it started with posts like this, from say uncle, a gun rights proponent, whose blog i read pretty much every day. yeah, he supports mccain, but no one is perfect. on the other hand, he’s pro rights, so he also supports glbt rights, and the pink pistols.

it was escalated with posts like this, from kynn, a “transgender::genderqueer” woman who takes issue with “pompous, idiotic gun-fetishists [who] need to shut the fuck up and stop trying to politicize tragedy to justify their own lunacy.”

words were exchanged, including the obligatory insults on trans appearances and subsequent apologies. and all the while, feeling torn between my affiliation with both what i’ll call “gun culture” and the “trans community™”.

why can’t we just “get along”?

i picked up a walther p22 in pink yesterday. i couldn’t resist. this is the first polymer framed handgun i’ve had, so it took a little getting used to, being much lighter than my smith & wesson 2206. i will say it’s almost as accurate. i really like the magazines, which have a protruding slide which is easy to depress when loading, and it fits nicely in my hand. of course, i shot it without cleaning it first, which may have led to several failures to cycle, but nothing that couldn’t be cleared simply by pulling back the slide.
(more…)

according to azcentral.com:

A 30-year-old man punched a 23-year-old woman in the face Thursday evening in an attempt to steal her vehicle, police reported.

But he failed, according to police.

The attempted robbery, in which he hit her on the left side of her face, took place in a Fry’s parking lot near West Peoria and North 35th avenues at about 6:10 p.m., police reported.

this is the fry’s where we shop, every sunday. and people wonder why i walk the streets armed.

abc15 news reports a shooting of a 15 year old boy outside a north phoenix restaurant, ming’s pagoda. this restaurant, which also features a neighborhood bar, is within walking distance of my house. my husband and i have had dinner there on several occasions, and their take-out chinese food is the best in the area. we both have also spent the better part of many an evening taking advantage of their reasonable pricing on their gin and tonics and other mixed drinks.

it’s scary to think that a bullet fired from their parking lot could easily end up in my back yard. in fact, my hubby mentioned that he saw a bunch of police cars down the street when he drove home saturday night. now we know why.

my hubby came across this in his internet travels, from cake wrecks. too funny. they should have put a lego gun in her hand.

i saw this walther p22 for sale at the range today. apparently, it’s so new, it doesn’t even appear on the walther website.

hmmm, it’s pink, it’s a .22, it’s distributed by smith & wesson - i want one.

a couple of weeks ago, i received a forwarded email at my office. it was one of those mass-distributed emails, which are pretty uncommon. it was described as something that would lighten our day. a joke. it was titled “best ‘out of office’ email responses“, the type that microsoft outlook will generate automatically if you set it to respond to emails while you are not in the office.

the first stated:

i am currently out of the office at a job interview and will reply to you if i fail to get the position. please be prepared for my mood.

pretty funny.

the second one stated:

you are receiving this automail notification because i am out of the office. if i was in, chances are you wouldn’t have received anything at all.

even funnier.

and so it went for the next 7 examples. apparently, they saved the best for last. it went:

i will be out of the office for the next two weeks for medical reasons. when i return, please refer to me as “lucille” instead of “steve”.

i had chuckled at all the ones previous. this one left me with a “deer in the headlights” reaction at first. i didn’t understand why the author thought it would be funny. then it hit me. it’s funny because it’s about trans people. trans women in particular. and trans women are funny.

it made me feel uncomfortable. and i still think about it every day. other people in my office must have read it, and perhaps found it funny. i wonder what they’d think if they knew my little “secret”.

i ran this situation past one of my friends who is gay, and whose opinion i trust. he chuckled when i told him that last one, so apparently he found it at least marginally funny. he explained that it was funny because transition just doesn’t happen like that. one doesn’t go away for two weeks and come back a different sex, and one certainly wouldn’t notify others through their auto response.

true. and perhaps i’m just being over-sensitive. i tend to be that way.

comments?

this is the carpet from my honda civic. why, you may ask, is it draped across the back of my husband’s truck? well, there was about an inch of water in places, underneath it, on the floor of my car.

(more…)

it was raining on the way home tonight. hard. i got soaked walking to my car, and the highway stopped dead about half way home. the road was flooded. actually, i was lucky, i was close to the front row, where everyone decided that the water on the road was too deep to pass. except for a few 18 wheelers. then a few pickups went through. and after waiting there about an hour, i decided to go for it. i believe that if the water was a half inch deeper, i’d still be there. but prayer and luck got me through. and i’m still digging out crud from my front grill and a/c.

i love my honda civic.

in other news, my stomach is still off. the doctor put me on anti-biotics. so i don’t know if i’m still sick, or if my normal reaction to the anti-biotics is what’s wrong. i’ll find out in 5 more days, i guess.

update:

continuing to scrape the crud from my front grille. yuk.