Day 942

Day 942 Monday August 5, 2019

457 Days until the 2020 election and 539 days until the Inauguration

I’ve got a quick and simple fix to the gun and the abortion problems in this country. It’s so incredibly easy I don’t know why someone hasn’t proposed it before.

After the last two shooting, of which one is a direct result of the president’s beating the drum. Oh excuse me, the shooter left a message and used some of the same wording as the president. Just a coincidence I’m sure. For some reason the president decided to eliminate all tweets that referred to immigrants as invaders. 

One of the memes, phrases, whatever making its way around was one suggesting that people who want to buy a gun should have to go through the same procedure that people who want an abortion in states with highly restrictive abortion options have to go through. Things like traveling halfway across the state, three days waiting period, walking through a line of protestors calling them murders, etc.

My solution is so so simple. It’s kind of like Steve Martin’s “How to Make a Million Dollars and Never Pay Taxes” routine.

This solution if implemented will greatly cure the gun problem and the abortion problem.

Are you ready?

Stand by. Here it comes.

Pass a law “Guns may only be sold in abortion clinics.”

That’s it.

Naturally, there would be a House and a Senate version, which would have to be resolved. The House version would include ammunition and gun accessories. The Senate version would give money to rich people and not mention guns at all.

Think about it. With a one sentence law you wipe out the gun show loop hole. That is unless they started offering abortions. This bring me to the gun shops becoming abortion clinics. There would all of a sudden be hundreds, thousands of new clinics. “Burt’s Guns and Abortions” etc.

As an ancillary advantage would be protests and protestors. Now you could stand outside a G&A shop and scream murders and take care of both! Handy.

Listen, this is a boffo idea from yours truly. Now I know what some of you are saying, “But …”

To which I say, “Shut up! I’m tired of your whining. Pass the bill.”

Okay, what else?

Today, we are in Passau. It’s at the confluence of three rivers. It has lots of churches and five beer companies (all of which are owned by the Catholic dioceses.) The big cathedral in town has a huge pipe organ: over 17,000 pipes, 283 stops, and 5 organs, which can all be played from one console with five keyboards. (Eat your heart out Arcade Fire.) Now why you need five organs and can’t have one is beyond me. Maybe they play in different keys or something like that. One is in the ceiling at the narthax of the church. Why do that? Me don’t know.

However, we got to hear a concert. Six pieces, half an hour, two Mozart, two of other folks I didn’t recognize, and the last two were Bach. 

Bach is one of those dudes I’ve never quite gotten. I’ve been fascinated with Bach ever since reading, “Godel, Escher, Bach” in which the author says that the mathematician, the artist, and the composer have similarities in that they seem to go in circles but the circles always go somewhere else before returning to the original place. The last piece played did what I have described. It seemed to be the same pattern. It was, but the notes varied, just a little. It was subtle in that way. I had the realization that this is what the author of “Godel, Escher, Bach” was talking about. Maybe, you have to have reached a certain age, (or level of maturity?) to appreciate this kind of thing. I don’t know. But it was cool – very cool.

457 Days until the 2020 election and 539 days until the Inauguration

PS The Passau Organ