CONCEALED WEAPONS
On the almost second anniversary of Ohio's law allowing conealed carrying of arms, it's worth taking a look back at how this came about.

Under the heading of “disturbing philosophical arguments,” file the discussions found at Vermillion’s “Open Carry Shipping Day,” where for a two-hour period, the good citizens of the Harbor Town area of Vermillion, Ohio, were treated to the site of gun-toting patriots walking in and out of local stores and restaurants. In an attempt to promote the legalization of concealed weapons in Ohio, around 70 folks strapped on their firearms and wandered around the streets looking for bad guys. Well, maybe just looking for a Christmas present for the kids.

Chuck Holliday, who sounds like he has a relative called “Doc,” wasn’t taking any chances and decided to wear both a .40 Beretta and a .357 Magnum – you can’t be too careful when living in Vermillion. Chuck’s words of wisdom include the phrase, "We are common-sense people." I always worry when anyone appeals to "common-sense" because the definition appears to be “whatever I think is a good idea.”

One of the common-sense notions that Chuck advances is that "When criminals think somebody may be carrying a weapon, they won’t mess with them." Now this raises so many questions that it hardly qualifies as an answer in the first place. If I’m a rootin’, tootin’, pistol-packin’ hombre who thinks some dude’s packin’ heat, it’s in my best interest to plug him first. Hey, the concept of the Pre-emptive Strike is pretty popular these days, especially amongst our leaders.

Of course, if concealed weapons are OK for Joe Average (and it seems a testosterone-fueled thing because one rarely hears from Josephine Average that she wants to pack heat) then it’s OK for Al Capone, Don Corleone, and Tony Soprano to do the same.

A worried shopkeeper calls the police at 1:30 am because three suspicious guys with bulges in their pockets are positioning themselves at the gas station; one by the pumps, one at the door, and the third inside the store heading toward the counter. The cavalry arrives and finds – surprise surprise – that all the guys are carrying guns. But what’s the charge? Well, nothing! They’re carrying the pistols for "personal protection" and were just looking for a late-night coffee. And then they sue the police for harassment.

Ron Wise, another “guns for peace” promoter, feels that carrying arms is “a great idea.” However, his wife, Betty, thinks, “this is the most stupid thing I’ve heard of in my whole life.” Josephine Average? According to Betty, “We’re not living in the Old West. Everybody doesn’t need to carry a gun. We’re supposed to be civilized.”

Ron, on the other hand, says, “If everyone carried a gun, everybody would be civilized.” Which reminds me of an old joke: A man walks onto a plane and the security folks find a grenade, a gun, and a knife in his hand luggage. When asked why he is carrying all this stuff, he replied “Well, I heard that one in a million people will have a grenade on a plane, one in another million will have a gun, and one in another million will carry a knife. I reckon that if I’m the one carrying all three, I’m going to feel much safer!”

SHAVING AND SIN
My battle against chronic procrastination continues, but with a new moral twist. Is it OK to submit to one of the seven deadly sins in order to conquer another? Is a little evil OK to defeat a bigger one? Before we plunge into this, remember that your editor is not a theologian and so prone to error. However, he is a human being and so faces the same dilemmas as everyone else in the world. So let’s start with a little background.

For many years now, I have been toying with the idea of removing my mustache. The small hairy caterpillar sits quietly above my mouth, hiding an imperfection in my top lip. It’s not that I grew the ‘tash to do that; it just happens to fulfill that role. Apart from a period of about one week some fifteen years ago, this little furry patch has been there since I was able to rub hair from my spotty teenage face with nothing more than a wet cloth. Other than a few baby pictures, I suspect there are no images of me in existence that exclude my fluffy friend.

Yet with age comes two changes to how facial hair works; it gets grayer and more brittle. Most of the time I now look like I’ve been eating an ice cream cone and forgotten to wipe my face. And the brittleness is such that when I use scissors for trimming, there is an audible “click” as the blades snicker-snack through the tiny trees. By the time I reach fifty, I suspect they’ll be a noise abatement order taken out against me. So removing the mustache sounds like a good idea.

However, here’s where the moral issue sneaks in: removing the ‘tash is clearly a sop toward one of my much-discussed sins – vanity. There’s no life-threatening condition here, and the fate of my family or career does not depend on whether or not I keep the fuzz. Therefore, it’s plain, old vanity stepping in, tempting me to take a dip in that fictitious fountain of youth in a desire to stop looking older. One the other hand, I’ve been putting off this action for years now, saying, “Maybe next week” or “As soon as the weather gets a little warmer,” and this strikes me as the rumblings of another sin – sloth. Regularly readers will be aware that I have tackled both vanity and sloth over the years, but more so vanity. This is probably the first time both have appeared at the same time.

It seems to me that I can “leverage” vanity to fight sloth, and if that’s the case, is it right? Or would it be “better” if I used sloth to temper the vanity, bearing in mind that I think vanity is my greater failing? And all because of a mustache! Who would have thought that such a moral conundrum could reside in a trivial case of how to deal with facial hair?

I don’t recall St. Thomas Aquinas devoting a paragraph to “On the removal of whiskers and the sin therein” in his Summa Theologica. Then again, I don’t know whether he had a mustache himself, so maybe this sort of issue is the province of the more hirsute philosophers. I know Karl Marx and Friedreich Nietzsche were both particularly hairy, but Das Kapital and Also Sprach Zarathustra were both noticeably quiet on the issue of personal hygiene. So, no help from the moral philosophers then – it’s up to me to solve the problem myself. I shaved it off. Forgive me for pandering to vanity, but I dragged a sharp, new, triple blade across the petrified forest and returned my face to its baby-soft original state. I chalked up a victory against procrastination, followed the same day by another mighty swipe against indolence – I replaced a light fitting in the basement laundry room that hadn’t worked for years: it took me 30 minutes including the trip to the hardware store.

Oh the shame! I don’t know how long the mustache will be gone. Maybe it will be back in a week; maybe never. Doubtless they’ll be suggestions from my family and friends as to which way I should go, but then if I use this advice, am I not submitting again to vanity, growing or not growing it to “look better?” No wonder Aquinas, Marx, and Nietzsche gave this one a wide berth.

BURGERS AND RESPONSIBILITY
Hippocrates once said “Everything in excess is opposed to nature.” His name, curiously enough, comes from the Greek words hippos, meaning horse, and kratos, meaning power. Fortunately for the car sales industry, engine makers opted for abandoning the Greek hippo to describe the power of their machines. I’m not sure folks would be wowed by a Porsche that was described as having the equivalent pulling power of 605 hippos.

As well as being almost famous for sounding like a huge, fat, water horse, Hippocrates is acknowledged as the founder of modern medicine, with the Hippocratic Oath being named after him. As a doctor, he apparently not only talked the talk but walked the walk when it comes to looking after oneself. According to legend, he lived into his 80’s, with some sources claiming he hit the century mark. Clearly, avoiding excess and adopting the maxim of “moderation in all things” worked out just peachy for old Hippocrates.

Contrary to this philosophy, Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Moderation is a fatal thing... nothing succeeds like excess.” Not exactly noted as a believer in temperance, Wilde died at the age of 46 – only half way towards Hippocrates’ expiry date.

However, the spirit of excess lives on in the USA. If Wilde had been alive today, no doubt he would have found his way to the Heart Attack Grill in Tempe, Arizona. Armed only with your check book and a portable defibrillator, you can tuck into their infamous “Quadruple Bypass Burger,” (QBB) a name that is as accurate as it is graphic.

Here, for the morbidly curious, is the list of contents for a QBB, from top to bottom: Bun, lettuce, beefsteak tomatoes, bacon, red onion, cheddar cheese, ½ lb beef, more onion, more cheese, another ½ lb beef, more onion, more cheese, yet another ½ lb beef, more bacon, another onion, an unashamed fourth ½ lb beef, gourmet sauce, and a bun.

I should say that in a nod towards healthy eating, the lettuce is described as “crisp” and the tomatoes as “fresh,” so things could be worse. For those on a diet, it is possible to order the less destructive “Triple Bypass Burger” (only 1 ½ lb of beef in total), the middling “Double Bypass Burger,” which is barely meaty at all with a measly 1 lb of beef, or the supermodel special, the “Single Bypass Burger,” which with a mere ½ lb of beef makes it practically vegetarian.

For those of us who think that a flight to Arizona just to sample a huge burger is just a little too extravagant, there is the more mundane option of popping in to the local Burger King and ordering a “Quad Stacker.” For a lot less than a plan ticket to Tempe, you can fill yourself with 1000 calories, 68 grams of fat, and another 30 grams of saturated fat.

Burger King management are unapologetic about the burger (as are the owners of the Heart Attack Grill). In an official BK statement, a marketing executive said, “We’re satisfying the serious meat lovers by leaving off the produce and letting them decide exactly how much meat and cheese they can handle.” Notice that “produce” is used as a euphemism for “vegetables.”

Although sorely tempted, you intrepid Editor has so far been able to resist the lure of the Quad. However, I have to admit to having tried the Triple and lived to tell the tale. I guess I’m OK with one Triple, which is surely an example of “all things in moderation.” My concern is that not everyone knows when to stop; when to “just say no”; when to draw that proverbial line in the sand. At what point does the individual have his or her right to gorge on excessive foods be taken away because “someone” thinks it is bad for them? If a line has to be drawn in the sand, who should be drawing it; the individual or Society?

Consider the following: Russian Natalya Kashuba, 27, is the owner of an up-market clothes shop. She drank up to three liters of Coke every day for five years. Then, at the beginning of this year, she took legal action against the soft drinks giant after claiming that she had suffered insomnia and heartburn. Miss Kashuba said she had become addicted to the drink as a result of a promotional offer that allowed consumers to swap Coca Cola caps for prizes. And guess what? She won! Although the damages were a token $100, the principle is that it was not her fault but Coke’s.

I know this might sound a little off the wall, but does anyone else think that three liters of ANY sugary soft drink per DAY might be just a tad bad for you? I’m no nutritional scientist, but it’s been fairly common knowledge for as long as I can remember – and that’s about 40 years – that excess sugar = bad.

Maybe Hippocrates had a point after all.