A Declaration Of Love For Starbuck
Dear Ms. Katee Sackhoff:
Mel and I are giant fans of you. We think you’re the bee’s knees. We realize we put a few words in your mouth in this strip, in order to make the joke work. Please do not be offended or sue us. We would be very sad if you did. Also, we have never actually followed you, in person, in California. There is no soda cup. But if there was, we would probably pet it like a puppy.
If you are at Comic Con International this year, Ms. Sackoff, please come by Booth #1230, and let us hug you and take pictures of you with us. We will gift you with a bunch of crazy merchandise that you, no doubt, won’t care about, and it would make our entire convention if you did stop by. Even if just for 60 seconds. Long enough for J to snip a clandestine lock of your hair off. We love you. Never leave us. Stay drugged up in our garage forever…
OK, it’s getting weird now.
Love,
J and Mel.
For those just tuning in, it seems our dear Sexy Starbuck is a fan of gun safety. The whole thing is a storm in a teacup, seriously. All she said was “gun safety is good,” and a bunch of people lost their motherloving shit over it. It’s insane what sets people off. In the end, finding this out about Katee just made her more lovable to us. Maybe she’ll come shoot with us at a range in Dallas sometime? One can only dream. Yes, I am a giant fucking fanboy. Mel is a giant fucking fangirl.
Can you blame us?
Now here’s good music to get angry and break shit to.
I even believe that she’s on the short list for Ms. Marvel for Avengers 2.
Ah, yes. Portland’s own Ms. Sackhoff. Such a damn shame she hasn’t gotten more high-profile work lately.
I’m not sure how “high profile” I’d rate Battlestar Galactica. I loved the show, it’s a marvelous piece of television and probably the best science fiction show ever made, but it’s still not exactly ultra mainstream.
Being a PDXer you can only imagine my surprise and pleasure when The Starbuck herself was at the Baghdad one night. When they were showing BSG. I watched BSG with ‘Starbuck’.
That was rather cool. She was pretty friendly too. Miss Sackhoff, you keep on with that talk, we’re behind you!
PDX fistbump!
For those of you in the savage outerlands, she (both her real self and her BSG character) is actually a pretty normal example of the kind of women who live here. And we have more permissive gun laws than Texas.
My condolences to the rest of the country.
I’ve heard a lot of great things about Portland from friends in the area, but i don’t think I could live there. Too small, for one thing – I tried the Denver Metro area for a year and a half, and hated it. DIA Met is bigger than PDX.
Secondly, I really love the attitude of people in Texas. Still fully in love with this place.
Rents in PDX are also California levels of stupid, like $1800 for a smallish 1-bed. Otherwise I’d be down with living there.
I… I kinda love Omar. In a creepy “I need Mace” sort of way.
But hey, cup puppies!
I cant believe it;s taken this long to get some SYL up on this shit.
Hey J. and Mel,
I just wanted to let the two of you know that I look forward to FTF every weekday, and Twolumps every MWF. Seriously makes my day.
I also have to laugh at the whole petting a cup like a puppy. If someone messaged that to me I would most likely overstock on ammo. Fun times…
I know the entire hayday it made brought me to start following her on twitter.
I’d advise you not to go to the range with Ms. Sackhoff. Three people almost died the last time that happened.
I don’t get it, gun safety and gun control aren’t mutually exclusive. I imagine places with gun control would have mandatory gun safety courses and/or standards, something licensed gun owners would have to show they understand.
No, regrettably the majority of places… like Massachusetts, to my mind only have Gun Control for two reasons: Pop media driven fear (more like terror, many will nearly wet their pants just mentioning guns.) and misguided knee-jerk legislation.
It wasn’t until 1998 that they introduced the requirement to have attended a “Basic Firearms Safety” course. I assume to both “legitimize” their gun control and to place another obstacle to gaining access to firearms. If MA could have their way, they would ban them outright. They really would.
Terror is correct. Most of the anti-gun people I’ve talked with have ultimately boiled their arguments down to “they’re scary and evil.” I have at least one friend who doesn’t even want to SEE one in real life, or to know one is anywhere near her. It is somewhat challenging to hold a rational debate when one of the participants is terrified of the topic to the point of tears.
I have to argue with the phrase “misguided knee-jerk legislation” though. I think it’s often anything but knee-jerk, nor (from the point of view of those proposing it) misguided. History has shown that the best way to ban guns is a little bit at a time. With this in mind, the perfect time to tighten the noose is when public sentiment is inflamed. Get people to accept “this gun is ok, but that one isn’t because it’s dangerous and has no legitimate purpose” and you can slowly move more and more guns into the second category. It has been clear that politicians are willing to use the public’s knee-jerk reactions to push through legislation, but it is legislation that they have long desired and carefully considered.
There are exceptions, and some legislation actually is knee-jerk; it’s proposed in haste to address a perceived threat. Rep. Biaggi, sponsor of the bill to ban “cop-killer bullets”, seems to have been legitimately trying to protect officers in the wake of a “new” threat revealed by a media frenzy, and was reportedly pleased with the ultimate, NRA-assisted, version of the bill as doing what he had intended it to do. (The bill as originally written would have banned practically all rifle ammunition.) However, I strongly doubt any “assault weapons” ban has been proposed as a knee-jerk reaction.
“Clandestine lock of hair” reminds me of a scene from Point Break. “Dude, you’ve got a gnarly creepy crawly right on your…” *RIP* “OWWWW!!!” “Got it! Man, you’re lucky!”
I think storm in a teacup sums it all up nicely. I really have no idea what her stance on guns or the second is. She just mentioned, in response to something tragic, something about gun safety…
She is also a motorcycle rider, and it’s not a piece of ass jewelry custom something… She goes to rallys and actually rides.
I don’t even have a twitter account, but now I want one. My wife added her yesterday to hers.
and the word of the day is ‘cup-puppies’.
I had a feeling a strip about this was going to pop up today, and I’m glad you did it. I like the stance she took in response to it all and not back down from her statement. To many people say something they think/feel just to press conference it later and beg forgiveness so they keep their fanbase. I say we rally and double the amount of people she lost on twitter!
I think she’s already had enough new followers on Twitter (including me, over this) to make up for those who bailed out. While I didn’t watch much of the new-and-improved BSG when it was on, I was impressed by the number and variety of real-life firearms they used in the show, sometimes without altering their appearances under plastic. Go check out http://www.imfdb.org/ the Internet Movie Firearms Database; I was pleasantly surprised to even see a CZ-52 used in an episode or two, among other guns. Meanwhile, Ms. Sackhoff stars currently in “Longmire” as a deputy sheriff, continuing to show off her firearm skills, by shooting lots of bad guys (practice for Omar?).
I’ve remarked elsewhere, that kids these days are brought up to be so anti-gun that the mere mention of the word “gun” makes them wet their diapers, and they’re in middle school! The so-called fans of hers who dropped her for recommending REAL gun safety instead of the usual LA-NYC reaction of wanting to ban all the eeeeeeeeeevil gunz, are by my reckoning a big part of the problem, b/c they then pay big bucks to watch their favorite stars use guns in reckless fashion in their favorite movies and shows, while those stars give lip service to gun control.
Also, one thing that’s impressed me about her, is that she didn’t try backpedalling to win back those lost followers, and in turn piss off any new followers supporting her for some REAL common sense gun discussion, as has happened with other celebrities who stuck their feet in their mouths.
I missed the actual shitstorm, but caught the following tweet about losing half of her followers. It’s a damned shame that the only accepted liberal stance on guns appears to be none at all.
Guns: the only subject where people react negatively when you encourage safety.
Seriously, can you imagine the same thing with anything else? “We shouldn’t teach people to stop, drop, and roll, we should just ban fire.” “There’s no need to teach people to look both ways before crossing the street, we should just ban crossing the street entirely.” It’s patently ludicrous. It’s almost like gun control proponents’ first priority isn’t actually to save lives.
Add in people saying that you shouldn’t have a stock that’s easier to control, you shouldn’t have one that fits you better, you shouldn’t have a magazine that makes it fast and easy to unload the firearm, you shouldn’t have a cover so you don’t burn yourself on hot metal, and you DEFINITELY shouldn’t be able to attach something to protect the hearing of yourself and those around you. Let’s make people safer by making cars louder and less ergonomic, too; I’m sure that will work well.
For anybody reading this who is unfamiliar with firearms, the above are elements commonly listed in assault weapons bans. In order, those are: pistol grips, collapsible stocks, detachable magazines, barrel shrouds, and threaded barrels (to which I was referring to attaching silencers, which are restricted by the 1934 National Firearms Act along with various state and local laws).
I’m of the opinion that if you take an argument about gun safety, and replace the word “gun” with the word “car” and the argument doesn’t make sense anymore, the person’s original argument is moronic.
Cars are frequently an apt analogy. Unfortunately, it generally seems like a better analogy to pro-gun types than to anti-gun types. Cars are familiar things to most Americans, with their utility apparent and their dangers downplayed. People who are familiar with guns see them somewhat similarly–common, useful tools that are dangerous when handled improperly and safe when basic rules are followed. People unfamiliar with them seem to see them as unnecessary and unnecessarily dangerous objects.
This brings a question to mind: I wonder how driving records compare for non-gun owners, gun owners in general, and CCL holders? I remember reading an opinion (John Ross, perhaps) that if you got a traffic ticket, you didn’t possess the awareness or presence of mind appropriate for carrying a concealed weapon. I don’t know that I agree with that assertion, but it’s an interesting one, and it makes me wonder if appreciating gun safety leads to increased automobile safety.
The typical response to this chain of logic is invariably “Cars aren’t designed to kill, like guns.” That there are more automotive fatalities than firearm fatalities per year doesn’t seem to register with them.
That statistic may no longer be true; at the very least, it’s now almost equal. (I saw the infamous Dr. Wintemute trumpet this on NPR not long ago, and was surprised to find the statistic was more or less true aside from his deceptive phrasing.) Also, to play devil’s advocate, cars are used much more frequently than guns, so an equal death rate still implies that guns are much more dangerous.
Bear in mind, however, that the majority of firearm fatalities are suicides, while the vast majority of automobile fatalities are accidents. All the safety training in the world isn’t going to keep somebody from actively ignoring it in order to kill themselves (or others). Conversely, automobile deaths have been falling due to widespread, active efforts to reduce both the frequency and the lethality of accidents. Doesn’t it make sense to put at least a little effort into reducing non-automotive accidents as well?
In other news, Joerg Sprave’s grandmother has been spotted in Turkey:
http://imgur.com/vVQoo02