una noche sin los hombres

the mayor of bogota, colombia, has declared this friday the official ‘night without men.’ apparently, this friday all the men are supposed to stay home and do the baby-sitting and house cleaning so that their wives can go out and party. sounds good to me, particularly in a country where the women’s primary role is still that of the homemaker. go mayor.

in less happy news: the latest shooting spree: a high school in santana, ca. the discussion group on cnn made me so angry that i had to stop reading it (especially b/c the registration page was broken so i couldn’t write back to all these people with their heads up their asses). how can the nra folks sleep at night after something like this happens again . it doesn’t seem like rocket science to me to figure out that guns lead to shootings. it’s obvious that ‘responsible’ licensed gun owners can’t handle their weapons in a responsible fashion, since their kids keep managing to borrow them and shoot each other. how many times does this have to happen? it just makes me feel ill. someone on the cnn discussion group was pointing out that only 1 in 4 violent crimes involve a firearm, so that getting rid of guns wouldn’t really eliminate violent crime. hmm. seems to me that a reduction of 25% of all violent crime wouldn’t be a bad place to start. you can’t deny that it’s psychologically easier to kill someone using a gun than something like a knife or a club. how many of the high school killing sprees would have happened if the perpetrators had had to use knives? besides, how often do killing sprees happen in countries like canada and england – countries in which the police officers don’t even carry guns? seems to me that a lack of guns=lack of death by guns. the thing that i hate the most is the way that people can overlook the fundamental purpose of a gun. a gun is a machine designed to kill things. making them into a work of art is just sick. how can people own guns recreationally? why would you buy a gun if there wasn’t some thought at the back of your mind that you might need it to kill someone? that’s like buying a dish washer and assuring everyone that you’re just going to use it as a coffee table. somewhere, in the back of your mind, you know you have a pile if dirty dishes…and if your wife really gets desperate, well.

i’m fully aware of the 2nd amendment, that our nation was founded on top of this freedom to shoot off our own feet if we damn well please. i just think it’s one of the things wrong with this country. were i queen of everything for a day, my first move would be to get rid of the 2nd amendment. if people feel they need protection, why not non-lethal weapons? since i live in the ‘hood, i carry a vial of pepper spray. it won’t kill anyone, or even do any permanent damage, but it’s a comfort to me to know that i’m a bit safer this way. a few months ago i read this article about this quaker couple who have gotten really involved in the weaponry r&d department at the pentagon. it sounds weird, but they’re these huge experts on non-lethal forms of weaponry. evidently they decided that preaching peace wasn’t going to be enough, so that the next best thing to do was to try and reduce the number of casualties. pretty impressive example of adapting to one’s environment without losing one’s moral stance, i think. wish i could remember their names.