Monday Monday How Could You Leave...

...and not take me.

I'm putting on my game face for Washington D.C., followed by the NRA Convention in Milwaukee later this week.

To get ready, I watched the Survivor finale — yes, I occasionally love the show — where final two competitor Danielle proved her IQ was three points lower than the weight, in ounces, of her breast implants. I think the coolest thing about the show is how we get to sit on our fat butts and watch perfectly normal people act against their own self-interest. Cheery, and perfect to get ready for Snakepit-Inside-The-Beltway!

I've also poured over the Internet to find the stories that will be on the tips of our Processing Unit this upcoming week. Of course, FLORIDA UNDER GATOR ATTACK immediately came to mind. I was able to reach a couple of my old shooting buddies in Florida at their underground bunkers, where they'd retreated as the huge prehistoric reptiles rampaged across the state. Here's their report, "Tastes like chicken!"

And speaking of edible fowl, Chicago has banned foie gras, or, as we referred to it when we were younger and less soooopisticated, "Yeech! Goose liver full of fat!" This from the WSJ OpinionJournal:

Slaughtering and butchering animals is pleasant neither to witness nor even to contemplate. One reaction to such brutal work is of course the moral response of vegetarianism, which can run from the chastest veganism (eating nothing that has eyes or is itself capable of giving birth to its own species) to that of a woman I recently heard about whose vegetarianism is restricted to refusing to eat only cute animals: no lambs, ducks, rabbits, Koala bears, but bring on the steaks and lobsters.

Yet if there is something repellent about the slaughtering of animals, this is very nearly counterbalanced by the sight and sounds of vegetarians in high moral dudgeon. For a pungent example, at a Chicago City Council committee hearing on the banning of foie gras, the actress Loretta Swit, an animal-rights activist, compared the forced feeding of geese and ducks to the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Do you think it's really fair to call Loretta Swit an "actress?" I'm not even sure she could make the "cute animals" cut.

Finally, as I root in my closet to see if there are any clean, or less dirty, SHOOTING GALLERY shirts to pack, I would like to take note of the Boulder "Hate Hotline." I've mentioned it in the past, but the Cliff Notes' version is that the city of Boulder is moving ahead with its plan to create a "Hate Hotline," where anyone can call and report any use of tactless language. The big issue, apparently, is whether the calls should be forwarded to the Boulder Police Department or the hand-wringing, peckerwood-baiting, brain-dead chimpanzees on the Boulder City Council. Personally, I think the calls should be routed to Katie Couric, who as we speak is tongue-kissing a monkey who can take digital pictures on national television. Or maybe Martha Stewart.

Peace!