Gun hater stuck with gun

My loyal buddy of 55 years was kind enough to drive my car from Charleston to Asheville for me. Friendship is a wonderful thing and there is much more that unites us than divides us even though he is at the opposite end of the political spectrum from me. He’s like a serious Republican NRA-supporting dude and I am a kind-hearted enlightened Democrat.

Anyway, to get on with the story, Bud (not his real name) got home and realized he’d left his Glock 27 bad guy-whacker pistol in my glove compartment. (What's with these GOP NRA types that they can’t take a day drive up the interstate without deadly weaponry?! Do they think some deranged bleeding heart, liberal, government-lover is going to assault them at a rest stop?) All right, back on topic, I can't just leave it in the glove compartment because I think it's against the law to be packing heat in your car without a license unless you're in South Carolina where it's actually smiled upon. Now I have to get the damned thing out of the glove compartment and find a safe place to stow it. I guess I just carefully pull it out by the butt end while keeping the nozzle pointing away from anything I don't want to shoot. Apparently guns are liable to spray out bullets spontaneously at any time judging by the number of my friends and people I've met who have managed to accidentally get shot by their own gun.

Later: I got the gun out of the car and into my office. Now I've got to figure out how to safely take the bullets out and ship it to Bud. He tells me the bullets are in something called a magazine, which is not the same kind that you read. He said there is a little button on the left side that I can push to make the magazine drop out. I pushed the hell out of it and nothing drops out. Maybe I’m pushing the wrong thing. That’s scary.

Voila! I got the bullets separated from the pistol and didn’t shoot any holes in anything. Following Bud’s direction I was able to eject the magazine by pushing a little thumb button on the left side of the handle in a certain forwardish downward direction while carefully avoiding pulling the little pointy-finger lever under the bottom.

Uh oh! Turns out those sissy second amendment-hating liberals in government of all levels have made it very difficult for an innocent law-abiding person to ship a firearm to another innocent person. Bottom line: Costs over $50 and must be shipped from a licensed firearm shipper to a licensed firearm receiver.

I will just take it to Bud on my next trip past his town, currently scheduled for next month. If he has to shoot anyone before then he’ll just have to use his turkey gun.

A spider made me do it

I’m in the rehab hospital. No, I’m not a celebrity druggie; I’m an idiot. Here’s the story. I was up on a ladder pressure washing the pilings and girders under our Edisto Island house. Hot day, good fun, bathing suit, barefoot. Almost done when a huge black spider dashed out from a crevice right over my head. I don’t like spiders so I commenced a high-speed emergency descent. When I got to the bottom rung I stepped back off onto the concrete floor. Just one problem! It wasn’t the bottom rung and I stepped off into thin air. Suddenly my frail nearly naked body was speeding toward cruel hard concrete at about 900 miles per hour. Fractured left side humerus and femur near the top of each. Sassy spider looked down at me writhing on floor for ten minutes awaiting rescue. Spouse found me and kindly hosed off dirty floor all around me so things would be tidy for the ambulance guys.

Fast forward 17 days. I now have some metal pins in my femur and am just able to walk on a cane with a spotter. Left arm still strapped tightly to my side. Nice ladies help me go pee and poo. They promise me hellish agony when the time comes to unstrap my arm and start cranking it around. Due for discharge and further outpatient therapy beginning on June 15. Will convalesce at my sister’s house until well enough to travel to Asheville for the rest of the summer. Good news is it’s supposed to heal completely to original strength and I got out of my dreaded trip to Spain.

Fast forward again 58 days from fall. I can drive, walk in almost a normal gait, ascend and descend stairs normally, and scratch my head with my injured arm. Punishing physical therapy and home exercise continue and I continue to slowly improve. No jump rope or pull-ups though. I think I will be as normal as anyone my age eventually.

The South Carolina Light Bulb

Failing schools, genocide in Libya, budget deficits, drunk drivers killing 17,000 people per year nationally, earthquakes, tsunamis, scary unions wanting to bargain collectively. Just when we thought we had heard it all, we learn that the government wants to tell us what kind of light bulbs we can buy, starting in 2012. They want us to use those sissy energy saving “Curly Friggin’ Lightbulbs” (CFLs for short) Isn’t that the coup de gras for our personal freedom!

We in South Carolina don’t have to take this. Representative Bill Sandifer (Republican Oconee County) is going to attract a manufacturer here to build a factory to make old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs like Thomas Edison invented in the late 1800’s. Apparently if they are manufactured here, we can still sell them here. Heck; we should take this to the next level and make it a state constitutional amendment. We already have a “right to hunt” amendment. We could have a “right to buy horridly inefficient light bulbs” amendment. Yeah! And even a “right to eat junk food while praying in school” amendment. OK, I’m getting off topic. Just got a little excited about how SC could set the nation’s pace for freedom.

How will we get a manufacturing facility for obsolete light bulbs here? Easy! Give them giant tax breaks, and fund training programs for their workers. We did it with Boeing. We can do it for obsolete light bulbs. If need be we can even give them big subsidies. Everyone knows that if you give money to rich businessmen they will invest it in ways to create jobs and stimulate the economy.

Why should we support this effort to keep ourselves in the 19th century? There are lots of reasons. Everyone knows the 19th century was the best century. The old fashioned light bulbs are only 10% efficient so we can get 90% heat out of them in the winter at only three times the cost of heating with a heat pump. Two out of three women say the 19th century bulbs make their skin look better and warmer. In fact it really is warmer because they are so inefficient they give off tens times more heat than light. If you think that doesn’t make you look good, go to Light Your Face and have somebody look at your face. It lights up your face like a super inefficient 19th century light bulb. Oh! Don’t make video calls to movie stars with this; they’ll fall in love with you and start stalking you.

Funny Superbowl Commercials

I watched the Superbowl XYZ (or whatever the Roman numeral for 45 is) along with the rest of you. The commercials were truly entertaining. There was one where a fellow fell through a rotten wooden bridge and smashed his testicles. There was another where a whole bunch of different guys were getting violently kicked and kneed in the testicles with near lethal force. There was one where a baby got smashed into a glass window and another where a giant log smashed into an elderly lady. There was one where a robber had a gun in the face of a guy in a convenience store threatening to take his life while another guy lay writhing in agony on the floor with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Ha ha ha ha! Isn't it fun to watch other people get painfully injured?! Oh oh, another great one was the one where somebody threw a pop can with such force that it smashed a young woman in the face and completely knocked her off her park bench. Oh, crack me up! Ha ha, get it? CRACK me up. How will they top this next year? I can’t wait. Maybe they can have people getting their eyes gouged out or actually killed completely dead. Sooooo funny!
Actually I’m being sarcastic, which is supposed to be the lowest form of humor. That’s probably why you aren’t laughing. I miss the gentler more refined commercials of a few years ago like the Budweiser one where the greatest violence was when a couple just got singed a little when they accidentally ignited a brewery horse's bowel gas. And wardrobe malfunctions! That one with Janet Jackson was GREAT. I know that was the half time show but why can’t we have more of that in the commercials?

Boo may come to Edisto Island

Brace yourself. He wants to move to Edisto and bring Boo. I am speaking of Kiawah resident, Graham Banks, a self-described poet, investor, day-trader, and dog owner. Mr. Banks is fed up with getting big fines on Kiawah Island for repeatedly having his dog Boo on the beach unleashed. According to a February 9, 2011 Post and Courier article, he plans to teach Kiawah a lesson. He aims to sell his Kiawah house and move to Edisto Island where he figures it’s more “laid back southern”.
I am a very laid-back grits and collards-eating Edisto Island resident, born and raised in the middle of South Carolina. However, I really do not need Boo or others of his species scampering unleashed and sandy-footed on my beach towel, shaking water on me, and shoving his big wet sniffing nose where I do not care to be sniffed. My two-year-old granddaughter does not like getting body slammed by affectionate forty-pound carnivores laying siege to her and her sand castles. Few of us good old freedom-loving southern boys and girls on Edisto really want unleashed dogs digging up turtle nests and defecating big steaming piles of disease-causing coliforms in the sand, even if their owners do scoop when watched.
Town of Edisto Beach rules require that dogs on the beach be leashed May 1 through October 31 and of course owners must scoop year-round. Dogs anywhere in town anytime must be under “verbal command” of their owners when off leash. If Mr. Banks does not intend to live by the democratically established rules of the community, perhaps he and Boo can seek their Utopia somewhere far away. Maybe there is a place where the prestige of having a poet and day-trader for a neighbor outweighs all else.

Man's Best Friend

She yaps at me every day to go for a walk with her. Then she scampers all over everyone’s yard inspecting their new shrubs and things while I holler for her to come back before we get into trouble with the neighbors. At least this ritual ensures that I get my daily exercise. She’s not always nuts about me watching television but she will sometimes reconcile and flop partially across my lap to be stroked. She’s very protective of my children and grandchildren although she gets restless in the car when we drive to visit them; we sometimes have to stop for exercise breaks and it’s hard to round her up again. She’s a good early warning alert because her acute hearing and sense of smell pick up anything unusual long before I can detect it. My friends all adore her. Most heartwarming of all, she is very loyal and comes bounding to greet me when I return from a trip. Yep…though I sometimes complain about her, I really really love my wife.

Shameless: Coarse language and Insufficient Nudity

Last night we watched Shameless, the much-hyped new edgy Showtime mini-series. Normally we don’t get Showtime but our cable TV provider is doing a free week of it for promotion. Anyway, the show is well named. It is about a trashy single-parent family where everyone uses coarse language to discuss their sex lives and even normal everyday events like going to school or getting arrested. The Dad is drunk most of the time and passes out on the floor every night. They’re just the type of family we all wish we had. Right?

Why does the entertainment industry think viewers are dying to hear coarse language? I’m not a prude; I just don’t see the entertainment value in it. I don’t use coarse language in normal conversation and neither do others with whom I associate…too much. Coarse language should be reserved for special moments like dealing with an inane robotic call director when trying to report a lost credit card, or getting your finger snapped in a mouse trap you’re trying to set – both of which happened to me yesterday. If I become habituated to coarse language in ordinary conversation it will lose its efficacy for these important moments.

There are scant moments of sex and nudity in the show. But somehow the producers think the most exciting sex is on the kitchen sink with dishes getting broken with every lunge. Obviously they have a lot to learn.

The bright spot in the show is Fiona, a lovely young woman and the only character with a shred of discipline and responsibility. She also happens to be smart and deliciously curvy. We need to see more of her…not just more screen time but more surface area. She should be innocently nude in all the scenes, while speaking with a civil tongue of course. It wouldn’t matter what she’s doing. She could be baking cookies, doing her income tax, or practicing her yoga. I’d subscribe to Showtime for that!