounds, or 9 Canadian kilos, my ranking has dropped from #7, to #9.
4. Where will you find Mr. Stay Puft?

On a bench at the strip-mall, three doors down from the new marijuana dispensary.
5. Where will you find The Hallelujah Mountains?

That’s what women discover when they take off the bandages, after breast augmentation surgery.  Hallelujah, Mountains!
6. What did Gru intend to steal with the Shrink Ray?

It wasn’t exactly “steal.”  It was more like an extortion scheme.  He was going to shrink all the Kardashians’ butts, and blackmail them – and several Black guys with no taste – to return them to their ridiculous but normal size.  Just as he was lining up on Kim’s ass, ‘Andy,’ who became the 40 Year Old Virgin, suddenly appeared.  He had sneaked in to discover whether Kanye West was CGI, or an animatronic built by American Amusement Corporation.  Gru’s shot hit him right in the crotch, causing a small problem, and the plan collapsed.
7. Going back a long way, what was ‘Baby’ in the 1938 film Bringing Up Baby?

She was the girl who grew up to be the actress who played ‘Baby’ in the movie Dirty Dancing.  “Nobody puts ‘Baby’ in the corner!”
8. Who played the drums in The Muppets?

It was Charlie Watts for a while, but Janice and the rest of the band felt that his face was frightening children, so they replaced him with the Muppets Animal.  Charlie went on to fame and fortune with the Rolling Stones, playing at morticians’ conventions.
9. What magical instrument did Sparky play?

See #4.  It was a Bic lighter.  For 79¢ at the nearby Dollarama store, he gets to join in on the festivities all day – and night.  “Hey man, got a light?”  “Sure – for a toke off your little friend.  Here, I’ll spark it up for you.”
10. What did ‘Andy’ have waxed in The 40 Year Old Virgin?

See #6, above.  It was his snowboard.  After getting his sex appeal downsized, women were freezing him out.  He wasn’t getting laid, and his sex-life was going downhill fast.

The truth is, I’ll be back in a couple of days with And Now For Something Completely Different.

Swimming In The OCD Ocean

I can’t dress myself!  Oh, I can put clothing on my body – but pick what to wear??  Shortly after I got married, my wife proved to me that, like many other newly-wed men, I was incapable of choosing acceptable attire.  I haven’t bought myself a piece of clothing in over 54 years.

We have agreed on black jeans for normal, casual wear.  For the mix-and-match polo shirts that go with them, her system for choosing to purchase seems to be based on – Ooh, I love that color – Ooh, I like the collar on that, and – Ooh, they’re on sale.  We’ll get one in all four colors.

She was doing laundry one day, and asked me to check my closet for any empty hangers that would be needed to hang them up after drying.  I opened the closet, and it was FULL of polo shirts – How many??! – 32!!  How can I possibly have 32 shirts left, on the day she’s doing laundry??  Not having done laundry in two weeks, she had another 10 in the wash.

When she buys me new shirts, she says, “I’ll throw out all the old, threadbare ones to make room.”  With 42 shirts in the rotation, how would any of them become threadbare?

I was wearing a particular shirt one day.  She commented, “I haven’t seen that shirt in a while.”  I responded, “You should see it every couple of months.  I put shirts into the closet on the left, and take them out to wear, from the right.”  “Wellll… You’ve got some shirts that I don’t like, so I go into your closet and move them around, so that you won’t wear them.”

Wait!!  You do what??!  You purchase all my shirts, and there are some that you don’t like??!  No wonder I can’t choose any that she likes.  She doesn’t even like the ones that she picks.  Must be the ones with the OOH collars.  And she goes into my closet and curates my clothing??!    😯

She does throw out threadbare shirts – right when she shouldn’t.  At the old auto parts plant, the windows were one short step up from kitchen sieves.  During a winter cold snap, temps on the floor could drop into the 60s, or even 50s F.  I had 10 thick, warm work tee-shirts – 5 each for two weeks till she did laundry.  In the summer, with no A/C and lots of hot vinyl, many days I worked in the 90s F.  I had 10 thin, threadbare shirts.

As cold weather approached one winter, I put away the thin, summer shirts.  At our first heat-wave in April, I went to pull them back out – but couldn’t find them.  “Honey, do you know where my summer tee-shirts are?”  “Oh, they were all so thin, and they had little holes and picks in them, so I just threw them all out.  Just wear the good, thick, heavy ones.  They cover you better, anyway.”  I can’t even go out and buy thin, cool shirts.

The poor dear probably doesn’t even notice what she’s doing, and does it with the best of intentions and my welfare and best interests at heart.  A guy could die from all that love.  I’ll be wearing a clean shirt when you return in a couple of days – solid colors only – no stripes, spots, or Canadian plaid.  Tell me if you like the collar.   😉

The Man With The Golden…. Silence

It’s still ‘A Penny For My Thoughts,’ but it’ll cost you a buck to get me to shut up.

My chiropractor recently got stuck with a coin that wasn’t a Canadian $1 Loonie, so he stuck me with the job of finding out just what it was.

I didn’t have my eyes glasses with me when I went in.  It’s difficult to lie face-down on the torture table with them on.  I could make out what appeared to be an indigenous person on it, and the wife said that she could read the word ‘Dollar’ on it, but places like Ecuador, El Salvador, Zimbabwe, Timor, Micronesia, Australia, and New Zealand all have dollars.  I had to wait till I got home and used a magnifying glass, and the son’s jeweler’s loupe.  Then I dove into a maelstrom of unfettered hype and promotion.

This was an American Sacajawea, or Native American dollar.  Since 2000, for 20 years the American Mint has produced them.  They first came out for collectors only, but in 2002 they went into general circulation.  Each obverse (heads) side, with Sacajawea and papoose, is identical, but the reverse (tails) sides are all different.  In 2009 they removed the date, and the mint mark, but the arrows identify this as a 2010 version.

This coin has no edge milling – little grooves.  I understood that, from 2009, there was supposed to be words engraved on the edge, yet this one is plain and bare.  Close examination of the edge shows that it is an Oreo coin.  Both flat sides are a manganese-brass golden color – which quickly dulls.  The ‘filling’ is a cheap ugly copper.  As an American coin, it is medal-struck, that is, its front and back are upside-down compared to each other.  Canadian coins are coin-struck, with the top of both front and back being adjacent, along the edge

These coins were produced at the same time as a series of Presidential Dollars, both intended to bring in Mint revenue from gullible collectors.  The results of the 2008 financial slump may still be being felt.  Initial productions of millions per year, have dropped to mere thousands.

Americans in general may be poorer, but the bureaucrats are no less dumb.  Some coin collector nuts aren’t poor, but they still seem dumb.  A pristine, untouched exemplar of this coin recently sold on Etsy for $23,000 US.  Someone said that, if the Government were put in charge of the Sahara, within five years there would be a shortage of sand.  It is no wonder that things like Black Lives Matter spring up.  This coin has the Indian word ‘Haudenosamee’ on it.  This means ‘Longhouse dwellers,’ ….  in New York and Ontario Iroquois.  Sacajawea was a Lemhi Shoshone who guided Lewis and Clarke after she met them in North Dakota, 1500 miles away.  😳  Details, details.   🙄

I won’t guide you astray if I ask you to come back in a couple of days.  Please remember to bring a dollar or two with you.  We’ll be having a Telethon.  Your donations can help stamp out verbosity.  😉  😆

Flash Fiction #183

PHOTO PROMPT © Jean L. Hays

RETIREMENT VILLAGE

Wuz anybody famous ever born here? Y’alls gotta be jokin’! We wuz gonna have Thoreau Theodore, thuh weather-forecastin’ prairie-dog, but thuh little varmint wouldn’t come outta hiz hole. Wouldn’t matter if’n he seen hiz shadow or not, we’d jest git ‘nother six weeks of whatever’s outside.

Some Eastern dude retired here. Place useta be called Nowheresville – motto, “Civilization’s Thataway ->”. Folks renamed the town after him. Think he wrote a book – sumpin’ about fishin’ at some pond, ah think. Doan know why ennybuddy with a pond ta fish in, would come to a place like this, drier than a popcorn fart.

***

Click to hear ‘Wild Horses,’ Canadian Gino Vanelli singing about parts of the US where the population density is so low, that you can be, “a hundred miles out of town.”

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

I Have Poor Relatives

Once upon a time there was a poor little boy from a poor family. His Father was poor.  His Mother was poor.  The maid was poor.  The cook was poor.  The butler was poor.  Even the chauffeur was poor. One day, he went to his father and asked if he could have a pony.  His Father said no, because they were too poor to afford a pony.  The poor little boy went to his piggy-bank, took out enough money to buy himself the pony, and put the rest back….

We are often so busy with our own lives, that without really obvious clues, we think that everyone is pretty much like ourselves. It takes an observant and analytical mind to notice the struggles of those at the bottom of the financial, pissed-on trickle down ladder.  I am distressed that a $180 pair of distressed designer jeans looks just like my four-years-old $24.95 Wal-Mart pair.

This is why politicians, who are already being paid far too much to do a job that their predecessors did without pay, as a Public Service, feel free to waste millions – Billions – of our dollars, and still fraudulently pad their office budgets and expense accounts.  They have no idea, and don’t care, what it’s like at the bottom of the pile, and it’s been this way since long before Marie Antoinette offered to “let them eat cake.”

It is just as illegal for a millionaire to sleep under a bridge, as it is for a homeless man to do so.

I recently had a conversation with a friend. It seemed that both of us were keeping an eye on family finances – total income vs. expenses – only I think that he was doing it at a much higher level than I was.  I’ve never asked how much he makes.  It’s none of my business, and doesn’t affect our friendship.

With his experience, training, intelligence and education, I suspect his annual salary is somewhere north of $100,000/year. His talented wife probably makes half of that.

With my learning disabilities, and poor short-term memory adding to my tendency for procrastination, I’m lucky to have accomplished what I have during my life. About 15 years ago, before I retired to live on Government and company pensions – with a bunch of overtime, I grossed $44,000, but the wife had been ‘downsized.’  Earlier, when I made $38,000, she added $19,000.

This is not a whine! I’m still doing better than a lot of people, including the little guy who busks in the cold, outside the local grocery store.  As an engineer, Jim Wheeler says that it is not worth his while to stop and pick up a penny.  I still grab the occasional one or two from the ‘Need A Penny/ Leave A Penny’ tray at the corner store.  People abandon them because the Mint has stopped making them.

I always check the reject chutes of the coin-counting machines in stores. Sometimes I find Canadian coins, as well as foreign ones which I add to my collection.  It’s quick and easy to eyeball the change chutes of vending machines.  I’m not too proud to (discreetly) stick my finger in the few payphone chutes that still exist.  The last time I did, I found $2.  It’s all relative.  $2 to a millionaire is nothing, although Bill Gates (or his minions) cashed a check for 39 cents.  $2 to someone who is eating cat food (We don’t.) means a lot.

Having pets is a wonderful experience. I would not want to get rid of any that we have, but the wife wants even more.  I cannot convince her that, between food, treats, litter, and vet bills, each animal costs us about $1000 a year.  I would sooner have that money to pay down our still-existing mortgage, or use it to take enjoyable trips, while we are still physically capable of doing so.

Some people waste money, too often MY money!  Some people scrimp and save, show restraint and fiscal control, and budget their money to get them the most they can.  I’d be patting myself on the back, but I’m busy crawling around on the floor, trying to find that quarter I dropped.  I’ll be back up at the computer in a couple of days.  Please come back again then.   😉

Being Canadian

 

 

 

 

 

Recently, there was a viral media story about an immigrant Muslim woman who appeared in court in the province of Quebec.  Her teen-aged son had been pulled over by the police with a suspended licence.  In a case like that, the car is impounded for 30 days.  If someone can show reason to need the car back before that, they have to appeal to the court.

Already, at that point in the story, I was having trouble with it.  Despite the public wanting safer roads by having dangerous drivers taken off them, do you know how hard it is to suspend this teen’s licence??!  As a minor, and a Good Muslim, to whom alcohol is forbidden, was he caught drunk driving?  Has he been convicted of multiple traffic offences, like speeding, racing, leaving the scene of an accident?

On her side, has she been blithely unaware of multiple traffic offences, at least one court case, and the suspension of his licence?  If she was aware of his suspension, did she uncaringly allow him to illegally use the car?

 

 

 

 

 

When she appeared before the judge, a lovely lady judge, she did so with her Muslim tea-towel wrapped around her head.  The female judge told her that she would have to remove her head covering, as a mark of respect for both the judge, and the court.  Things like scarves and sunglasses were not allowed, and must be removed, or her case would not be heard.

She chose to leave the court without recovering her car.  Instead of hiring a lawyer, she chose to arrange a pity party news conference.  Instead of claiming religious discrimination, she told enthralled TV and print reporters that she had worn her dish rag when she became a Canadian citizen, and now the judge had made her feel like she was not a true Canadian citizen.  Wah, wah, wah!    😦

The judge had already told her that scarves and sunglasses were not allowed.  Canadian-type rednecks, with tattoos and 2-digit IQs, are told to remove their ball caps.  These rules apply to everyone.  The closest she came to playing the religion card was to claim that Jewish men were not forced to remove their yarmulkes.

For pious Jewish men, the wearing of the yarmulke is a decreed portion of their religious observance.  Her wearing of some window curtain is merely personal preference, not a dogmatic Muslim tenet.  I now wear my glasses at all times, yet when I go to have my passport photo taken, I am told to remove them for better identification.

She whined about not feeling like a “real Canadian”, yet every member of every level of ‘Canadian’ police, every ‘Canadian’ EMT tech, every ‘Canadian’ firefighter, and every member of ‘Canadian’ Armed Forces, male and FEMALE, remove their head covering in court.  That’s what “real Canadians” do, they show respect, and they obey the law.

Militant Islamism is more dangerous, but this type of Muslimism is more insidious.  Many Muslims come to North America with the honest hope for a better way of life.  Far too many though, come here saying they want a change, but the only change they want is to our way of life.  They play the long game.  They plow their twisted view of the Koran, and sow our welcoming multiculturalism, so that they can eventually reap the crop of the universal Caliphate.

 

 

 

 

This woman is no more a ‘real Canadian’ than the two, fortunately inept, terrorists who were going to dump a Niagara train and bridge into the gorge.  She’s just more subtle and long-range manipulative about it.  Sadly, there are too many politicians loaded with gullibility and White Man’s Guilt, who will feel sorry for her.

An Englishman arrives at his mate’s flat, to find him desperately packing. “Where are you goin’, an’ why??” “Well, it’s about homosexuals!” “What about ‘em?’ “Two hundred years ago, if you were gay, you were hanged, drawn and quartered.  A hundred and fifty years ago, you were flogged and sent to a penal colony.  A hundred years ago, you went to prison for life.  Fifty years ago, it changed to ‘live and let live’.  A few years ago, that became ‘Don’t ask – don’t tell.  I’m gettin’ to Hell out, before it becomes mandatory!”

Only three days after her little video went viral, she had crowd-sourced $20,000 to pay for a lawyer to represent her, to thumb her nose at Canadian traditions and the legal system.  I don’t know if I’ll be more disappointed to find that the bulk of the funds came from apologetic Christians, or hard-core Muslims, financing the firm insertion of the thin edge of the wedge.  Sharia law, here we come!

 

Fully Insured

The following are actual statements found on insurance forms, where car drivers attempted to summarize the details of an accident in the fewest words possible.  These instances of faulty writing serve to confirm that even incompetent writing may be highly entertaining.

Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have.

The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intentions.

I thought my window was down, but I found out it was up when I put my head through it.

I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way.

A truck backed through my windshield into my wife’s face.

A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.

The guy was all over the road.  I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.

I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment.

In my attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.

I had been shopping for plants all day and was on my way home.  As I reached an intersection, a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision and I did not see the other car.

I had been driving for 40 years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.

The telephone pole was approaching.  I was attempting to swerve out of its way when it struck the front end.

I was on my way to the doctor with rear end trouble when my universal joint gave way causing me to have an accident.

As I approached the intersection, a sign suddenly approached in a place where no stop sign ever appeared before.  I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.

To avoid hitting the bumper on the car in front, I struck the pedestrian.

My car was legally parked as it backed into the other vehicle.

An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car and vanished.

I told the police that I was not injured, but on removing my hat, found that I had a fractured skull.

I was sure that the old fellow would never make it to the other side of the road when I struck him.

The pedestrian had no idea which direction to run, so I ran over him.

I saw a slow moving, sad faced old gentleman as he bounced off the roof of my car.

The indirect cause of the accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.

I was thrown from my car as it left the road.  I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows.

***

 

 

 

 

 

Consistent with the Bi-Cultural Policy, the Canadian Government is now considering changing the National Emblem from the Maple Leaf, to the condom.  The reasons are that the condom withstands inflation, slows down production, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives a false sense of security while one is being screwed.   🙄

Gun Safety vs. Gun Control

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Mr. Government;

Please roll me up in bubble-wrap, and put me in a big box full of non-toxic packing-foam peanuts, so that nothing – not even a bad word – can hurt me.

***

Recently, some Idiot (a woman, as it turns out – just to disprove female claims that all Idiots are male.), managed to get herself shot to death in an American Wal-Mart, when her 2-year-old son reached into her purse, beside him in the shopping cart.

She was described in local papers as “an atomic scientist.”  She was a chemical technician who worked at a power plant.  This is not Big Bang Theory!  She was an ‘atomic scientist’ in the same way a homeless panhandler is a “Charitable Donations Canvasser.”  Still….

In an outpouring of telling others how to run their country and their lives, a Toronto area man sent the following letter to the Toronto Sun, titled More Gun Control:

I just read about the tragic death of a 29-year-old mother in a U.S. Walmart.  She was shot by her two-year-old after the youngster pulled a gun out of his mom’s purse.

I can’t think of any reason why it would be necessary to bring a loaded gun to go shopping.  What a waste of life, not to mention the emotional scars this child is going to have to deal with the rest of his life.

The NRA and its lobbyists need to be muzzled and better gun controls in the U.S. are long overdue.  There’s been too many of these senseless events for far too long.

I agree that it was a sad and preventable occurrence, but this writer leads a far too protected life, and uses way too many hysterical mistakes and lies to justify it.  Even the term “loaded gun” is a loaded term.  Can he think of a reason to bring an ‘unloaded gun’ shopping?  The title is another flag to show his bias.  He doesn’t advocate ‘Greater Gun Safety’.  He demands ‘More Gun Control.’

Through lack of forethought and research, I recently spent a weekend in a dangerous part of Detroit.  This was near Eight Mile, where the white rapper Eminem got street cred by growing up in a tough Negro area.

My motel had an armed security guard patrolling after dark.  My place was quiet, but the downscale motel directly across the street was well known for gunshots and police and ambulance calls.  The pizza shop on Eight Mile had floor-to-ceiling, half-inch thick, bullet-resistant Plexiglas.

The ‘Trade Center’ (more like a cheap flea market) that we went to on Sunday, had signs on the doors which read, “All hoods must be removed on entering”, and “We will provide a security escort to your vehicle, but we will not carry merchandise.”

As an unarmed Canadian tourist, I was very careful where I went, and when.  I can understand and sympathise with local residents who feel the need to carry firearms to protect themselves from gangbangers and drug dealers.

If even the Trade Center management feels the need to provide protective escorts, there must be a good chance that there might actually be someone in the parking lot to protect from.  I might not need a handgun while I’m shopping, but if there’s someone out there who wants to rob/rape/kill me before I get to my car, then I might need the gun when I leave the store.

Just what further “gun control” does this conservative Canadian feel Americans need?  The woman in question underwent a background check, and endured the 10-day waiting period.  She paid for, and enrolled in, a concealed weapon carry permit training session.  She was psychologically stable, and the weapon was duly registered.

Sadly, stupidity still carries the death penalty, and she’s posthumously (there’s no other way) enrolled in the Darwin Award hall of shame.  While she might have been intelligent enough to work at a nuclear generating plant, neither training nor legislation can instill common sense.

To have a loaded gun is one thing.  To have a loaded gun with several children around, including a busy, curious two-year-old, is something else entirely.  The story does not say if the purse was open, but even if it was closed, she was not paying sufficient attention to the child and the gun, sitting side by side.  The gun was not merely loaded, but almost surely must have been cocked, and the safety off.  Little two-year-old hands can’t do these things.

Just what ‘senseless events’ is he referring to, the accidental shooting death of a mother by a young child?  I don’t ever remember hearing of another!  Perhaps he could worry less about the NRA’s somewhat overzealous desire to preserve the legal right to possess firearms, and vent his indignation on gangs and druggies and other criminals who make carrying them seem like a good idea.

And that’s a view on Gun Control vs. Gun Safety from a grumpy, old, unarmed Canadian, north of the border.