Wear pants, speak English, Eat cow and last but not least, get a gun!

No.. no Jon Stewart style monologues today. Just a few "bullet points"  to put down given my current frame of mind. When you are tired, grieving and a bunch of random things come together in your brain early in the morning, there is a collision of thoughts, of worlds, where you think "did I accidentally ingest some drugs?"

First, the Church shooting that has left a lot of us disturbed for various reasons. Some because we feel that peace may not be the option, especially if you are the one dying for peace, and others because they have to start the "we have a right to our guns" propaganda machinery all over again after the 24 hour period where they let the victims grieve (it used to be 72 hours.. now it is only 24 hours before the FB feed starts seeing posts on why one's right to even having opinions on guns is subject to conditions!)

I have not owned a gun, but have shot one with ball bearings in it. It was a good toy, as long as I was shooting at  piece of paper with a turkey /bullseye drawn on it some 100 feet away. If you love physics, you will love guns. It is like loving rockets. They are good when used for space travel, but bad when used as missiles.

Also understand why my friends living in downtowns or crime filled areas have a gun in a holster while they walk alone. However, having guns consistantly land in the hands of people with an evil intent or a deranged mind is beating the odds in the US by a wide margin. These are no "random accidents". They are systematic. 

On a tangential note, we still have no pavements or lights in our street. The guy who came to my door for my vote many years ago, spoke to me for 30 mintues. It was shortly after my bike accident. Told him that the whole "village of cupertino" thing being implemented only on our street does NOT make sense. All other streets in our area have lights and pavements. Our street is exempt because some old folks who have lived here forever are insisting on keeping it that way. These guys are clearly living in the past. we now have Teslas that are quiet and fast zipping through the street and our house is a blind turn. The danger is there for sure. He promised to fix it and I voted for him. 

The now elected city councilman, did not do anything. Instead he sent me a form and asked me to pay $700 to submit it, after getting it signed by everyone in the street. Common sense does not prevail. I would have had better odds suing the city. Anyways the whole reason for this tangential rant was that, we can change the rules to adapt to changing times, if as a collective we choose to. In this case some anti street light guy cost me a lot of money in medical bills, and one hell of an experience trying to get my life back on track. The only bright side of the whole thing was I found Bikram Yoga when physiotherapy could do no more. Over the years, I have become a "cup half full" kind of guy. 

Someday, someday, during this lifetime, I will see some sanity with gun ownership and regulation, where guns are mostly safely stored in shooting ranges and no one is able to give automatic weapons as birthday gifts to their deranged kids. 

To my gun owning friends, please understand. I am not for taking your guns away and I say this, not out of respect for your feelings, but for fear of those guns you have!

As for the bozos who are in Congress and the Senate who shamelessly "grill" airbag and automobile companies for a few deaths on a product that malfunctioned (on a normalized % of product use vs. damage these are orders of magnitude lower than guns), show some balls and do the same "grilling" when it comes to guns which have repeatedly caused tragedies. If I see you one more time on some C-Span hearing preaching about safety and consequences, while you voted NO on meaningful gun legislation (background checks), will not be voting for you again. I have a large stock of photographs of sunsets, flowers, birds, kittens and cute puppies as well as a decent version of Photoshop! Can do a lot of "inspirational" messaging that will go against you. Thankfully I have a day job and a family to take care of. Don't turn me into an activist. You are not ready for it.

Then came the "eat dog"  sorry "eat cow" thought.  Received a petition to sign saying, "stop the chinese from eating dogs".

This is a topic close to my heart. No, not the dog eating. Love dogs, although I am allergic to them. Here is the thing. When I was a kid and growing up in India, most of the households had a cow in the backyard. We would go feed them hay or balls of cooked rice. Everytime there was a prayer for our dead ancestors, my brother and me would be tasked with feeding the cow with the honorary food. We would pet the cows, see them smile. We bonded with them. We were taught that the cow was to be treated like your mother. After all, you drank its milk! 

When in elementary school, my mom or grandma would send me to the local milkman  with vessels to get milk  Think his name was Jai Ganesh at the corner of St. Mary's road and Devanathan Street in Mandaveli. He along with his team, would milk the cows in front of us and give us milk. Not sure if they are still around, now that they have door delivery of packet milk. Where was I going with this?

When I came to the US more than two decades ago, it was shocking to see so much meat in peoples plates. It was difficult to digest the scale of animal slaughter that was going on in this country. Kind of got used to it, what with the fact that you never see a live cow or chicken on a day to day basis. 

The hypocracy of asking the Chinese to stop eating dogs really got to me. One mans dog is another mans cow. Have said this before many times. If folks in the US can treat cows (or chickens or pigs) in the most inhumane way, and eat them with total apathy, why cannot another race of people treat dogs the same way? The dogs don't mean anything to them. So when they see a dog, they think "delicious" much the same way a picture of a cow might bring thoughts of "juicy and delicious steaks" to folks in the US. 

It is bad if you are a cow and are born in the States. It is bad if you are a dog and are born in China. If you are a cow and want refugee status, go to India. If you are a dog and want refugee status, go to US. I know my friends in the animal kingdom cannot speak for themselves, but that is where we have to step in. If you want to be fair, stop eating animals. If you cannot give up your "medium rare steaks", stop preaching to others on what they can and cannot eat.

Over the last twenty plus years, do you know how many times a friend or co-worker has joked "you get sick a lot and are puny.. a steak or two is what you need". They don't even realize how much it might offend someone. For the record, I became immune to this in two years. Even tasted meat for three years on and off during grad school days and found it to be "meh". There was nothing delicious and the meat did not make the food tastier.  Nothing to beat my mothers potato curry roast, my grandma's Vaththa Kozhambu or munna's Malai Kofta. As for the "protein", I definitely did not need that much protein. Have been vegetarian for the last 16 years and I am not missing anything.

We are all the product of our experiences and upbringing. So I am definitely not suggesting the world go vegetarian.

Just remember, one man's dog is another man's cow!