Don’t get excited.  No-one’s pregnant.  And no, we didn’t get another puppy.

I’ve introduced you all to Irish Woman’s alternate identity, Gopher Girl.  She takes on this guise when she indulges in the irrational need to dig up the yard, garden, or pond.

Well, that trait appears to follow her bloodline.  This weekend, BooBoo transformed into Captain Chaos!.*    The transformation apparently began while I was at the NRA Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, but became very evident on Saturday.

He’s discovered superheroes, and marketing works.  He’s begun wearing towels and sheets as a cape, racing through the house, climbing to ever-increasing heights, and jumping from them.  This was very evident when he played at the zoo’s playground on Sunday.

So far, this new obsession hasn’t caused any injuries that required more than a kiss.  However, he may be causing damage to his mother’s cardio-vascular system as it goes from normal to oh-Lord-he’s-climbing-the-curtains-again and back several times a day.

Hopefully, Captain Chaos! will be a rare visitor to the house.  He’s a good guy, but he can be a bit destructive in his enthusiasm.  Oh well, at least he’s not fixated on professional wrestling.

*The exclamation point is part of the name, like when you say Blackhawk!.

Sometime in the next few days, I’ll be cutting down the blog roll a bit.

Basically, if you haven’t posted in the past six months, you’re going to roll off.

If you maintain a blog, but haven’t posted in a long time and want to stay on my blog roll, drop me a comment and I’ll make sure to keep you on it.

If you notice that I got overzealous with the pruning shears and someone inadvertently gets whacked, feel free to squawk at me and I’ll correct the mistake.

The massive amounts of liquid sunshine we’ve been getting for the past few weeks are good for at least one thing.  Our cherry trees are loaded!

In today’s society, animals have two vital functions:   to be delicious and to fit well.

— Greg Proops

A gentleman in Illinois was arrested recently for keeping an alligator in his home.  He apparently felt it attracted females.

I’d like to poll my lady readers out there.  Given the choice between two men, who would you choose:

1. A stable, hard working, clean guy with a job.  His house is clean, and he has a beagle or a cat
2. A creepy loser who wants you to come over to his house to “see the alligator”.  His house smells like the reptile house at the zoo, and his fish tank has a bloody alligator in it

A farmer in Colorado is auctioning off a “panda cow” to benefit a charity for pandas.  Apparently the other wise black miniature cow has a white middle and white face with black spots over the eyes.

Since pandas are on the endangered species list, and cows are not, this may be the closest we will ever get to panda mignon.  The farmer maintains that there are only 24 of these cows in existence, which makes them rarer than actual pandas, but then again, it’s a cow.  If it’s not producing milk or methane, than it’s a walking meat locker.

So, we could be looking at panda steaks, panda sirloin, standing panda roasts, and of course, roast panda on a stick.  Sure, it’ll just be beef, but at least you won’t have Greenpeace on your lawn threatening your kids for eating it.

Reverand Paul over at Way Up North lost his father today.  Go on over and give him some good thoughts.

Now that we know all of the hardware that I saw in Pittsburgh, here are a few pics of the people:

First, the anti-gun protest that blew through on Saturday:

  

Seriously, there were about 50 or 60 people milling around at one of the intersections behind the convention center.  They were led by one of the local pastors in wanting the NRA leadership to come out and talk to them.  What the NRA board would be able to do, other than to cave in and make statements about guns that they knew were false is beyond me.  This is where I met Uncle, Nancy R., and her Sweet Daughter.

The police pretty much stood by for a few minutes, but after having to tell the crowd to not block the sidewalks and street one too many times, they ‘asked’ the group to move on.  Silly east coast hippies don’t even know to sit down when they’re being hassled by the man.

Next, we find  JayG, who got that faraway look while looking at an oversized bayonet:

I promise myself that eventually I will be financially able to do nothing but go to the range, write stuff, go to conferences and meet-ups, and take naps.

As much as I love the day job, it’s been hard to get my head back into the game after this weekend.

As I was cursing under my breath at the insanity of paying almost $50 to fill up the tank on a Nissan this weekend, it occurred to me that I really didn’t know how much the gas itself cost.  I knew what I paid for it, but how much of that is taxes and such?  Looking at the receipt, all I saw was the raw amount, not a list of prices for everything that’s included.

When you buy groceries, you don’t just get a short slip of paper with the final amount.  You get an itemized list of what you bought, and how much each of those items cost, along with a sub-total, the amount of tax due, and a grand total.

Why can’t they do that with gas receipts?  If the excise, sales, and other taxes were listed out, people might realize that it’s not the gas station that’s making a lot of money from high gas prices.  Heck, even the evil petroleum companies aren’t making that much more than they were when gas was retailing for $2 a gallon.  But I guarantee that the huge percentage of tax that’s paid on each and every dollar spent on fuel would cause even the biggest VW Beetle driving hippie to scream in frustration at the pump and slap a Gadsden Flag sticker on the bumper.