Guns
"Have you ever read anything by Straussberg?"
I wanted to stare at him until he retracted the question, but I knew I couldn't.
"No, not much. Not anything, actually."
"Oh my! He's great, he wrote this amazing piece about an impoverished swedish school boy who. . . "
I looked over at my wife who was happily chatting with her friend. I thought of all the times I'd introduced her to my friends and their wives. Surely they couldn't have been as weird as this guy.
I would honestly rather be sucking on the tailpipe of a car than be sitting in a conversation with this guy right now.
I turned my attention back to this paradigm of social awkwardness, who didn't even know me and honestly couldn't realize that I didn't want to get to know him. He had stopped talking.
Oh crap, did he ask me a quesiton? He kind of looks like he's looking for a response. Dangit! Um. . .
"Yeah? Wow."
He seemed appeased. Good.
"So, do you own any guns?"
So do I own any guns?! What in the world? He was just telling me about some lame poetry about a crippled school boy and now he wants to get all manly on me? Bull!
"Of course I do. Yeah, guns. . . gotta love guns, right?"
I wasn't about to let him prove that he was more of a manly man than I. As he eagerly rushed off to the back room, I realized that he might actually be bringing back a gun. What that meant I wasn't sure, but I did know that if he wanted to talk "guns" that I was in for it. Sure I'd shot a gun before--in fact my grandpa had even given me some sort of sissy rifle a couple of summers ago, but I haven't shot it because frankly, I don't know the first thing about guns.
He rushed back with some sort of assault-rifle-looking gun that looked like it belonged to some Columbian drug-lord.
Great.
"So this one is a Ruger 357 with a triple seal blue-wing finish. I also went with the double corragated Thompson clip."
"Yeah I can. . . I can see that."
He then handed me the gun.
"I own over a dozen assault rifles, shotguns, and pistols."
I have no idea what you mean by that. Is that impressive, scary, or a threat?
I held the gun like how I imagine an awkward young father holds his first child for the first time. I had no clue. And what's worse, he sat there looking at me as if to say, "Well, aren't you going to do something with it?" I knew what I'd like to do with it.
If I screw this up, I could literally kill someone.
So I sat there staring at this gun, trying to show him up in manliness while our wives were in the other room chatting up a storm, not knowing that at any point in their conversation they could feel the sweet sting of hot metal as a bullet ripped through their shoulder. He sat looking expectantly at me waiting for me to prove that I really did know guns.
There's got to be some lever I can pull, or some bolt I can latch. . .
I found a lever and decided to pull it back. It slid back and automatically set off a chain of movement in the main action of the gun. Since nothing came out of the barrell, I considered it a personal victory.
"Yeah! All right. This is . . . quite a weapon."
I carefully handed it back to him, as if I was satisfied with my experience with it. No sooner had I done that then he pulled some sort of pistola out of his back waisteband.
Who is this guy?
Of course he handed it to me with the same expectant look. So I held it up and acted like I was aiming it at his clock on the wall.
"Man, I could really shoot some. . . birds or. . . some sort of deer with this bad boy."
"I wouldn't know, I don't hunt."
You don't hunt?! What's the point then?
"You don't? Were you in the military or police force or something?"
"No. I just like guns."
You own enough guns to arm a marine reserve unit and you don't use them?! You and your wife are struggling college students with two little kids running around and you buy $2000 worth of armery?!
I didn't know what to say. I still don't know what to say. All I know is that from then on, I've encouraged my wife to hang out with her friend on a girls-night-out only basis.

Observations and Queries: 5

• Apparently there's a heat wave going through America and we need to cut energy somehow. Here are some ways I've thought of: use oil lamps instead of street lights, instead of turning on the lights in your house at night--don't, steal your gasoline instead of buying it, or cut back on the amount of TV you watch by only watching quality programs--that alone would cure America of any energy crisis.
• Out of all the stupid things to do in life, being born to the Jackson family (Michael, Janet, Tito, etc.) would be the stupidest.
• Floyd Landis, the American who recently won the Tour de France, was caught with abnormal amounts of testosterone in his system. I'd like to believe him when he says it's natural, but the fact that he has three adam's apples and a head of hair on the bottom of his feet doesn't convince me.
• Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock are getting married this weekend. Good for them. You know what would kill two birds with one stone? If they got married at a NASCAR race or Lynard Skinard concert--then everyone who actually cared about their wedding would already be gathered. And you know what would kill two red-necks with one stone? A shotgun.
• David Hasselhoff is really making a comeback. I wonder if he knows that everyone's making fun of him.
• The prosecutors against Saddam Hussein apparently requested the death penalty for Suddam. Not surprisingly Suddam requested the same thing for them.
• Lance Bass of N'Sync recently came out of the closet by revealing that he's gay. On a related note, it was also revealed that the earth is round, ice is cold, Nazi's were bad, and eating food will keep you alive.
• If your parents were red-necks you're probably either embarrassed, uneducated, drunk, unbathed for two weeks, or all of the above.
• The wife of artist Prince (or The Artist Formly Know as Prince) filed for divorce saying that she was shocked when she realized that her husband was a "creepy, martian-looking man who is probably looking to hook up with Lance Bass from N'sync." His wife was equally shocked when she found out that dirt is brown, puppies are dogs, Prince is gay, and the sun is hot.
• Katharine McPhee, who was second in this year's American Idol, has reportedly overcome her bulimia problem to join the rest of the Idols on their tour. Tragically though, Taylor Hicks couldn't overcome his physical problems and died of old age during the tour. His mourning grandchildren said he died at peace, surrounded by his genereations of family memebers whom he loved, and danced gracefully into death like only he could do--which incidentally looked like an epileptic seizure. Hicks died at age 84.

Observations and Queries: 4

• I know that the most popular reasons for going to war and killing a bunch of people are disagreements about religion, political affiliation, and ethnicity (to name a few). But let's consider some disagreements that lead to war that make a lot more sense: those who wash their hands when leaving the restroom and those who don't, those who use their blinkers while driving and those who don't, those who like the band Journey and those who don't, ugly people versus pretty people (that would be more controversial than religion!), etc. Surely there are better reasons to vehemently disagree with someone to the point that we go to war than how someone believes or where they want to believe it.
• If your parents were ugly, you're probably not (sarcasm doesn't transfer through the written word very well).
• I'm sorry, but doesn't the unrest in the middle east seem like two stupid brothers fighting? "You punched me so I'm going to kick you." "Oh yeah, since you kicked me I'm going to shoot you with my BB gun." "Oh yeah? Well, I'm going to burn your baseball card collection, jerk-weed." Not to make light of a serious situation, but it's really getting to be annoying.
• Apparently Paris Hilton recently declared, "Skinny people look gross." When skinny people heard that they replied, "Well we think that people who are as smart as a brick and look like a flamingo are gross." Paris got really mad.
• President Bush was recently caught swearing at a dinner-conference with English Prime Minister Tony Blair. Here's some of that conversation: "TB, I'll tell you what, I [bleepin'] hate broccoli. It's like a [bleepin'] miniture tree. Look at it. Tony, [bleepin'] look at it!!! Funny ain't it? Hey, look at Putin over there--doesn't he look like a [bleepin'] zombie? I [bleepin'] hate zombies. They freak me right [bleepin'] out."
• I don't know about you, but I really care what Angelina Jolie recently said about motherhood. (What about that, could you catch the sarcasm on that one?)

Observations and Queries: 3

• I heard that once Donald Trump had a child with his current wife who is as old as his (other) child he said,"Now my life is complete." Actually he was misquoted--they cut him off, he went on to say,"Now my life is completely screwed up. I seriously should be put down like a lame horse." C'mon Trump, a lame horse? Aren't we the optimist?
• I don't see what the big deal is about Facebook and My Space. If teenage girls want to advertise for a free stalker, who am I to stop them?
• I was watching TV the other day and I noticed that on a born-again Christian channel Kirk Cammeron was teaching a lesson on evolution and how it's an evil belief practiced by pagen murderers. Good for him! Apparently he's a very prestigious born-again Christian evolutionary scientist now. Long way from the wirey-haired weirdo he played on Growing Pains. It's amazing how puberty can change you. You and I are not too different Kirk Cammeron.
• If your parents were born-again Christians you probably hate me.
• I'm glad people are finally talking about immigration. What I think people of the US don't understand is that the only reason they have access to real authentic Mexican food is because they have Mexicans to make it. Also the only reason they have access to real authentic Chinese food is because they have Mexicans to make it. Chew on that they next time you're at Panda Express.
• Zinedene Zidane from France recently head-butted an Italian soccer player in the the chest during the finals of the World Cup. I blame poor eye-sight. Like a Rhino.
• In the sports news today it had the headline: Bonds' Trainer Asks To Leave Prison. Now I'm not an expert on the legal system, but I'm pretty sure that's not gonna fly.
• I wonder if secretly in Tom Cruise's mind, someone's really screwing with him.

Observations and Queries: 2

• You know what the best sport is? Nascar, hands down. I mean, if sitting on your can and driving around in an oval for hours and hours doesn't show athletic prowess then what on earth does? Sure the car is there, but who or what does most the work? You think the enguine is what's making that car go 200m/p? You do? Oh, I guess you're right.
• Isn't it disturbing that our nation is so intolerant of the peaceful religion of Islam but they're not opposed to dressing their 3 year old up like a vampire? Let's send a video to the citizens of Iraq or Afghanistan of our kids dressed up as zombies, ghosts, and Tellatubbies and then see if that will cure them of the misconception that we're an evil, crazy nation.
• I know that celebrities become celebrities because they're either really talented, really attractive, or really freakish. So apparently Paris Hilton is freaksih.
• Speaking of freakish celebrities, Taylor Hicks reminds me of a single guy who's 48 years old, and single, driving around the local high school in a 1987 Corsica looking for girls to woo. Does anybody else feel what I'm saying?
• Many people in the sports world see Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban as a nuisance and an embarrassment, but I disagree. How many autistic people with two lazy-eyes do you know who own their own sports team? One--Mark Cuban.