Let A Thousand Concealed Handguns Bloom!

Strange things happen to your mind when it’s transplanted to a foreign culture. Events and ideas that would have once appeared outrageous become very normal, and before long you accept them without batting an eyelid. It takes a serious jolt for you to realize how normal the hitherto abnormal has become.

Recently I had one of those jolts, when I read that the Texas State Legislature was about to pass a law forcing college campuses to permit students to carry concealed weapons on their persons. There is already a law that says Texas colleges can decide for themselves if they want students to wander around with secret firearms. None permit it; that’s why state lawmakers want to force them to grant students their 2nd Amendment rights.


O brave new world, that has such people in’t!

Robocop Forever!

The United States is a troubled nation, friends. The economy is a mess, the political culture is unbearably shrill, ponytailed types are rioting in Wisconsin, etc. Fortunately there is some good news: Detroit is getting a statue of Robocop.

This is how it happened. Last week, via Tweet, somebody proposed a Robocop monument to the city’s mayor, Dave Bing. Bing replied sniffily: "There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop. Thank you for the suggestion"

Almost immediately an Internet campaign began which raised the $50, 000 required to build it, after which a local non-profit organization donated a site. Bing’s diktat was overruled by the will of the people - kind of like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, only completely different.

Life After Wartime

I’ve always been fascinated by the military. Well, not always. In fact, when I was younger I was bored senseless by it. I couldn’t stand war films, war comics, or anything war related. The only exception was war in space. I loved laser guns and watching aliens die.

And then, at some point, my attitude changed. After all, nobody can deny that war is a phenomenon worth pondering, given that humans like killing each other so much.
Suddenly too I found that I admired military people. I was jealous of their ability to rise early, keep their hair short, and submit to external authority. Bohemianism is overrated: disciplined habits can help a man progress in life.

Ice Storms, Snowfall And The Last Man On Earth

Growing up in Scotland, I didn’t see much snow.  1979 provided the only white Christmas I remember. After that (with the exception of one year when blizzards closed school for a few happy days) you’d get two weeks of slushy stuff at the end of January/start of February, and that was about it.

In January 1997 I moved to Russia. I vividly recall the banks of deep snow in front of my dilapidated khrushevka in northwest Moscow. I waded through it with pleasure, astonished as I sank in up to my waist. Of course I was walking in an un-trodden area beneath the trees, which greatly confused the handful of Russians who were using the smooth, flattened path like regular people.

A Brief Encounter With Holy Death

For a while now I have been hoping for an encounter with death- Saint Death, that is, or Santa Muerte, affectionately known to her (largely Mexican) followers as La Flaca- the Skinny Girl. She’s all bones, you see.

I don’t remember how I first found out about Lady Death. It was some time last year, while I was prowling the Texas-Mexico border. For the uninitiated, Santa Muerte is a crypto-saint not recognized by the Catholic Church. Nobody seems to know where she came from- one source I read speculated that the cult was new, dating back only to the late 1960s. Another speculated that it was much older, and arose as a result of peasant confusion between a Catholic Saint and an Aztec deity of death. Whichever variant is true, Holy Death emerged looking like a figure from a death metal album cover: grinning skull face, scythe, hooded robe etc.

Ancient Wisdom of the Apache

Years ago, a friend of mine started dating a vivacious American girl. Being American himself, he naturally included her ancestral lineage in his discussion of her charms. “Yes, Dan,” he said, “She’s part Scottish, part Irish, part German, a little English and also Apache - on her great-great-grandmother’s side.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” I said.
“Why?”
“Well, because her great-great grandmother was raped, of course. What do you think the white settlers were doing on Indian lands in the 19th century? They weren’t passing the bong around at a groovy inter ethnic love-in, I’ll tell you that for nothing. “

Things Coca Cola Has Taught Me

On Monday, I helped an 88-year-old man move a Coca-Cola vending machine from the floor of an industrial warehouse to the back of his pick-up truck. He was buying it for the employees at his scrap metal business in Houston. The owner of the vending machine was out of town, and I had agreed to meet the old man and help.

Alas, I wasn’t much use. I soon discovered that even if I pushed the vending machine very, very hard with my shoulder, it wouldn’t move. Fortunately there was a man across the street with a forklift truck. If he hadn’t been there, the Coke machine would still be standing in the original spot, or perhaps the 88-year-old man and I would be lying under it, two bloody smears on the warehouse floor.

And so the week began with a new discovery: VENDING MACHINES ARE INCREDIBLY HEAVY. Reflecting upon this, I wondered what other things I had learned from Coca-Cola which, like the air we breathe, is a ubiquitous part of modern life.