Overthunk

Last night*, I went to the gun store. It's newish, having appeared in the local shopping center next to the Target about six months ago. I'd been curious about it, but didn't have a reason to go, really. I own an inherited firearm, a cheap, crappy, tiny .22 with a pink plastic-inlaid handle that my mama passed on to me when she passed onto the next plane. I wasn't raised with guns, really, unless you count the fact that about the time I was 10 or 11 years old, my mother must've visited one of the pawn shops that weren't too far from my childhood home, and purchased a gun. Then another. And a third. I'm not sure why she felt she needed this diminutive arsenal, except that she was rather paranoid. (That's what comes of reading forests' worth of true crime pulp.) She drove around, for probably the last 25 years of her life, with a very likely loaded gun under the seat of her taupe Toyota Camry. Any attempt by me to convince her that this was dangerous f...

Snapped outside Wal-Mart as I hopped out of my hippie-ass Prius...

I've lived in Texas all my life, and I've made it through some damned hot summers. Yet only today, and never before, have I witnessed this: cows going for a dip in the afternoon sun.* Of about a dozen cows standing around in the pasture as I sped past, two seemed a little bit smarter than the others. They were skinny dipping, even, and seemed to be smiling, and perhaps snorting the bovine version of the following playlet: Black and White Cow: "Vaya Con Dios, bitches!! We're swimming!! In your and our water hole, even! We are one step closer to taking down our human oppressors! " Black Cow: "Word! I'm sick of just standing here absorbing the sun's rays!" 'Course, what cows actually say to one another as they graze in the blazing sun will perhaps never be known. Any scientists fool enough to try to trek all the way out to the water hole on a 104-degree day like today while lugging heavy data recording instruments and wearing white lab coats w...

It's road trip time. Tomorrow I embark on a 500 mile journey towards Big Bend National Park, in southwest Texas, into the Chihuahuan Desert -- the largest in North America. It will be my first excursion into such a place, though for unknown reasons, deserts have always fascinated me. Perhaps, on this trip, I'll find out why. In any case, hasta luego! See y'all on the flip side!

It's not often one gets the opportunity to see a beating taking place outside a chain grocery store. B ut a few weeks past, before the near death experience that is driving in Plano, Texas, a compadre and I witnessed just that. As we were walking up to buy some shells and cheese or red delicious apples or the like, violence was ensuing. Down on the concrete parking lot, 3 or 4 grown white men chased, apprehended, and then held down a black teenage boy. We stood and watched for a moment, stunned. "They're gonna get themselves sued," I said. Some bystanders told us he'd been shoplifting, and we learned MUCH later, had pushed down a female employee or customer while trying to escape from the store, hence the chase. Quickly a division sprang up between my friend and I. She ran to assist the kid, and got right in the middle of it, telling the red-shirted store manager what for. I stood back, not wanting to get involved with a kid who, I thought, was making a stupid mis...