Monday, April 13, 2009

Screw Guns



I am the proud owner of a screw-gun, a nail-gun, a heat-gun, a glue-gun , grease-gun and several other guns replete with enough ammo to get me through most jobs. I wield them with deft unapologetic. Each of my lovelies are kept safe and in fine working order, they never let me down. My guns are used to make stuff, to make a living not a killing. I have no use for guns that destroy with dumb lead slugs. I'll leave those toys for the folks who have nothing better to do than stockpile hunks of metal designed to hurt others and intended to comfort their most inner baseline psychosis, the thought that a mob is surely coming for them someday soon.




Charlton Heston is the Face, Bushman is the Brand.

If you want to understand the why's and WTFs , look no further than the NRA and the clowns/apes who uphold their principals "over their dead bodies". Look and listen more with alarming disbelief at the Eliminationist loud-mouths, not in the fringe, but currently on mainstream TV. Listen , if you have the stomach, to the crazies on Fox; Gloom Beck, Jerk O'Reilly, Rube Limbaugh, Same Hannity and what's her face Mann Coulter.
Their contrived hate-talk is intended to entertain and radicalize the American Right fringe.




There is an element in our culture that is whak. Michael Moore got it right in Bowling for Columbine. "...It is a film about the state of the Union, about the violent soul of America. Why do 11,000 people die in America each year at the hands of gun violence? The talking heads yelling from every TV camera blame everything from Satan to video games. But are we that much different from many other countries? What sets us apart? How have we become both the master and victim of such enormous amounts of violence?



The PopeMobile - Luxury Lunatic Edition.

Many our friends around the world look at America's love affair with violence and make the necessary arrangements when visiting our glorious developed nation. They know what we seem to refuse to accept, that in a civilized society there are safeguards for avoiding tyrannical tendencies and jack-boot thuggery. But then there is the little matter of stun-guns. Tasers don't kill people, people do.

When we visit them in the Old Country, they make the necessary arrangements also.



But this blog is about the swamp... and this post is also about Guns in Art.
Florida leads the nation in rampant irresponsible gun sales and there is an unnerving tilt by ordinary folk towards packing heat. The "law under my pillow" crowd is alive, well and trigger-happy. Then there are the rest of us who are feeling a bit edgy on the side-lines.
Ironically and without pity the artist as spectator will find endless material to express the profound impact that fire-arms have on our psychic collective. A painting of a gun is not a gun, it can not hurt you physically but it can and will at best affect you mentally. Are there really only two kinds of people; those with guns and those with shovels?







In a nutshell: Bad-ass equals Dumb-ass.

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