As the wingnuts, bigots, neocons and other protofascists continue squeezing my country the way Senate Republicans squeeze Joe Lieberman's balls, I'm just learning, at age 27, as a California, Boxer-voting liberal to love guns. Like most sane human beings (cf., Charlton Heston) I was born and remained for a large part of my childhood, gunshy. By now, however, I'm a crack-shot with a 30.06 at 70 yards, and while I suffer a slight case of "lazy wrist" with the .45, it's only a matter of time...In a nutshell, I've hopelessly fallen for the Zell Miller interpretation of the 2nd amendment. As my marksmanship skills improve, I'm actually beginning to enjoy myself. But I want nothing to do with the attendant "culture."
Now, I am a carnivore, and as such, have nothing against fair chase hunting. That is to say, I have nothing against other people doing it. My least favorite chore, next to folding whites, is grocery shopping. I like to spend the least amount of time possible doing it. And to me, hunting is nothing more than a grueling, time-wasting, hopelessly outmoded, wretchedly tiresome form of grocery shopping. If I want meat, I go to the store. If I want an outdoor experience, I trudge (lightly) through Mendocino, take pictures, collect bugs, and in general do a whole lot of nothing; that, to me is so much more enriching than hefting a buttload of artillery, sitting stock still in one place for hours on end, and, if I'm lucky, lugging a 200lbs. carcass through swarms of yellowjackets in the middle of nowhere. Despite what certain game evangelists might have you believe, hunting doesn't make me squeamish, just horribly, horribly bored.
Certainly, it doesn't get me orgasmic, as it seems to the men and occasional women of Outdoor Life. Take a video camera apparently manufactured in the mid-90s, and use it to record an armed, pudgy, middle-aged, camoflauge-draped white guy sporting a goatee and a cornpone accent chuffing up and down the wind-scraped hills of some hellish wasteland in search of that perfect 4-point whitetail. Now edit out 100% of the near misses, 10% of the tedium, and be sure to get a good long scene of the triumphant hunter crowing and all but spewing manchowder in his skidmarked, size 46 Fruit of the Looms.
That, in a paragraph, is your typical half-hour of Outdoor Life programming. How this seething pit of jingoism, delusions of persecution (many hosts continue to play on right-wing fears of black helicopter-flying, blue-helmet wearing gun-snatchers), and retarded commercials for military recruitment and shit no one in his right mind would ever need constitutes entertainment will, I fear, be forever beyond me.
An Aimless Rant About a Mystery
1.27.2005
Ore : 10:04 AM
Ore : 10:04 AM
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