SelfAdoration.com

The Feds banned the plans for the 3D printed gun yesterday. This is an obvious violation of the First Amendment, and it will be shot down by the courts — assuming we don’t shoot everything else down first.

As my own small act of defiance, I am mirroring a zip file of the Liberator 3D printed handgun plans. I’m hoping this is hugely redundant — thousands of mirrors all over the world — but, either way, come and get me coppers. I am an American, and no one tells me what I can and can’t say.

Meanwhile, some thoughts from Fred Eaglesmith:

My friend, Richard Nikoley, showing you what a Randian hero looks like in real life:

I listened to the state collector’s heartfelt, condescending admonishments, including how much he’d so have preferred to work it out, had I just called him back and et cetera, et cetera. I got quiet, nicer.

“Well, I think that tells me everything I need, and I know what I need to do.

“Oh, good.”

“Yea, I’m going to rectify this whole situation immediately, as soon as I hang up. But before I do, I want to thank you for the help. I’ve been neglecting things for too long and I’m going to change that right now. I know it’s only Thursday, but you have a good weekend.

“You too.”

I hung up, and immediately deleted the email server. Then I shut off all the phones and the fax. My next email (I’m operating on private email by this point) was to the bank that holds client funds, telling them I’m done, to delete the $30,000 in already earned fees that trickle in to us as client funds trickle in to them, to delete all drafts and refund all money to clients. Soon as that was confirmed, I sent all paper files to the shredder/recycler, Continue reading →

Happy Birthday, Man Alive!bernat… / Birthday Photos / CC BY-NC-ND

At Easter, I traded email with my father about the poetry of song-writing. I write about that stuff, of course — less than I might, but publicly. I write everything very publicly, but my father has seen almost none of that. This public life of mine means nothing at all to my family.

My mother died at Christmas. She was one of my favorite people in the world, the one person besides my wife that I would call just for fun, just to tease and torment her with the thrust and parry of talking for the sheer joy of talking. And yet my mother died without knowing anything fundamental about me. And poetry or not, that seems likely to be the case for my father, too.

That’s not an expression of dismay, it’s just funny. I have my Cathleen, the incomparable love of my life, because of my writing. I hear from brilliant strangers all over the world, some of whom are very careful students of the things I’ve written. And yet I’m sure my mother knew nothing about that part of my life, and I have no idea at all what my father Continue reading →

Oh, you know you’ll look: Femen Stages a ‘Topless Jihad’ from The Atlantic:

Earlier today, members of Ukrainian feminist group Femen staged protests across Europe as they called for a “topless jihad.” The demonstrations were in support of a young Tunisian activist named Amina Tyler. Last month, Tyler posted naked images of herself online, with the words “I own my body; it’s not the source of anyone’s honor” written on her bare chest. The head of Tunisia’s “Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice,” reportedly called for Tyler to be stoned to death for her putatively obscene actions, lest they lead to an epidemic. Tyler has since gone quiet, leading some to fear for her safety.

The accompanying 31 photos show the Ukrainian women doing two things American feminists cannot do:

1. Stand up for the oppressed and not the oppressors.

2. Look good without clothes.

I expect things will get worse before they get better for the women of Islam, but it’s nice to have contemporary visual evidence that the feminine waist is not extinct.

Watch this:

Yes, everyone knows Saturday Night Live is not funny, but that sketch is interesting, even so.

Why? What is that bit actually saying?

Actors are puppets for writers, never forget that. What are the writers of that unfunny little skit trying to say?

Imagine this: Your parents spent a ton of money to send you to Brown or Yale or Dartmouth, and now you have the thoroughly unsexy job of writing unfunny comedy bits for an unwatched variety show that can’t even sell its own advertising time.

Do you want to believe that some mouth-breather in Dubuque can get an education just as useless as yours at, say, one percent of the cost your parents paid out?

Worse, what if that guy’s education is better than yours? What if he can get a job that amounts to something, in an industry that is growing, not dying? What if people make or lose money — or even live or die — based on his academic performance?

He doesn’t have your class ring, and he doesn’t belong to your network of drunken dissipates — each one of whom is stuck in a going-nowhere job just like yours. But, but, but: He doesn’t feel himself endowed with the centuries Continue reading →