The Electron Pencil

Fresh Meat

Now that the city o’Bloomington has inked a deal with White Buffalo, Inc. to cull the deer pop. around Griffy Lake, I will give the plan The Electron Pencil seal of approval.

That’s because the contract between the wildlife management outfit and our parks board calls for the unlucky critters — up to 100 of them can be whacked from late fall through February 2015 — to be processed for distribution at the Hoosier Hills Food Bank. As long as hungry folk are going to be able to make midnight snacks out of deer sausage sandwiches, I’m cool with the whole idea.

White Buffalo Staffers At Work

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And this despite the fact that White Buffalo has gussied itself up using ripped off Native American mythical iconography. The company’s website proudly proclaims:

Native American legend tells of the White Buffalo Woman who offered a sacred pipe to a Dakota tribe, explaining that the pipe symbolized that all things were connected. Its purpose, and ours through educational efforts, was to remind people of their tie to nature, what nature gives and what should be done in return.

I suppose a co. would have to dress itself up in quasi-insulting Noble Savage togs if it’s in the biz of assassinating cute little deer. Pretending you’re following in the great tradition of our proto-American predecessors makes the messy business of shooting Bambi in the brain a tad more palatable to the general public.

In any case, nobody would argue the fact that the deer are aggravating the bejesus out of residents around B-town. In fact, some dear friends of this correspondent and The Loved One are aghast that we put out corn and salt licks for deer. They claim the deer eat up all their flowers and vegetables and we are aiding and abetting them in these nefarious acts. I counter that they ought to plant something the deer don’t care for. Problem solved, no?

I’m not terribly eager to see a deer shot down in the prime of life. But as long as its meat feeds those less fortunate than I am, I’m all in.

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Guns

Speaking of The Loved One, she brought up a compelling scenario last night during our ride home from downtown B.

“What are they going to say,” she observed, referring to the NRA and other gun fetishists, “when somebody shoots up a gun show?”

You know, I’d never thought of that. Wayne LaPierre and the rest of the folk who cuddle with Glocks always screech whenever some armed psychotic opens fire in a school or a Wendy’s. If more of us carried artillery, they shriek, we’d all feel safer.

In fact, the thankfully-almost-forgotten Joe the Plumber grunted on his website that the father of one of the people killed Friday in the Isla Vista shooting, the one who blamed the NRA and chicken-hearted pols for the spate of shoot-’em-ups these days, was just tragically and ignorantly wrong.

[I bet you didn’t know J the P even had a website. He does and I wish I didn’t know it.]

No Real Joe

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Joe the Plumber (his name’s not Joe and he’s not a plumber, but what’s a few facts among Me Party-ists?) gurgled and snorted about how it’s a daddy-o’s duty to protect his litter with guns in every pocket as well as an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. The implication being the father of the aforementioned victim was a pussy for not accompanying his son while bandalero’d.

The father, his face distorted by anguish, had cried, “They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live?”

Joe the Plumber’s retort? “As harsh as this sounds — your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.”

My guess? Joe’s nightly ejaculation into his gun barrel was of an extremely copious nature after he wrote that.

Back to T-Lo’s original point. What will Pan troglodytes like J the P say when a sick bastard mows down a few gun enthusiasts at the next NRA convention or any of the countless big gun shows around the nation? It’s going to happen, right? Gun-ophiles obviously count among their number a healthy population of borderline lunatics. And they carry guns. And no one at the convention or any of those shows will think twice when they see a guy walk in with two rifles and a hip belt full of pistols. And then that guy will open fire, dropping a few or even a few dozen gun-ists before someone drops him.

No doubt they’ll crow that the guy’s kill count would have been far greater had they not all been caressing firearms at the moment of his outburst. The fact that the convention hall floor will resemble nothing so much as a meat processing plant will seem to escape their notice.

I’ve got bad news for The Loved One: I think we already know what they’ll say.

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