Happiness Is a Warm Gun?

Anyone who knows me can attest that overall, my political views run to the left. I was president of the student labor union in college, have voted Democrat in every election except one (that will be the subject of another Irk!!) and have even travelled overseas and spent time working on a collective farm picking plums in what was then the Soviet Union.
So would you be surprised if I wanted to get my Firearm Owners Identification card?
Conservatives that I have known over the years often would comment when they learned of my liberal leanings.
"You're a Democrat?  You want to repeal the 2nd Amendment!"
Thanks for the sweeping generalization.  You hit the nail on the head there!
Seriously, though, I do not have a problem with people owning firearms.  And like any other issue, there are varying degrees.  My view is I can understand owning a gun for protection, and for sport hunting.  I question some people who feel the need to have an arsenal under the guide of being a "collector".  Personally I have a hard time rationalizing why anyone outside of the police or armed forces would need an assault weapon and armor-piercing bullets.
So my interest runs towards practical knowledge and the technology of firearms.  I don't want to start a collection.  I don't even hunt, thought I know plenty of people who do, and I can see the appeal.  Just like I know plenty of people who fish.  God bless them.  I do not have the patience for it.  I just want to gain a familiarity with guns, now that I have the means and the interest to access them.
So, over the years, I have acquired several friends who own guns, are smart about their use of guns, and make a strong argument for gun ownership and gun stewardship.  They enjoy guns in a controlled setting, keep them locked away safely, and make a point of passing their knowledge and safety practices on to their children.  In a word, responsible.
Does this mean I'll be a card-carrying member of the NRA and adopt every plank of their platform?  Hell no!  Just like I can't follow blindly any other political or social cause.  (Christ, I'm a Democrat that voted Blagojevich into office.  Look where that led!  Let that be a lesson!  That is a whole another Irks by itself.  Stupid hair helmet idiot.)
So weigh in on this one.  My application is being processed as we speak.  For $10 and a passport photo I'm on my way to gun ownership.  I'll be curious to see how this develops.

My $300 Mid-Life Crisis

I know it's fairly trite to talk about or to have a mid-life crisis. Usually it was an excuse for some guy to make a poor decision in his life and then hold on to that poor decision with delusional strength, under the guise that some "crisis" prompted him to suddenly reevaluate his entire life. I always joked that it would be a sports car, or a tattoo or a mistress. Or a tattoo of a mistress in a sports car. But little did I know the object of my midlife crisis would creep up on me like some adoloescent urge.

I wanted to learn how to play guitar.

Not Rock Band guitar. And not electric guitar. Just plain acoustic guitar.

Now, I have no compulsion to be a guitar performer and grace the subways with folk songs for spare change, or to work some coffee house or open mic night. I always enjoyed folk-oriented rock, and found the guitar appealing. And with the years slowly passing by, I figured, why the hell not? If not now, when? And being 45 and not overly active, it dove-tailed perfectly into my sedentary lifestyle.
The advantage to learning to play guitar now and not in my youth is that now we have the internet.
I was able to browse around and research what would be the best guitar for a beginner. And since most guitar players are like any other enthusiasts, you can't shut them up when you ask them for their opinion.

So after some modest research I settled on my guitar of choice, a Yamaha FG700S.
Awesome! Now that I know WHAT to buy, I had to find where to buy it. So I did a search for local retailers and the first hit that came up was . . . Best Buy?

I was a little confused. Since when did Best Buy go into the musical instrument business? From the answer of my local Best Buy associate, about 3 years ago. Not every store has a musical instrument department, so it wasn't a well-known fact. And for the entire state of Illinois, there are three locations that sell them. And one was 10 minutes from my house.

It sounds like the start of an insult. "Where did you buy that guitar? Best Buy? Haw haw haw!"

Amazingly, the people at Best Buy were very knowledgable. They could play the instruments they sold. And the prices were as good as any online. Also, I wanted to talk to a person, and have somewhere I could go back to if I had questions. So off I went. Guitar: $200. Case: $50. Guitar Stand: $15. Total cost for my mid-lefe crisis, plus tax: $300.

Now, how much for that tattoo?

Six Flags - More Pain!

They say that your body has no memory for pain. That is a great survival adaptation that helped us evolve as a species from the plains of Africa, and enables us to keep returning to amusement parks!

Spent the day last Sunday with my brother and his family at Six Flags. Robyn and I had never been there as a couple, and neither one of us had been there since our teenage years. My brother had season passes for his family and accrued enough credits to get two free passes for the park for us. The admission is free, but you pay for the rides later!

The first ride that we went on was the American Eagle. For those of you who don't know this ride, it is a very large, relatively old wood frame roller coaster. I'm not saying the ride was rough and bumpy, but I had smoother rides on the railroads of the Soviet Union. At comparable speeds. And they served tea.

I was convinced that pieces were shaking off the cars as we went around, and that there had to be a park employee with a metal detector below retrieving them. Robyn and I exited the ride, each clutching different parts of our anatomy that had gotten wrenched. For her it was her neck. For myself, my lower back.

"Screw the signs about what height you need to be to ride this thing," I offered. "They need a sign stating the maximum age for riders, because I'm sure we're over it!".

While the ride was rough, it was not nausea-inducing. That's where our next ride comes in - the Demon. Now, I remember the Demon from my youth because it has loops and corkscrews and didn't jar an internal organ loose from its moorings. I was about two people from getting on the ride when they announced the ride would be delayed temporarily. I decided to stick it out, since the cars were so tantalizingly close. As I watched, they ran 2 sets of cars through empty. Then, as the third set pulled up, a park employee put on latex gloves and starting dragging a trash can to the back of the cars. Obviously the excitement was too much for one rider. As the attendant swabbed the seat and safety bars with disinfectant and paper towels, I daydreamed about the other riders getting enveloped in a mist of someone else's barf. I would hope there were a few free park passes for the asking for any victims after an event like that.

Since Kevin and his wife Jody had gone to Six Flags multiple times this summer, they were able to steer us clear of any other potential hazards.

"That ride over there is the Iron Wolf", Jody stated. "They say that if you have neck or back problems, that you shouldn't go on it. I found that anybody that HAS a neck or a back should avoid it, as it will be in pain once you leave the ride!"

We deferred to her wisdom. Besides, there was a food court somewhere that needed patronizing, right?

One entire area that didn't exist in my youth was the water park at Six Flags. We were able to enjoy several of the rides there, as well as the wave pool. The wave pool was fun, but for whatever stringent safety reason it was closed down for 15 minutes of every hour. I conjectured that it was either for:

a. Keeping people from getting exhausted in the unrelenting waves

b. Changing lifeguards so there were always attentive people overlooking the throngs; or

c. They needed time to fish the bodies out and clean the place, much like the floaters get cleared from the fish tanks at the K-Mart pet department every morning.

So visit Six Flags when you can. And if you get hurt, just remember, no one forced you to get on those things, you idiot!