Tag Archives: guns

The Baboon Congress

Southern Discomfort

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Today’s guest post comes from Clyde.

Twice in one day I received eye pings, that is discordant visual images it took my brain several seconds to recognize and decode.

The first happened while driving in Mankato; the vanity license plate in front of me read “M MORT.” What? Then I realized it was on a hearse, a Mankato Mortuary hearse no doubt. But isn’t “M MORT” just sort of a small “ewee”? Do they have another one called “M MINKY”?

The second happened about an hour later in Barnes & Noble. I was staring off into empty space; not into space actually but into the magazine rack a few feet away, which is by-and-large the mental equivalent of empty space. I read as the title of a magazine Garden & Gun.

What? Was this real? Had I misread? Nope. I looked closer and saw a subtitle “Soul of the South.” Hmm. The entire complicated cultures of the ten or so states of The South find their soul in gardens and guns? I do not like sweeping generalizations about nations, cultures, peoples, regions, but gardens and guns are a big miss for my experience of The South. But see it’s for real.

Then I looked lower on the cover and it read “The Hollywood Issue.” Now that’s more than a bit discordant. Has Hollywood ever represented The South as anything but tired old cliches? Or The Midwest, or New England? To Hollywood has The South ever been much beyond hillbillies, plantations, bigotry, and threatening ignorance?

What was on the cover? But of course, a woman showing cleavage.

Cover Garden & Gun

Anna Camp, whoever she is. Another actress of whom I have never heard, but I am ignorant in this regard. In a wedding dress–is that what that is–and cowboy boots. How did cowboy boots become Southern, anyway?

I scanned through the magazine. It is actually very slick, high-concept, visually very well done. It had few pictures of either guns or gardens. It did, however, have an extensive article with high-quality photos on how to make moonshine.

It was all too big a brain cramp for me. I went and scanned through Mad Magazine–much more in my frame of reference.

What would be your “_____________ & ____________” title of a magazine on The Midwest?

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Ask Dr. Babooner

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We are ALL Dr. Babooner
We are ALL Dr. Babooner

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I can’t seem to get my pacifist niece to like me, even though I’m really a gregarious, lovable guy.

OK, it’s true that I have lined the perimeter of my property with barbed wire, own more guns than some third world countries, and will expound at length about why jack-booted government thugs are planning to surround the house to take away my freedoms.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not a nice person. I laugh. I’m kind to children. And I like puppies and Disneyland, just like every other proper American. So why doesn’t she warm up to me?

I will admit that some people who feel the same way I do about certain things have committed terrible acts, and they can be kind of scary, especially when you get them going on the Second Amendment. But if you could see me the way I see me, I’d seem perfectly reasonable to you.

Noble, even.

I tried to convince my niece that I’m not insane, but she says if the government really wants to come after me, my arsenal will be useless. But in my mind I am George Washington – the leader of a popular uprising that will prevail against overwhelming odds and become a beacon for the world before it morphs into a merciless tyrant that will try to crush another brave someone exactly like me more than 230 years from now!

That would make me incredibly famous forever – and she’d be famous too because she’s my niece! But she just doesn’t get excited about it in the same way I do.

It’s not that different from those who imagine being the winning quarterback in the Super Bowl or a global singing star by impressing the judges on The Voice. These are harmless fantasies that people need to help them face another day.

I sometimes hear my niece say things like “follow your bliss’ and “be the most authentic version of you you can be”, which I think she picked up from Oprah. Not my thing, but I’ll defend to the death her right to watch it.

So why does she scoff at my dream?

Intensely,
Gregarious Uncle Needs Niece’s Understanding To Survive

I told G.U.N.N.U.T.S. his dream is unsettling for his pacifist niece because its realization relies so heavily on firearms, which are the opposite of harmless and much more frightening than football or singing. Everybody wants to be celebrated, but perhaps if he wants to win over his niece, he needs to construct a more benign hero fantasy for himself.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?