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[AugustWest]

Golly did I laugh hard at today's strip.  Boy Howdy!

Also:  "Glock" as a verb.

[jaydub]

I'll bet Ray didn't imagine processing his own cow though. Hella work and messy too.

True that.  In some ways, the fact that we get our meat all nicely trimmed and not looking at all like the animal from which it was cut is something I like about modern life.  It would be a major time sink to butcher the quarterly cow (I think I eat about 4 cows a year - especially tenderloins...).  On the other hand, I think the detachment most people feel from where they get their food is a major cause of stupid thinking in American society.

Glocking - is that what you call the weird way gangstas depict holding a gun?  I've wondered what that does to accuracy or effectiveness.  There's no way I'd get caught trying it at the range though - the scorn of my fellow shooters would be unbearable.  Its my theory that some video director thought it up so his star could hold a gun towards the camera (like he was going to shoot the viewer) without obscuring his face.

[littlefallsmets]

To "glock"... I believe... is not as specific as that particular way of holding a gun but, rather, just "to shoot" in general.

My rudimentary knowledge of physics has always made me wonder about that shooting form, though. Wouldn't the backfire cause you to  kind of accidentally pistol whip yourself after killing a dude?

[ndpatel]

On the other hand, I think the detachment most people feel from where they get their food is a major cause of stupid thinking in American society.

I took an entire 200-level class in college about genocide where the professor's basic theory was that since Westerners for the most part don't have to kill their own food, they don't understand death at all and pretty much just let other people kill the shit out of each other.

[jaydub]

Yeah, that's essentially the sort of thing I was going for in my comment - but then I ran out of gas and hit "post".

[Sub_Topical]

I've raised chicken and rabbit for the table, and pig before Carl the Pig Farmer died and I lost my spring shoat supply. Wringing somethings neck or shooting it in the forehead with a .22 so you can clean it out and eat it does give you maybe a little different perspective on the utility of animals and the base reality of the cessation of being that is death. I don't mean to glorify or demean the harvesting act, but it is something that brings its own perspective.

Part of my perspective, from a background of killings living things for a reason, is a broad deep black and abiding revulsion and interior outrage at the propagation of fabulistic mythology surrounding guns and the criminal life and all the posturing and amoral romanticizing that result in instantly understood phrases like glocking or images like the sideward held handgun.

Whew.
Oops.
How about them cartoon cats!

(You're no more likely to smack the rear sight off your face with a vertical or horizontal hold in a handgun. It's the same amount of force either way. Can't use the sights for shit when you lay it over on its side which has prolly saved alot of peoples asses. So a good thing in a way. Carry on, media!)

[Fooker]

I made a post elsewhere about how I did not do this new comic post even though I had the chance.

Then it was deleted.

Poignant!

[pmcd9]

I took an entire 200-level class in college about genocide where the professor's basic theory was that since Westerners for the most part don't have to kill their own food, they don't understand death at all and pretty much just let other people kill the shit out of each other.

Because genocide is a modern idea, obviously.

[Sub_Topical]

No, but the concept of it being somehow wrong is fairly recent.

[ndpatel]

Part of my perspective, from a background of killings living things for a reason, is a broad deep black and abiding revulsion and interior outrage at the propagation of fabulistic mythology surrounding guns and the criminal life and all the posturing and amoral romanticizing that result in instantly understood phrases like glocking or images like the sideward held handgun.

Weapons have always been sexy, though. The people who wield weapons are romanticized because of the weapons. A samurai without a sword is just a guy in a dress, you know? The helmet is nothing without the M-16.

Because genocide is a modern idea, obviously.

The notion that first world Westerners "let" other people do things is most certainly a modern idea. If killing and death are totally abstract concepts to the people who have the ability to intervene in such things, it's that much more difficult to convince them that they should support the sending of resources to stop them.

Or something like that - I took this class, like, five years ago.

[Sub_Topical]

Weapons have always been sexy, though. The people who wield weapons are romanticized because of the weapons. A samurai without a sword is just a guy in a dress, you know? The helmet is nothing without the M-16.

I'd go the other route in maintaining that the weapons are secondary to the person commiting the mayhem. It's the action and not necessarily the means of delivery that is romaticized. Look at the action movie competition to have dudes get it on with everything from aircraft to playing cards in a tidy 90 minutes.

As to that other thing, isn't there sanctions and international pressure to address those kinds of problems? ;-)

[dejavroom]

An ex-girlfriend once tried to make me watch a documentary which was basically animal snuff (shot after shot depicting the lengths to which sadistic abuse could go within the confines of abattoirs around the globe, plus depressing visions of nightmarish transport conditions, genetic tampering, production-boosting methods which involve mutilation and 100% physical restraint 24/7, that bespeak for nothing if not pure unadulterated lack of soul, yadda yadda). But I was raised in a small town and I knew that of course, the tape was either a piece of hysterical propaganda, or a well-meant and (considering the horror of the scenes in it) necessary alert. I never saw it but for the images on the back of the thing, and oh God no not again.

The point being that not all animals are killed in those ways. Free-range animal farmers (which still subsist and have might have their own institutions for mutual support - many do) basically offer no more no less to the animals they raise than an equivalent of a *truly* "free range" life, consisting of the only things animals care about as live biological entities: subsistence, procreation (in some cases), a place to shit, a place to pee. Death comes also as it would come in the "free" scenario. There's of course no implicit cruelty in the nasty way with which a python's teeth point throatwards, or that an alligator will spin you around underwater while it drags you to the bottom of the lake to wait until you drown, but I bet it hurts a lot of fuck, and most animals, in those times when the needs of both species were more balanced, would meet and expeditious death - quick beheading, twisting of the neck etc - this of course being a broad stroke: there are also animals that are casually thrown to clatter to death inside a bowl of boiling water - , which is the efficient human way of getting things done best ("efficiency" being for instance a highly regarded word in Paris around 1793).

You may call me paranoid, but specialization leads to extinction, and being an omnivore is an advantage as naturally deserved as we are all on earth subject to the same inflexible rule: there is free lunch - all you gotta do is catch it. *How to do that in a more humane, less crap-dudistical way*, by all means, let's find out how to do that and I'll be there helping.

[ndpatel]

Look at the action movie competition to have dudes get it on with everything from aircraft to playing cards in a tidy 90 minutes.

Exactly my point. Top Gun without F-14s is the gayest movie ever made. You cannot argue with this fact.

[Sub_Topical]

Exactly my point. Top Gun without F-14s is the gayest movie ever made. You cannot argue with this fact.

Helped you out with a problem there.

[Enkidu]

I liked everything including bossy about today's one-off. I'll bet Ray didn't imagine processing his own cow though. Hella work and messy too.

And a stench that you wouldn't believe.  Do you know what death smells like DO YOU KNOW WHAT DEATH SMELLS LIKE??!!

Man the keyboard on my new work computer is silky as all hell.