GUNS, NOT ROSES

I love to shoot a gun:  it's fun.  What's more kick-worthy than pulling a small trigger and hearing the glorious response, then seeing a bull's eye put out, not a real bull but a target one.  When I was an adolescent, my father took me to the backyard (which had 30 acres) and showed me how to fire a shotgun and a .22 caliber rifle, which became my weapon of choice right after I picked myself up off the ground after firing the shotgun.  He laughed knowing that hard lessons stick.

My Dad as a Young Gun

Over the years, I have used a gun exactly 0 times, having no real occasion to take a life, but there's always tomorrow when the Chinese attack.  

I guess the state of Virginia has special affection for the Second Amendment and the NRA (National Rifle Association); they rank right up there with God's forgiveness and possibly incest.  I postulate that the writers of the Second Amendment did not envision a strong accommodation of mass murder.  We country folks are a patriotic lot and we love our country's flags, both of them.  Mathews even has the Confederate Flag Tour, should you have time on your hands, which is a subset of the Elevated Chassis Pickup Parade.  (I just made those up, but I could conduct a sightseeing tour of those places.)

If memory serves, Virginia has moved hard right in the places we allow guns to be present.  Thank goodness we can attend state parks fully-armed and know that going to a night club is more exhilarating with the added danger of not only getting a STD (sexually transmitted disease), but of being shot by a stray bullet as well.  I like dancing, but hot music should be the motivator, not a sadistic gunslinger.

No Guns Just Queen Anne's Lace

A Member of the Carrot Family

Events of the last few days bring home the reason we should not be accommodating gun lunacy, and yet you know we will.  That is the definition of insanity:  knowing you're driving off a cliff and accelerating.  What would sane people do?  We can only wonder.  

Meanwhile, we oil "Old Betsy" and the familiar amnesia sets in until the next mass shooting by a dissociative miscreant brings us back to reality.

GALS WITH ASPIRIN BETWEEN THEIR KNEES

Events of recent days have unearthed old feelings, deliberately buried, remnants of the natural abhorrence of the bridle of second-class personhood jammed into our mouths by those who sought to prepare us for our role of woman in society:  a surrender to what the Bible reinforces in many ways, a sad acceptance of being born a disappointment and a constant call for atonement for our prenatal sin and shortcoming.

These instinctive reactions can't be extinguished or moderated after cooking, under fuming pressure, for so many years.  So when a gentleman casually mentions on public media that birth control in his day was cheap:  "...a gal put an aspirin between her knees...,"  well that is where the rip cord gets yanked and the parachute from Hell deploys.  How vulgar a reminder of how inherently a "piece of meat" a woman is regarded.  And how lascivious an old wag the speaker of such stomach-churning opinion must be.

And Now A Word From Our Sponsor, Mother God

Dear Daughters, You Are A Full Person

 Andrea Mitchell should have been wheeled off by paramedics if looks are any clue to her reaction.  When she resumed her interview, she might have suggested he should put his Viagra between his knees and enjoy the ride.

When I was a child, I was told little boys and little girls played by different rules.  "Why?" I asked.  "Because they do," I was informed.  That was the end of my understanding.  As a teen, an atmosphere developed around me which, as far as males were concerned, forecast every day as Sunday and me as the chicken.  I was never comfortable with being the main course of a man's lust.



Every Woman Is Strong, Sweet and Capable

Any way you view it, Underdog should be Woman's mascot.  Not only have we been short-changed, tainted as sin-inducing temptresses, we are the ones left high and dry in the unintended pregnancy dilemma, and birth control is being discussed as somehow wrong.  We have come a long way, Baby?

War on women, is that what you want?  In the words of Dirty Harry, "C'mon...Make my day!"  I'll just vote for the candidate with healthier opinions of women.  I'll just vote to keep the government out of my underwear.  I'll just vote for a candidate who trusts me to make my own moral decisions, which can only be superior to that of the average politician.

GUSTAV GETS A VALENTINE

Yesterday out of the blue, a female Canada Goose made herself at home in Gustav's fenced yard next to our house here on Waverly Lane.  He was euphoric and going through his list of "How to Please a Lady" tricks, which is extensive.  I kept a watchful eye to be sure she didn't tempt him to escape to the icy waters of Queen's Creek, which his white goose genes haven't adequately equipped him to survive if met by a predator.  He can't fly like his Canadian cousins.

Gustav Shows the Lady Around

They spent the day digging roots, eating chicken feed, drinking water, and taking naps in the sunshine.  Until I looked and he was missing, though she was still there unperturbed.  Panicking, I searched every inch  of fenced yard and shoreline, in case he had felt the call to wander.  No sign of him.  I searched the neighboring shorelines and scanned the distance for his white outline.  Then I went back to his fenced yard to see if I overlooked anything.  I noticed one of his plastic swimming pools upside down.  When I flipped it over, up rose Gustav from his dark confines.

Gustav Celebrates Being Liberated from His Pool Prison (behind him)

I surmised that in his eagerness to show off his equipment to the new lady, he planted a heavy webbed foot on the pool's rim and, being empty, it flipped over and cost him an embarrassing moment and a few minus points on the Love Scale with the lovely bird from the North.  To be sure, Gustav is not a gifted thinker, and so he accepted his fate and sat patiently in the dark waiting for a miracle, which I was happy and relieved to provide.  When darkness fell the two were enjoying mutual company.

 Valentines Day Comes Early for Gustav

Surprisingly, this morning the lady friend had departed leaving him only a memory.  Evidently it was only a one-night stand.  For a while he was upset, blaming himself for appearing klutzy with the swimming pool; but you can't keep a good goose down for long.  Still time before Valentines Day!

After All, There Are Lots of Fish in the Sea!