How I swim cold water

Today's temperature in Lake Natoma, which I swim at least four times a week, is 46.9 degrees Fahrenheit, or 8.3 degrees Celsius.

The temperature is rising, from a mid-January low of 44.3 degrees F (6.8 C).

To swim it this time of year, I imagine blue flame blooming from my arms, about 80 strokes in. The prickling becomes the delicate flames igniting and spreading, jacketing my arms. The stinging intensifies until, 40 or so strokes later, it levels off, the flames hold, their tendrils snapping off into the green water, and I can go on.

Except …

For some reason, I haven't needed to visualize the flames this winter, even though the water has been colder longer than the last two winters. Last year, the temperature dipped to 47 F for just one mid-January day before steadily rising. The same thing happened the year before, except the temperature dropped to 46.

Besides falling below 45 this year, the water temperature has held steady for more than a month, rarely rising above 47 before dipping again.

I don't know whether my mind has grown to know exactly what to expect when I dive in now, or I've gotten used to swimming immediately on entering the water (instead of wading a while, as I used to), but the low temperatures I had dreaded for two months don't bother me.

This is nothing, though. Through facebook™®©, I've come to know many swimmers — mostly in England and Ireland — who swim regularly in much colder water. Several of them abide by "channel rules:" Goggles, a single latex cap and a swimsuit, no wetsuit, as required of swimmers who brave the English Channel, the Mount Everest for long-distance swimmers.

I swim "channel rules light," with a neoprene cap and two slightly thicker silicone caps. No wetsuit, but my head is warm.

One London swimmer, John Donald, reports almost daily on facebook®©™ of swimming more than a mile, "channel rules," in his stainless steel community pool (or lido, pronounced LIE-doe … the things one learns on facebook™©®), where the temperature is 3 degrees Celsius, or 37.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

I encouraged him to get in touch with the International Ice Swimming Association (yes, it's a sport!), which has documented a small number of people worldwide who have swum a mile in temperatures 41 F and below.

It's a big deal, requiring a doctor's documentation of the swimmer's heart health, careful temperature readings of the watercourse, and layers of safety and recording and certification. Local long-distance swimmer Brad Schindler swam an ice mile unofficially last year at Lake Tahoe, and plans to repeat the event soon for keeps.

This London swimmer achieves this feat almost every day, apparently, with no attention save for a bitty post on a facebook®™© group page for swimmers.

The painting above illustrates, literally and figuratively:

• I look at my hand too much. With my head positioned correctly, I should barely be able to see my arm pass in peripheral view, and I try hard not to look. But on a long swim, I can't help but imagine the world below the dark green of the water, and how clear my arm looks in the void;
• I need to work on my watercolor skills. Or Photoshop®™© skills. Probably both.

Morally straitened

Trouble brews at the Boy Scouts.

Bring it.

And bring your hip waders. The irony and hypocrisy flow thickly.

Boy Scouts of America's governing board last week delayed until its annual May meeting a decision whether to include gay Scouts and Scout leaders.

Last week's was supposed to be a private board discussion, just a consideration of the possibility of lifting its ban, The New York Times reports, until news of it leaked and the planned discussion took on the public weight of an imminent decision.

Foes and friends of the policy flooded BSA with consternation after the leak. Now all sides stake positions for the next three months.

I predict BSA will ultimately hold fast — for now. But change is gonna come, sooner now. Be prepared. It has to.

As a private organization, BSA has a right to decide who its members are, and the Supreme Court has affirmed it. So, no homosexuals in the ranks. Pedophiles yes, it turns out tragically, and BSA is moving grudgingly and glacially to eradicate that horror, but no homosexuals.

But Scouting wants it both ways. It wants to be America's citizenship laboratory, but just for some boys. It positions itself as the foundation for America's future leaders, but only for heterosexual leaders. As it helps to mold men for an American society that becomes daily more complex, it is only molding some, preparing them partway for what they'll face. Like banks we deem too big to fail, Boy Scouts of America fancies itself too American to mess with.

In upholding BSA's policy, Gov. Rick Perry, an Eagle Scout, unwittingly gives credence to change.

"Scouting is not a place where sexuality should be the intersection of," Perry told reporters before addressing Texas Scouts visiting the State legislature. "Scouting is about teaching a substantial amount of life lessons. Sexuality is not one of them. It never has been. Doesn't need to be."

He's right: Scouting is not about sexuality. Nevermind the old gay-bait card Perry seems to toss, that if you let gays in, the banners and pamphlets come out and recruitment ensues. Scouting is about the great and wonderful outdoors, the laboratory in which those life lessons play out. Lessons in self-reliance, preparedness, stewardship, and working with other people.

Sexuality wasn't an issue when I was a Scout leader. Once in a while it came up: Adult leaders talk of high school Scouts being overcome by fumes — perfumes and car fumes — during the long climb to Eagle rank. And once in a while an adult leader might talk with Scouts casually about prom or events in Scouts' lives. Other than that, we didn't raise the issue; it never seemed germain to our mission.

[These are the observations of one dad/Scoutmaster/former kid who wishes he had been a Scout. Beware the narrow view and lack of perspective. Pick from the bones what you will.]

And there's the Scout oath, in which Scouts pledge to keep themselves "physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight." Time has bent "morally straight" into an unintended connotation. 

I'm not so naive to discount that sex talk goes on among Scouts away from leaders' hearing, the kind of wildly erroneous talk that kids talk.

It reminds me of when Bill José told the other kids on our block a dirty joke. When he got squints and stares and not the laughs he expected (I was in fourth grade, maybe), he tried to salvage the joke by explaining the mechanics of sex and the existence of pubic hair. When we told Bill that was the most outrageous and unbelievable lie we had ever heard, rendering his joke inert, he gave up telling us dirty jokes.

I've heard Scouts throw around "gay" as an adjective to mean "lame," and I'd tell them it's not cool. Scouting is indeed a reflection of society, and left to their own devices — at recess, on a campout — kids carry out their own varyingly cruel versions of "Lord of the Flies."

Scouting is not about sexuality. It's about character, a wholly independent trait.

By barring gays from Scouting, its governors — and we involved at the grass roots — are saying gays are not worthy as people, that their contributions — as people — are unworthy.

Maybe we could declare that publicly over a music backdrop of Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man," arguably the most "American" of musical pieces. Aaron Copland, by the way, was gay.

Maybe Scouting can explain to Native Americans why, since BSA's early days as a merger of the Woodcraft Indians, it has picked and chosen elements of Indian culture and left out others. It isn't long before a Scout encounters BSA's version of Indian lore: Our Troop's favorite summer camp included membership in a "tribe" that bore no relation to native Californians that inhabited the site — and still an active community nearby — but more of a Disney-fied long-feathered-headdress-breechcloth-and-pidgin-English-noble-savage version.

One of the elements omitted from the vast diversity of Native American cultures is that some tribes had special roles for members who were homosexual, including as spirit messengers.

The BSA's aborted discussion was to touch on the trial idea of letting chartering organizations decide whether to admit gays.

The Troop my son and I belonged to, 328, is charted to a Catholic Parish. The Catholic Church finds homosexuality a sin, with a "hate the sin, love the sinner" policy.  I imagine the practical effect of a decentralized decision on gay membership would be:

• The Troop would have to look elsewhere for a chartering organization and places to meet and stow their gear … of which the parish has been generous — the most likely scenario

• The Troop might dissolve over dissension on this issue; 

• All parties will decide it's no big deal, and life will go on;

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known also as the Mormons, would have major problems with a new policy. Boy Scouts is a kind of extended ministry for boys in the church, and operates with marked differences from most other Scouting units, including large gatherings among its own units.

On the other hand, public schools and civic groups with anti-discrimination policies would again open its facilities for meetings and events and equipment storage.

When — not if — the change comes, the fallout will be wild. Scout units will dissolve, others will move … private chartering organizations will be outraged, while others embrace the change. Recriminations and kudos alike will erupt all the way to the president's office and the steps of the Supreme Court.

Over time, Scouting in tatters, people will want an organization like Scouting, the nation's greatest steward of public lands. People will realize Scouting's potential for shaping citizens and leaders, and learning to work and live together.

They'll reinvent Scouting — truly too American to mess up.

Bang the gun slowly

(I could pick many fitting examples at random, as you can see from today's news … I choose these):

On Saturday, police say, an Iraq War veteran shot and killed two other veterans at a Texas shooting range. They included Chris Kyle, a renowned Iraqi War veteran (author of "American Sniper," an account of his unprecedented success killing the enemy) who had devoted his civilian life to helping other veterans. 

He and Chad Littlefield had apparently been trying to help Eddie Ray Routh, a Marine reported to be suffering from post-tramautic stress disorder. Target shooting can be part of "exposure therapy" for afflicted veterans, affording them the familiarity of guns, and the cacophony — if not the danger and dizzying horror — of battle, to throttle back their anxieties as they return to the world.

Routh allegedly shot Kyle and Littlefield with a semiautomatic pistol, then fled in Kyle's pickup truck before he was captured near his home.

We elect leaders who fabricate causes for war — a tragic habit in my lifetime — and we go along with the plan, calling dissenters un-American. Next we count on a fraction of less than 1 percent of our fellow citizens to prosecute that war; we set it and forget it, forget them. The result not only costs us trillions of dollars we could spend on our crumbling society, but shreds the bodies and minds and hearts of the warriors who fight — and return to fight, time and again — in our stead. But we can't or won't give them the jobs, can't give them the breaks on their financial obligations while they're fighting for us, can't give warriors like Chris Kyle the support he needs to administer true healing to his brothers and sisters in arms — can't give Eddy Ray Routh aid and comfort. We count on Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield to do that for us.

And a gun was supposed to give him comfort.

Last week sometime in a foothill town two hours from here, a man shot and killed his teen son and daughter, then killed himself, sheriff's authorities report. The children were found shot in the head, sitting on a couch, and may have been sleeping.

The father Philip Marshall, had been a pilot who said he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and the Drug Enforcement Administration, and wrote books describing what he called a Saudi conspiracy behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Divorce and child custody issues with his ex-wife had been contentious.

It's impossible to know the depths and degree of anger, despair, delusion, disillusionment, rage, impairment — impossible to know what unleashed this devastation. Except that it did, and a gun solved it.

On Sunday, The Sacramento Bee wrote extensively about the Lemon Hill section of South Sacramento, telling the not-uncommon account of a community in fear of guns. Residents spoke of hearing gunfire daily … of forbidding their children from playing in parks for fear of gunfire … of school providing brief safe haven from the drugs and crimes and gunfire. 

Several residents told Bee reporters they doubted gun control would help them, because the guns on these streets are likely illegal, stolen, untraced and untraceable. Criminals will still get the guns, these residents said.

[By the way, when we lose newspapers such as The Sacramento Bee, we lose their power to stand up for us in matters that matter. We lose their power to be the Fourth Estate, our watchdog.

[Many readers badmouth The Bee — that's a newspaper's lot — but Bee reporters found suspicious conduct in tests on the safety of the new Bay Bridge under construction … and discovered more than $50 million in taxpayer funds that California State Parks officials squirreled away while parks were closing over budget shortfalls (money, by the way, that individual parks can't get in cash, only in in-kind service, because doing so under state law would constitute an unconstitutional gift. thank you, squirrel-brained parks officials …) … among many other costly secrets that would have remained secrets without the reporters' vigilance.

[But. I. Digress.]

On tour of the Sacramento Underground this week, a fourth grader asked if people in Gold Rush Sacramento had guns.

"Oh yes," I said.

"Oh," he said. "You know what? I'm a hunter."

He wasn't bragging or taking a stand, just relating to a historical discovery. It was the result, I take it, of a family discussion which concluded that reasonable people can own guns.

When it comes to solving the gun crisis — wherever you stand, it's a crisis — I'm well toward the back of the line with a working solution. It isn't long before the complexity of gun use, gun crime and gun ownership in America makes me weary, makes me marvel at those who carry on in hopes of drafting a solution.

What I know — what I've always known — is that if nothing is done, then Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield, a distraught family in the quiet Sierra foothills, a hellish city neighborhood are the prices we will continue to pay for it.

We must ask if that's what we accept.

About face

Hello, my name is Shawn, and I'm an emoticon addict.

It started with the small stuff, just a little tweak to take the edge off. I swear, no harm was gonna come to this sweet, innocent logo:

The realistic bits — the Fred Flintstone nose, the Charles Nelson Reilly glasses, the Opie Taylor T-shirt, eyes floating flounderish on one side of my head — would all grow back.

I just needed something to boost the mood for my blog posts, in case I wasn't making myself clear. A pick-me-up … or a bring-me-down. Whatever.

They were gonna be like little postage stamps, just to reinforce, "I'm outraged! …"

Or, "My bad! …"

Or, "WTF?!"

Or, "How dare you!? …"

Or, "Um …"

Or, "We are not amused …"

That was gonna be it. Just a nice little stash of emoticons. Use 'em every once in a while, that's all. Just when I really, really needed them. I was in control.

No, I WASN'T! Who am I kidding? It wasn't enough! It's never enough. I needed more! I needed them bigger! These just weren't doing the trick anymore.

None of these could say what I wanted about El Día de los Muertos, for example, because suddenly I needed to say something about El Día de los Muertos:

Then it was swimming. Swimming this, swimming that. You're sick of me talk about swimming, I know, but I couldn't stop myself:

Enough to make your eyes bleed. Look if you must:

I disintegrated. After a while, it lost all context (I was admiring swimmers from around the world here. OK?! What's so wrong with that??):

Then I found out the high was higher on the rocks:
 

When that lost its thrill, baseball came along. Damn you, Giants:

It got, well, ridiculous. I'm ashamed …

 

I'm not gonna lie. The Giants had me on a roller coaster for a long time. It was a gooooooood ride:

Then it was baseball and Halloween. I was getting into some dangerous mixing:

It wasn't long before I crashed:

The time came for serious self-examination:

And reflection … 

I went through the five stages of grief:

OK, it was mostly anger:

Eventually, though, I may have found a new way of life:

Keep your fingers crossed — I think … I may be … on the road to recovery:

 And I can quit anytime I want:

(Hey kids! Print this out and make your own Shawn face flipbook! The first hit is free!)

Gym membership, paid in full

Another year reserved …

… for swimming waters that never get better — nor never worse — than cool and green and shady …

… for rightly calling Lake Natoma my home pool — and Folsom Lake my backup …

… for the distant sly greeting of a river otter at first light, betraying its surveillance with a needle-thin wake on the mirror lake …

… for water so comfortable in August it's almost impossible to remember how cold it was, and will be, in January …

… for waves so high swim buddies disappear momentarily in the sideways rain, raising our common-sense alarms a bit too late …

… for scary plants moving just oddly enough to seem sentient, chalky and yellow green just below arm's reach, with what look like nubby teeth flashing …

… for water so cold in January hands become dead things, seen but not felt, water floods frozen mouths, and summer's relative warmth is so ever distant …

… for dashing sideways toward shore just as the whiter hull of a rowing shell pokes out of the white fog …

… for squabbling turkeys in spring, somehow, somehow evading car bumpers …

… for at least one swim under the twinkling disorientation of a full moon …

… for running in place and spilling hot tea and shivering with friends, and bragging with them about what we've just done …

… for choosing from a wide selection of parking spaces, and a mile and more of uncrowded swim lanes …

… for swimming homeward and tired into neon summer sunsets …

… for dreading a cold swim, but emerging like a swamp thing afterward, full of life and glad to have gone …

… for causing beachgoers and fisherpeople to worry and wonder about us …

… for gliding and gasping past the ghost camps of freed and escaped slaves, and Chinese wayfarers, and adventurers of all types stumbling along the riprap, ripping up these banks in search of gold 160 years ago …

… for feeling alive in the deathly cold …

… for the distant perfume of sycamores and flowers in spring, warm licorice whip of anise in fall, and more often than not on our Saturday upper lake swims, bacon frying somewhere close …

… for maybe finally finding out why Edgar Rice Burroughs' name is attached to the tiny island we swim around three times a week …

… for getting so far out from the start that getting back feels not entirely certain …

… for the first moment in spring when the water suddenly clears enough to reveal old river bottom 12 feet below and emerald …

… for the shock of realizing how shallow the rest of the lake really is …

… for the paddlers in giant Hawaiian outriggers who stop in mid-chant to tell us with smiles how crazy we are …

… for splashing water at the mean-spirited minority of huki surfski paddlers who deliberately knife right into our crowd of swimmers on late summer afternoons …

… for often being in the water long before the huki paddlers even get their coffee …

… for coffee and contemplation with swim buddies at the Starbucks®© across the street …

… for It's a Grind and Folsom Grind and Peet's and Coffee Republic and Karen's Bakery and McDonalds — all the places that had good hot coffee waiting for freezing swimmers …

… for struggling up the lazy river more than five miles on Independence Day, and flopping on the granite outcropping three-plus hours later like a dying salmon …

… for trying to seem less like a dying salmon next time 'round …

… for watching another batch of Canada geese hatch and grow and become identical to the growing ranks of the black-and-white-and-gray-brown superflock (identical except maybe to other Canada  geese) …

… for finding new adventure in every swim …

… for being able to.

Another year!

It is to laugh*

Before I insult you, let me explain:

On a couple of occasions, interested parties have asked me to remove posts from this blog.

Nothing gains from saying who or even why, except that it involves public image control.

(jaw clenches … )

Both cases regarded my use of this blog to promote my illustration. Neither post held my clients in anything but a positive light; I had no reason, for one; for two, even if I did, I may be stupid, but I'm not that stupid.

True, I didn't ask spoken permission to promote the work in my blog; but it wasn't necessary: Under terms of service spelled out in my business paperwork, I retain ownership of my work unless I say otherwise.

(It's a facet of freelance illustration that remains poorly understood: Clients pay for the services of my illustration, not the product itself. Typically, clients reserve first and one-time use of the art commissioned, and all other rights revert to the illustrator.

(It's further proof that few of my clients read the paperwork; otherwise they'd pay according to the terms I outline. Only one pays within the terms.)

(brow furrows … )

Permission wasn't even the issue in either case. Posting my work, and crediting and portraying the result in the best light, doesn't cross ethical or legal lines as far as I can tell.

So maybe I am that stupid.

I have complied in both cases, because I understand viscerally (the client is concerned, and I don't want to spoil our relationship) if not intellectually (I spoke cheerfully of my client and the work I got to do, and maybe a few more people got to see it.)

In one case, the party didn't want its public knowing that this was the sort of work it spent money on. Which makes no sense to me, since the finished art went out to a portion of that public.

(sweat beads on forehead … )

In the other, a caricature came into question. Again, a caricature that had been used in presentation among the subject's public. Approved by said subject. A classic big-head-little-body apolitical caricature, with complimentary facial features. A feel-good caricature, published in this blog about the size of your thumb.

But it existed outside of the subject's control, I guess.

I write this blog for four … no, five … reasons:

(1) To promote my work (shawn, DRAWN in its literal meaning, the stuff I've done). It's easier than rejiggering my website to accommodate new work. My website shows the breadth of my work in a timeless manner, so changing it out is not necessary. I post a link to each blog post on facebook, and visitors to my website can link to my blog;

(Much of my work appears anonymously, the implicit perception being that my clients make these wonderful widgets and draw these pictures to boot! I just like potential clients to know what I do, just as I like to know who created this illustration or that logo.)

(2) To establish an archive, however funky and frustrating, of a career's work that otherwise would lay unseen in a flat file;

(3) To comment (shawn, DRAWN in its figurative sense, drawn from life) about myself and my foibles and issues that affect me … open water swimming and the San Francisco Giants, ad nauseam;

(4) To practice writing, a craft I let atrophy over the years;

(5) To practice organization; I assign myself essays and illustrations, testing myself, setting tight deadlines, becoming my own worst client. Posting the blog helps me organize the rest of my week, giving new urgency to the other tasks, giving me new energy to attack them.

Despite modest triumph at the last four, I fail with the first because —

here's the insult —

almost no one reads my blog.

Don't misunderstand: I cherish you few who read, and I infer with confidence that you read regularly. But I remain absolutely gobsmacked you do, or that anyone does. It's really a journal in which I've interchanged privacy for selfishness: Though I don't expect anybody else to read, a part of me really does; otherwise, of course, I'd type into a Word®©™ document, for someone to find on my hard drive someday.

And I always like to share my illustrations. What's the word for that? Narcissism? No. Egotism? Maybe. But not quite.

But no one has contacted me to to say, "I saw the illustrations on your blog and I have some work for you." Or, "I saw your website … do you have more samples?" after which I'd recommend the blog, except they'd have to read an awful lot of words to get to the pictures.

You'd laugh at what small company you keep (maybe I should spin that into a thing of honor).
All of which is why requests to remove blog posts make me laugh. A wheezy, sardonic laugh.

As a babe in Technoland, I have come to realize some people and businesses spend significant time searching for themselves on the Internet, trolling the wide web for their image, there to polish or unsully or preserve.

They use the labels I have made, word tags like virtual breadcrumbs, referring wanderers to this and that post. Though I use labels, I didn't realize their effect until people responded. People have asked me about editorial cartoons I drew long ago, and one asked me to comment on commentary she had made. I met two people (one a former schoolmate whom I sorry to say I didn't know back then) who happened to attend their first Major League Baseball game on the same day, though different cities, as I did, which I wrote about.

(This will be a label-free post.)

Labels also attracted the complainants, each a third party, who asked the clients to ask me to remove the posts.

(breath rattles … )

To my shock, I found 63 hits on the post containing the caricature. It's impossible for me to tell whether those hits happened lately, or accumulated over time. That's a big number. When I wrote about the unexpected death of a popular and accomplished high school friend, his star shine attracted many, many readers, relatively speaking. So too when I wrote about my great uncles who served in World War II, many of whom survived the attack on Pearl Harbor; my extended family found my blog, and I rediscovered some of my extended family.

More people than usual, relatively speaking, read when I declare logos the best or worst. That's the de facto purpose of blogs, I suppose, to critique uniquely the world at large. When a large number of hits, relatively speaking, accumulated in a short time over a post I wrote about the worst business slogan I had ever read, I was expecting suits at my door, or some kind of cease-and-desist phone call because I had hurt the company's feelings.

Corporations are people too, you know.

(fists ball up … )

Usually, though, the number of regular readers could fit in my kitchen. Which is why I laugh: The presence or absence of this caricature does not affect the subject's stature or wealth, both considerable, one vibrating nanojot.

It would be easier to cover the caricature with your thumb as you read, but you won't be able to now. Of course, the complainant sent me a copy of the post in an email, so it still exists forevermore somewhere.

E-mail me if you want details.

One of my friends, one of those regular readers, is surely thinking at this precise moment, "Your correct response to this, Shawn, should have been, 'This is my work. I have spoken in glowing terms about working with you. Fuck off!'" He's right.

That's my policy now; this is my manifesto.

Should you want me to remove a post, I'll refer you to this post. Maybe I'll talk a bit more about how, though I disparage my own fumbling attempts at process, I don't ever bite the feeding hand.

Then I'll delineate, in the kindest way possible, what you may do with your request.

(wheeze … )

*

Falling up somehow*

On Saturday, a 15-year-old boy near Albuquerque, New Mexico, shot his mom dead with a .22-caliber rifle as she slept. He told police his mom had annoyed him, and that he thought of suicide and homicide.

Little brother, sleeping next to mom, didn't believe the boy had shot her, so the boy showed little brother her bloodied face — then shot and killed little brother. Then he shot and killed two young sisters. This is what he told police, the Associated Press reports.

Next he grabbed a semiautomatic assault rifle from his parents' closet, and waited in a downstairs bathroom for his dad, a church pastor and volunteer chaplain at a county jail, to come home from helping at a rescue mission. The boy fired multiple rounds, killing his father as he walked past the bathroom door.

The boy put two guns into a family car and thought of shooting shoppers at a Wal•Mart, but went to his girlfriend's house instead. He also told police he thought of killing his girlfriend's family. Instead he told congregants at his church that he had killed his family.

Oh, well.

When you're upholding our absolute right under the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms, sometimes these things happen. It's too bad, but what are you gonna do? Call it … collateral damage.

Also on Saturday, five people were accidentally shot at gun shows in three states. The Associated Press reported three people were injured in Raleigh, North Carolina, when the owner of a shotgun accidentally fired it as he unzipped the gun from its case at a security checkpoint. A man in Indianapolis, Indiana, shot himself in the hand as he was leaving a show. A gun dealer in Medina, Ohio, accidentally pulled the trigger on a new purchase and injured his friend.

Saturday was Gun Appreciation Day.

What?! They were appreciating their guns!

On Wednesday, two high school students in Albany, California, were shot by assailants apparently interested in taking their basketball shoes.

That's old school, and old news. Happens all the time.

So it goes.

I'm waiting for the gun lobby to accuse gun-control advocates of orchestrating these heinous shootings and exercises in social Darwinism as a misguided effort to demonstrate that guns galore create environments for heinous shootings like these.

In these days of galling lies and stunts and hoaxes from the people we're expected to believe and admire, I wouldn't be surprised …

(Callow and cruel digression: If you owned multiple guns, including assault weapons, and you heard 27 people, most of them small children, had been shot in Newtown, Connecticut, wouldn't you say to yourself, "Hey! I have just such weapons! And I have children! Maybe I should be careful about where I put my Constitutionally guaranteed weapons, and about who can get them?" 

Wouldn't you take steps to make it so? Wouldn't you see the possibility of disquieting parallels?

Wouldn't you?)

People are killed by knives and hammers too, says the gun lobby. Should we ban them too?

I'm going to take a wild guess here, but I think killing with a knife is hard work. A lot of strength is involved, you have to swing or jab many times, you have the inconvenient problem of the victim not wanting to die, fighting back. Same goes for hammers.

Guns are immediate and distant, an instant expenditure of rage. Household with a troubled family member = Anguish and anger and confusion and heartache and impotence and a threat to family resolve. Now dangle a gun.

Ban automobiles! They kill too!

But the primary purpose of automobiles is not to kill people — and those who kill with cars are most often impaired, not intending to kill. Laws are imperfect to limit those deaths, but laws and regulations exist; they are upheld, and they work.

We own guns, the National Rifle Association and advocates say, to prevent tyranny, a noble notion imbedded in the Constitution. Nothing, therefore, can change gun policy. No ground may be given up in debate. No consideration for limiting access to guns. Absolutely, tyrannically, none.

So who decides tyranny? Who determines it's time to raise arms? Who determines the target? Who organizes this well-regulated militia, whatever that is?

It seems many opponents have made a straw tyrant of Barack Obama since he became president, with a talking-point vitriol and Orwellian newspeak I had never heard before in my life.

What of teapot tyrants? Do we start shooting when a town council denies a zoning permit? When animal control tells me to leash my dog? When are assault weapons justified here?

The brother of the New Mexico pastor shot and killed by his son said we shouldn't make the killings a political issue. So, it's just the tragic fate of a troubled family, then.

Just add guns.

*"Marker in the Sand," Pearl Jam, a jabbing satire of Bush administration war policy, which I'm sure not enough people heard.