I HAD TOO MUCH TO DREAM LAST NIGHT (OLYMPICS EDITION)

I am working in my home office on my laptop. For some reason I have the Olympics streaming in one tab – evidently baseball is now an Olympic sport. The sound is off but it’s also playing on the TV in the living room, so I can hear the commentary from there.

Team USA is playing someone, and they’re not doing well – every time I switch over to the video, Team USA is literally dropping the ball, allowing runners to constantly advance. At one point a ball boy throws a ball to the pitcher, but he’s facing the other way. It hits him, and he turns around and throws another ball back at the guy who threw the other ball at him. As this is the ball in play, the base runners advance again.

The pitcher throws down his glove, walks over to the ball boy and punches him in the face. The ball boy goes down, and the pitcher pins him down and keeps punching away. A classic brawl ensues, except that it’s between Team USA and the umpires and field staff, not the other team. The commentators are talking about how embarrassing and disgraceful it all is: “The US lobbied the Olympic Committee to make baseball an Olympic event for years, Bob, and the first year, this happens.”

Meanwhile, the camera shows players in the dugout watching this and looking pretty dejected. For some reason there’s a big brown bear in the dugout – a team mascot or possibly this year’s Olympic mascot. One of the players tries to pet the bear to comfort it as though it’s a dog. The bear promptly starts mauling him.

I switch over to Facebook and update my status: BEST OLYMPICS EVER.

And then I woke up. And I was rather disappointed to learn it was just a dream.

Metaphorical,

This is dF

CANADA: TOO SCARY FOR SOME PEOPLE

By now you’ve heard the one about the off-duty Kalamazoo policeman vacationing in Calgary who wished he’d brought his gun with him to protect himself from Canadian rodeo promoters.

With a set-up like that, who needs a punchline?

Anyway, Walt Wawra is currently undergoing his 15 minutes of Interweb fame after writing the Calgary Herald about his terrifying experience of being asked by two punks men if he’d been to the Stampede (as in the Calgary Stampede, which is basically a big annual rodeo). Wawra apparently assumed this was a prelude to a mugging, and lamented over the fact that if he’d only been allowed to bring his gun into Canada, he’d be able to shoot those fuckers defend himself.

There’s some debate over just what the two guys were really doing. Calgary Cultural Ambassador Jenn Lutz says they were promoters handing out free tix to the Stampede. The media relations manager for the Stampede says they don’t promote the Stampede that way. And of course, without being there, it’s hard to know if the two guys were genuinely being scary or just over-enthusiastic.

Still, it’s worth passing on the story because it illustrates clearly that the current conservative meme that people should be free to carry guns with them anywhere and everywhere at all times in the name of protecting themselves is, at its core, one big Fear trip.

As long-time readers might know, I don’t support outlawing guns in the US. But I am wary of people who argue that they want to be able to carry guns everywhere because they want to feel safe. Safe from who? Street punks? Al Qaeda? James Holmes? Gays? Mexicans? Rodeo promoters? Barack Obama?

Wawra’s “OMG I have no gun” mentality tells me that he treats his gun like a security blanket. He feels safer with it, and is convinced he is in greater danger without it, even in what most people would consider a relatively benign situation.

I realize it may just be a consequence of him being a police officer, which must make even the best cops feel like moving targets whether they’re armed or not. But my point still stands – if guns make you feel safer, that means yr living in fear. Which is justifiable in high-crime neighborhoods and war zones. In Nose Hill on vacation, not so much.

Man up,

This is dF