I'm Going to Eat Somebody

I hate Mondays.  I hate them with a passion unbridled.

Imagine a tweety bird floating along nicely, minding her own business.  Now imagine a brick wall materializing out of nowhere right when she's least expecting it.  Imagine that tweety bird pancaking it on the brick wall.  That's been me the past ten hours.

After a really nice weekend of hanging out with my mom and my sisters, the following realizations came to me this morning: I have about $90 total to my name.  I have three weeks left in Logan.  Gas prices are jacking up again.  If I go to my friend's birthday party this upcoming weekend, I probably won't have money enough to get me home after graduation.  Mom and dad couldn't get a room in Logan for graduation weekend because everything's booked, so I'm going to have to have ALL my crap out of my apartment the morning of graduation and crammed into my little Explorer (they're big, but not that big).  I have a paper and a presentation due in the same class this week.

I'm pissed because I promised faewren I'd go to her birthday party, but now I can't because I have no money (even getting to ginyoku's place and back will break me).  I'm pissed because I've got to figure out how I'm going to pack up my entire life and get it home before the landlord nazis kick me out on May 5.  And then, I'm pissed because I think I might have got a really, really, really, REALLY awesome job offer this summer, but it's in Brigham City and miles away from where I want to be this summer.  That sounds strange, I know, but I've been operating under the delusion that I might be able to be closer to family and friends in Salt Lake, but Brigham is about as bad as Logan.

And now I have seven minutes until class starts, so I'm going to go be pissed there.

Love from,
Jenny Wildcat

Terror At Home and Abroad Part 2

Usually, this is the place where I would re-hash the latest "24" episode, but I hung around to watch the news a little bit.  I take it everyone has heard about the Virginia Tech shootings today.  I hate that this crap happens.  I hate that people have to take a gun and shoot people for no particular reason other than to shoot people.  If this asshole hadn't shot himself afterward, I would have enlisted a group of us to take our guns and hunt down this bastard.

And now we get to have the fallout.  Because in addition to mindless violence, we get mindless college granola-heads trying to be our generation's hippie-wannabes saying that concealed weapons permits have "no place on college campuses. None."  Recently, the University of Utah has been debating whether or not to allow students and faculty with concealed weapons permits to have guns on college campuses.  I think they were considering voting yes, because now that this VT thing happened, the shooter is going to be painted as someone who had a concealed weapons permit, which couldn't be farther from the truth.

Can I just shake you idiots and say wake the hell up already?  People with concealed weapons permits go through rigorous training and multiple background checks and are good, law-abiding citizens who just want a gun to protect themselves and their friends.  I'll bet my pending Bachelor's degree that had someone in that dorm building had a concealed weapon, this incident wouldn't have been as bad as it was.  By the same token, people who want to commit crimes will get the things they need, including guns, whether it's legal or not.  By banning guns entirely, regular people are put at risk because these evil criminals know that we are unprotected.

The following is a true story and I swear up and down that it actually happened: One time, we had some ladies in a riding club from the city come out to our ranch.  They were saddling the horses and my dad asked one of the ladies to grab the bridle off the seat of his truck.  She went to get it and she freaked because my dad's shotgun was on top of the bridle and she couldn't get it because she thought the gun would attack her if she touched it.  No joke.  I've had a good laugh about this incident many times, but it's really sad.  This is where we've gotten where guns are bad, bad things.  People don't know that a gun is a tool.  All they know is that guns kill people (yeah, people who are coming after you, your family, your friends with the intent to do real harm).

Again, I am going to preach: if you know how to use and respect a gun properly, they are not scary.  I was taught at an early age how to handle guns -- from rifles and shotguns to .22s and pistols.  I know how to load and shoot a gun.  I've been around guns all my life.  It is not uncommon for people where I'm from to have their guns in the trucks.  I have gone hunting, trap shooting, target shooting and I have never been hurt by a gun because I know how to use them.

Even if you never get your concealed weapons permit or even go hunting, at least take Hunter's Safety or some kind of gun safety class.  Understand guns and what they're used for.  The right to own guns are permitted by our Bill of Rights for good reason.  It's to keep things like what happened at Virginia Tech from happening again.  Guns have a place in our society and it is not in the hands of criminals and murderers.  It is in the hands of their potential victims to keep them from becoming victims.

Banning guns will do more harm than good.  Pray that the liberal weenies don't ever get their way because we might as well offer ourselves to the crazed murderers out there.

My thoughts and prayers go to the families and friends of the victims in Virginia.  Honor their memory.  Learn to protect yourself and never let anything like this happen again.  Let's let something positive come out of this tragedy.

Love from,
Jenny Wildcat