The No News is No News Purgatory Thread, Vol. 7

mornin' puglets!

vandal, many congrats to you!

and billie, i had retweeted the fantastic
news! YAY!

dragon, *hugs*. i hope she is all right.

NK, exciting!

trinza, both my bubs have sore throats
right now. the worst!

puglets, i'm honestly getting worn down
by the gun violence that is happening this
week. we live in a society where you can get
shot down anywhere anytime. but it really
goads me when the fuckers go to a school
where innocent children are.

no one wants to talk about it really,
but there it is. i'm tired of it. =(

one gunman dead.

three injured in breaking news.

really hoping no more children or
bystanders hurt in this awful situation. =(

I had thought about a Purgatory Press collective before, too, but more as a sort of e-book branding collective. Where the name would be kind of a quality-control assurance brand like the good housekeeping seal for readers of self-pubbed material.

As mentioned, the big problem would come in when one or more slushers said "No. We don't want to put our brand on this." What if it's a Purg's book? Hurt feelings are inevitable, but I still like the general idea.

ETA: It would make more sense to do a Purgatory Reviews site, wherein self-pubbed books are read, rated, and might earn a seal of approval for quality. Very little money outlay, and easy for people to rotate out as time and life demanded.

Yes, the trickiest part is who's the accountant. Like, for self-pubbed anthologies, the royalties are paid to the pub name/author who uploaded it, who then has to pay the others their share. If the authors make $600 or more from this piece in the year, then the uploader has to issue 1099s for all of them.

Now, the collective I knew had no central money concerns other than sales made on the group website. They uploaded individually using the 'publisher' name. In 2007 when they started, you needed a publisher or several titles to upload to the e-book retailers that existed until Amzn, SW, etc. opened up, so they joined together for mutual benefit. Each author was still responsible for all their own self-pub fees of cover art, editing, etc. On their store site, they hosted all sub-genres of Romance, and several types of fiction. Here's how the site looked in 2010.

The news out of the CT elementary school shooting is getting bad. My heart goes out to the parents and loved ones. That's my worst nightmare.

Solving the gun violence issue is tricky IMO, and not for political ramifications. The question is how do you get guns out the hands of those that would cause violence? An outright ban doesn't work because then only the cops & criminals will have them. It has to be comprehensive.

I've always thought we should treat guns like we do cars. License, registration, and insurance.

RedScylla said:

I've always thought we should treat guns like we do cars. License, registration, and insurance.

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This. We have very tight gun control in this country, not even private security guards are allowed to carry guns. Now and then, as with Hungerford, which was decades ago and Dunblane, they still happen. But not with the frequency that it seems to happen in the US. Every time someone speaks up in defence of the current US gun laws, a little something pops and sizzles in my brain and I get very angry. The current laws aren't working.

There are some reports going around that as many as 27 are dead. I hope those are just rumours.

Yes, the news is more awful by the minute. CBS News is reporting at least 14 school children killed and the gunman was the father of a kid at the school.

It sounds like the gunman was the father of a student there.

I'm sitting here in tears, fighting the urge to go pick up my kid.

the news just gets worse and worse.

steve, you will never get the guns out
of all the crazies who are inclined to do
mass destruction. but control would certainly
limit it.

it's been proven to have dropped gun violence
in austrailia and it's basically banned in the uk.
they have much less incidencese--but banning is
out of the question.

but in the case of the guy who slaughtered all
those people at the batman premiere, he was
ordering shit online in gangbusters. there really
should be tighter restrictions. why does a grad student
need that kind of ammo?

Dear Ted Nugent and the rest of the NRA lobby - fuck you.

fire, i was there in 1996 when the guy
took his guns to a nursery in uk. i remember
how god awful it was--but also, how shocking
because it was a rarity.

here? it isn't so rare.

feel utterly helpless right now.
heart goes out to all those affected
and the poor kids who lost their lives
too early.

raburrell said:

I'm sitting here in tears, fighting the urge to go pick up my kid.

Click to expand...

This.

I can't look at the photos of the parents there waiting, searching for their kids because it hurts putting myself in their position.

Blondchen said:

Dear Ted Nugent and the rest of the NRA lobby - fuck you.

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x 100,000,000

Cindy, you're right, Hungerford and Dunblane were shocking because it so rarely happens here. Heck, I remember Hungerford because one of my co-workers at the time lived in the next village and his wife phoned him at work, scared out of her wits. I do my grocery shopping in Hungerford and I still can't go there without thinking of that shooting.

I'm just heartbroken. Elementary school kids, for heaven's sake.

I hate the NRA, I hate Ted Nugent. They're out of touch with reality.

It makes me so furious. It would never happen, but what if the law was that besides law enforcement, only women could own guns, or men only if they were over a certain age? Insurance rates are determined by the action of the group in which you belong, and at this point, certain groups of men aren't doing well in their ability to handle guns.

I just wish that angry people with guns that want to lash out should just kill themselves. There's no need to take people down with you.

It's ridiculous because so many in the pro-gun lobby oppose any type of restriction such as registration. It's insane.

firedrake said:

I hate the NRA, I hate Ted Nugent. They're out of touch with reality.

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I think it's worse than that - this is perhaps unfair to 'responsible' gun owners, but I'm honestly at the point where I think the gun culture in the US is a form of low-grade mental illness. (Which for some, like Nugent, isn't so low grade at all). Unless you're living in freaking Somalia, it's entirely possible to go out of your house most days and not be at a risk of getting into a confrontation with someone.

I'm over-generalizing and simplifying, but I'm pissed.

Blondchen said:

Dear Ted Nugent and the rest of the NRA lobby - fuck you.

Click to expand...

RedScylla said:

I've always thought we should treat guns like we do cars. License, registration, and insurance.

Click to expand...

Both of these. A few days ago it happened at the mall, and of course, the B@tm@n premiere. What we're doing right now isn't working! How many people need to die before we make changes to our current system?

Just horrific. Evil beyond imagining.

Do we have any of our people in this area? Are all Purgies and families okay? This is breaking my heart. This is beyond evil.

Cricket18 said:

Both of these. A few days ago it happened at the mall, and of course, the B@tm@n premiere. What we're doing right now isn't working! How many people need to die before we make changes to our current system?

Click to expand...

The problem is that there are so many people without shame. Being shamed into making a change was the way things happened in the US.

Tragedies would happen and then those believed tangentially responsible would either agree to the change or not stand in its way.

For instance, back at the turn of 20th century there was a huge factory fire in Manhattan which killed a lot of workers, including children. In the wake of the tragedy there was a change in the laws regarding work conditions, safety, and child labor.

In the 1960s there was the Alabama church bombing and the 4 little girls getting killed. This led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Will the gun lobby finally relent or will they rely on their stock response: Guns don't kill; people do.

Some asshole on my FB page is making the usual NRA argument - criminals are still going to be criminals, and strictly gun control laws only "punish" us law-abiding gun owners.

(a) If you're law-abiding, how does this punish you? Because you need to wait longer? You can't own a Kalishnikov?

(b) It's so easy to self-righteous when it's not in your backyard.

(c) UNFRIEND