Author: Gnerphk

I am The Gnerphk, writer extraordinaire, opinionated, radical, and extremely humble by nature.

Those Little Trees

A lovely lady of my acquaintance once asked me how many of those little pine trees you’d have to hang in the cellar to hide the scent of a corpse.  Since I was visiting without a chaperone at the time, that question got me to thinking, and once I’d finished my slice of apple pie I thanked her cordially for a fine meal and made my excuses without tasting her mince.  I’m mostly sure she was just making conversation, but I didn’t reach my present advanced age by taking needless risks.

Those pine trees are some powerful, it’s true, but my experience is they just cover things up, burying them in the olfactory noise (if there is such a thing).  They hide the lesser sins, (more…)

How To Lose All Your Facebook Friends In A Single Post

The longer I spend talking to people about the upcoming presidential elections, the more I’m convinced that Mencken was right:  The American people know what they want, and deserve to get it — good and hard. (more…)

EpiPens aren’t the problem.

(For those few of you who’ve been living in a cave in northern Nunavut for the past ten days, you might have missed Ben Popken’s story on the EpiPen price gouge.  Go read it, then come back and join the rest of the class.  Slacker.)

I’m going to call “bullshit”. Once again, the American Media, courtesy of political campaigns, is indulging the American Media Consumer — blinkered, pig-ignorant, and proud of it — in a pointless round of outrage at nothing.

Look, the basic problem isn’t the damn EpiPen, or that some CEO got a raise of $18 million. It’s that we have a system where people make a profit from other people being sick, and nobody is even remotely interested in changing it. (more…)

Don’t Waste Your Vote

Is Donald Trump a dangerous madman?  Is Hillary Clinton assassinating her political foes?  Is someone rigging the ballots and cheating us out of our elections?

I’m pretty sure Trump is far more clever and personable than he lets on, and I’m also quite certain that nobody who’s as much in the spotlight as Senator Clinton could sneak away from her Secret Service entourage long enough to commit murder.  But the answer to that third question is an emphatic “YES!” (more…)

Is Voting Third Party Wrong?

NOTE:  This is intended as a response to an article by T. N. Reider published at “The Conversation” entitled “Is the ‘lesser of two evils’ an ethical choice for voters?”  That article is well-written, and I recommend reading it.  All quotes come from there.

As I’ve discussed in other articles, despair is endemic in this country.  The presidential politics of this year underline this in a fashion seldom seen before, with the fiercest supporters of each candidate shouting loudly that their pick for president isn’t quite as bad as the only other choice.  People have stopped questioning the system, which seems to guarantee that the worst possible candidate always gains their party’s nomination.  Instead they like to shout at one another about how the other option is worse.

One thing that cannot be denied:  Americans hate both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and they do so in record numbers.  We haven’t seen this level (more…)

So About The Second Amendment

The general public is having another pointless debate, this one over the Second Amendment.

I call it a “debate” only out of courtesy.  It’s not really a debate; it’s a loud argument and it’s convincing nobody.  It’s just like talking to your idiot brother-in-law over the holiday table;  after a couple of minutes, both sides are too busy shouting to even hear anyone else, much less actually listen to them.  That moment when we drift beyond polite and reasonable discussion is the moment talking stops being productive. (more…)

We’re Having The Wrong Argument

This is a picture of a SiG MCX.

It’s a highly efficient modular tactical infantry weapon, designed to be easily modified so as to be the proper gun for any situation.  It’s lightweight, reliable, and deadly.  Oh, and a homicidal maniac used one to kill fifty people in Orlando the other day.

At the moment, the nation is sick and tired of hearing about guns and shootings.  We’ve had enough, and if the problem doesn’t get solved, We The People are about to fire a whole raft of Congressmen and Senators.  And the lawmakers in question know this full well, so they’re making a lot of extra noise about it this time around.

In fact, so very much noise is being made that I think we’ve lost sight of what exactly it is that we’re talking about. (more…)

What Is An Assault Rifle? A Guide For Non-Shooters

The current national discussion on gun control is taking place between a large number of people, many of whom have differing levels of expertise with the use or identification of weapons.  Many of those desiring greater restrictions on firearms are unfamiliar with them, which is entirely reasonable; firearms aficionados and collectors would be the most likely to educate themselves on the subject, whereas those who fear or mistrust them would be likely to avoid any contact with the weapons in question.

Unfortunately for the dialogue, this lack of expertise detracts from the credibility of those wanting change.  Additionally, decades of intricate and confusing gun laws have muddied up the conversational waters even more.  Since profitable discussion requires mutual respect, and since the subject is simple enough to learn, read on. (more…)

Stop The War On Drugs

The “War On Drugs” has failed, and we lost.  We’ve spent billions of dollars annually and trillions overall, and we’ve accomplished two things:  We’ve increased the street price of drugs, enriching the cartels in the process, and we’ve imprisoned millions of our own citizens, hopelessly overburdening the criminal justice system by so doing.

We have completely failed to eradicate drug use.

Some of you think I’m nuts already, and that’s fine.  I’ll provide a bit of history next and you can decide afterward if the facts justify my statements. (more…)

Beating My Drum

Every time something horrific happens, every op-ed writer in America puts out their thoughts on it:   why it happened, how it could have been prevented, the senselessness of it all.  And what’s sad is, a lot of people are getting sick of it, ignoring it, moving on.  We see so very much that’s horrible and we just can’t face one more thing in a litany of more things.  And the last thing we need is some self-important armchair political hack telling us who did what wrong and who’s at fault.

So why am I, yet another self-important windbag, writing anything?  Why do you need another helping of empty wind from someone else who doesn’t matter?  Why do we need any of them yapping at us when what we really want to do is grieve in peace or fix the damn problem already and get on with the business of living but this time in safety?

Good questions.  Here’s the answer: (more…)