Likes and Guns

I liked a thing on facebook. It was Obama, wearing a dunce’s hat and repeatedly writing Criminals Don’t Register Guns on a blackboard. I liked it because I found it vaguely amusing. It conjured images of pro gun lobbyists lecturing the well educated and thoughtful Obama and that amused me; because they are right, criminals don’t register guns; neither do they dress in black and white stripes or carry swag bags.

Incidentally I like Obama; I understand that what I see of him is a carefully crafted media persona, however he strikes me as an intelligent, well meaning, principled individual, with very little power to make any real difference.

I don’t like guns, though I guess I appreciate them, they are sunk fast into popular culture; Sarah Connor had a massive stash of them in Terminator 2, they were in The Avengers with John Steed and Emma Peel, they’re in paintings, photos, songs and I have a great selection of them in FallOut 4.

I thought about it and came to the conclusion that NO ONE needs a gun. No one at all. But that’s not going to happen because of The Criminals. The arguments always the same; no point in banning alcohol because production will go underground and The Criminals will take charge, like what happens with drugs.

So I get to wondering about those law breakers. In the case of guns I’m wondering how many criminals use guns. There are lots of laws and you don’t necessarily need a gun to break the law, think of for example; identify theft. Then I’m wondering what constitutes a gun crime, daft I know; until you realize that when the definition of what constitutes a knife was adjusted the figures for knife crime fell in the UK.

I’m thinking if you had a gun then I should have one too, just to make it; balanced. I’m still not sure how I feel about guns and I’m usually an all or nothing kind of girl.

It seems Obama is proposing only minor adjustments to the gun laws but minor adjustments very much annoy me; for example, no smoking in enclosed public spaces, in bus shelters, in cars, before long in your own garden shed, if it’s that bad why not ban it altogether? Make the selling of tobacco illegal, don’t make minor adjustments. Oh you can’t do that because of criminals. We certainly give a lot of consideration to those criminals don’t we? I don’t like that we do that.

I guess that’s the problem with the liking thing, I’ve never been very fond of the word like, it’s sort of insipid, not one thing or the other, who wants to be liked? Loved? Adored? Worshiped; even bloody hated, but not liked.

Tomorrow I will post on Facebook that I’ve written a blog about Likes and Guns; some friends will Like it, that doesn’t mean they will read it, just like my liking that facebook thing doesn’t mean I’m pro gun, it doesn’t mean I’m anti gun. The like button doesn’t mean anything at all.

An Aspiring Writer

Hard work and aspiration: modern day meaningless tag lines. Aspiration can only get you so far. I am dripping with aspiration I have it in bucket loads. I aspire to be a good teacher, to learn new things, to read lots of books, to play video games, to write, to meet people, to win literary prizes and to wear a fabulous outfit at the award ceremony.

Don’t for one moment think I just sit about aspiring all day long, no I am ….pro active in my aspiration. “Pro-active” I despise that word, I remember the first time I heard it at meeting in Staffordshire County Council. I was outraged that "active", a verb, a doing word, required a prefix to differentiate it from doing things and like; you know, really doing things.

So in what way have I been activating my aspirations? Well I have made a commitment. Again everything is beginning to sound so new speak, perhaps I have watched, read and listened to far too much politics, but hear me out please.

I have made a writing commitment and this blog is part of it. Now I am an author I will share my take on life, my thoughts, experiences and hints and tips on a weekly basis.  I could just write these in a diary, but a blog is about exposure and no one is going to read my work unless I expose it to them.

I am an active twitter user and am slowly building a small following in the twitter sphere. 

I have created a J Freese facebook page which I post to regularly.

I use Wordpress as a catalog for my short stories and poems.  Writing new stories then gives me something to read at events.  In the space of a month I have read at three events, that’s two stories Count DireLife and The Light map and one poem My Mothers Land.

On top of the requirement to provide words (what kind of a blog would it be otherwise?) I also need images in my posts to break them up and avoid the horror of a wall of text.  So I take photographs, or screen grabs sometimes edit them in photoshop and finally install them into the blog. Now I can include a photo in my twitter posts, on facebook and on Pinterest.

Get that for aspiration, I told you I have it in buckets. I said to husband the other day that I feel as though after ten years (the child is ten) we have finally come alive again, we have woken up and are doing things. The only problem is that ten years ago I was thirty four and now I’m knackered. Much as I have loved this recent burst of activity I’m simply washed out.

Next weekend I want to stay at home and go no further than the backyard. Tonight my main aspiration is to put my feet up, drink tea and watch a movie or else I fear my candle will be burnt at both ends.