Busy

I've been too busy over the past week to blog. Please see TNT and Excited-Delirium. Especially see a post at Excited-Delirium regarding a really, really, really ignorant taser expert.

In the few spare moments I've had, I've bumped against something I've experienced only once before in writing. I've been struck with a profound sense of futility.

When I blog here, I'm writing about a potentially deadly device that's clearly being used to torture people while simultaneously seeing aggressive - and successful - promotion by both its manufacturer and the public servants we pay to protect and serve us. People are completely snowed and it's frustrating to witness. We can't even get it together enough to make sure that our peace keepers aren't able to torture us on a whim. You think that's not true? Try getting your police department to disclose their tasing guidelines or usage statistics. I wouldn't recommend requesting those in person.

I can say this: Bull Connor would have loved the taser. It's in the spirit of his small, but deadly meanness that tasers are applied to the masses. It's his kind of device.

My cynical self is telling me that the only way the media at large and decision makers are going to seriously examine tasers and their use is if several white female college students are tased to death during a raid on a filming of a Girls Gone Wild video.