nothing special/nothing good (GMOOH)

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a citizen of the USA who owns a machine gun.

I believe that he said something like this: I just like guns.

Or, maybe he said, "I've been around guns all of my life and I know what to do with them."

Well, errr, that sounds like a militaristic version of Papal infallibility. (James Joyce, I believe, has the decisive historical account of how that came to be in a case of Papal fiat.......the cardinals and bishops were merely discussing it, when the Pope himself solemnly declared that he hereby possessed it.....)

But my deep antipathy to the people I meet is only illustrated by my conversation with the man who likes machine guns. The fellow also happened to slight another of my loves---crowds.

When I lived in Vienna, nothing made me feel more alive than getting off the U-bahn, going upstairs and facing a throng of people----some speaking Slovak, or Polish, or Czech, and some speaking German.....or even English..........and best of all on a crisp fall afternoon, or even a briskly cold winter one. I love that, and I miss it so much that I could burst into tears right now.

My machine gun friend ( I mean really! Does he think he is going to fight a war against the so-called "commies" or so-called "terrorists"?) also happened to mention that he does not like Paris because it is "so crowded". (As if the local freeway is never dangerously crowded by trucks speeding along at 70mph.....)

I guess it is puritan/capitalist/industrialist: A person without a truck/car is naked.

So, all those naked crowds in Vienna or Paris are just too erotic for the Puritan mind........positively disorderly and anarchistic by comparison with the neat rows and columns of trucks and cars, speeding along adding to global warming.......

Would I really want to spend 300 dollars a month to buy/rent/lease a car when I can spend 50 Euros a month (=approximately 66 US dollars) for the Vienna metro, which runs 24 hours a day? (A local man recently told me he spends $300 dollars a month for his new car...---and that is not counting, gas, oil changes, insurance, etc., or the mental agony which is driving....)