I walked into firearms division with a broad grin on my face.

“What, Linc.”

I grinned for a few more seconds and then said, “I would like to apply for a gun permit.”

I was met with a chorus of groans.  They know me so well. 

“Oh come now, as a citizen of this great country of ours, it is my constitutional right to be packing heat if  so desire!  I request, nay, I demand that you honor that right__”

An application booklet was tossed in my face.

“Easy, sheesh…” 

“Don’t forget you need 4 character references, and you’ll need to have it notarized too.”

“….cha–rac–ter… ref–er–ren–ces…” I repeated blankly.

“People who can vouch for you not being a whack job, and no we’re certainly not gonna do it since we know you.  Besides we’re not allowed.  You can use your co-workers though.”

“And you’ll give me full carry right?  Right, right, right?”  I jumped up and down.

“Go away please.”

I raced back to my section.

“Hey guys, can I use you as references so I can get a gun permit?”

Another chorus of groans.

“What is everybody constipated today?  Just sign the damned thing please.  I want my Beretta!”

I got 3 to sign in and offered the pen to my last co-worker, Mick.

“Are you kidding me??”  He scoffed.  “I think I’ll pass.”

“Well look at it this way.  If I couldn’t get a pistol license because you refused to vouch for me, I’ll just get a shotgun instead, and there’s no license required for that.  So which would you rather I have?”

He blinked a few times. 

“Gimme the pen.”

Today a coworker of mine took me to the firing range so I could learn how to shoot me a few guns.  Yep, as violent as I make myself out to be on this blog sometimes, the truth is, I’ve never actually used a firearm before.

Until today. 

The guy brought along a hefty arsenal too:  a 30 odd 6 rifle, a 357 Police Special, a Sig Sauer, a Beretta, and finally a weenie 22 Browning Buckmark.

Before I could get started he decided to have a little fun with the rifle.  He gears up and fires the first shot, and for a second I thought somebody had bombed the place.

“HOLY #%&^!!!”

“Yes, it does get that loud, Linc.  Calm down already.”

After he fired a few shots, he took out his firearms and began teaching me the basics.  I finally settled on trying out the Beretta, a 9mm I’ve always loved the shape of ever since I was a wee little one.  All the water pistols I used to play with had been shaped like the Beretta too.  I’m not sure why though, something about how it looked and felt just appealed to me. 

It was finally time for me to lock and load.  I put in a clip and pulled back on the slide, looking away and closing my eyes while I did it because I was afraid the thing might somehow accidentally explode on me.

“You’re embarrassing me, Linc.”

“Don’t annoy me when I’m holding a gun here.  Especially when I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

The Beretta was finally cocked and ready.  “Ok, so I just shoot now?”

“Yep, just go ahead and shoot.”

The target was only 10 yards out.  “Hmmmm, seems a little close, how about I move it back another ten yards?”

“20 yards??  For your first time?  I would start out close, but hey, if you wanna do that knock yourself out,” he chuckled.

I whistled as I cranked the handle to move the target back another 10 yards (a la Riggs from Lethal Weapon), then carefully took aim.  I squeezed the trigger all the way and the Beretta exploded.  I never saw the shell eject either, it all happened so fast.

Whoa…

I carefully took aim again and got more comfortable as I kept firing.  The Beretta was powerful, but it wasn’t overwhelming me like I thought it would.  In fact the gun felt pretty comfortable in my hand.  In a way it was love at first shot. 

I finished going through all 15 rounds, and my coworker immediately starts cranking the handle to bring back the target sheet.

“Are you #$%^ing kidding me?” he said in disbelief.

I looked at it.  It was a tight grouping that had mostly hit the upper torso, including one bullet that had hit the target’s eye.

“You sure you’ve never fired a gun before?”  He gave me a suspicious look.

“Never fired a gun in my entire life.”

“Well $%*& man, you’re a natural.”

Hee. 

I tried out the other firearms as well, though I quickly realized the Beretta was “my” gun.  I couldn’t even shoot as accurately with the pea shooter Buckmark as I did with the Beretta.  And the 357 Police Special?  Mother.  I shot it once and that was more than enough for me.  I don’t think even the Space Shuttle had that much kick, and yeah I understand it has great stopping power, but I think that only applies if you can actually manage to hit the target first, doncha think?  I don’t even know how off I had been with that shot because it never hit the practice sheet.

But the Beretta… ahhh the Beretta, the true love that I’ve been waiting for all my life.  At long last I think I’ve finally found something to keep me warm during those dark, cold, lonely nights. 

Yep, I got another rejection letter lined up, this time in response to a Craigslist ad that I could swear I never posted, and yet somehow it got posted anyway.   Don’t worry though, this is my last one because I am so, so, SO done with this whole dating-relationship crap.  I am finally going full on Lone Ranger here, and bite me all of you who think I can’t be happy being single.

So anyways, why am I rejecting this one?  Because dude, she totally looked like a guy.  Seriously.   She’s British though, so that might explain a few things, but still, dude, she really totally looked like a guy.  Here’s my farewell email to her:

Dear Look-Like-A-Man,

I wanted to like you.   I really did.  But see, here’s the thing: you look like a man.   A man wearing a pretty blonde wig, but a man nonetheless.

I can deal with plain looking women.  I can deal with women who are overweight.   I can deal with women who have disabilities and missing body parts (unless it’s the head maybe.)  I can even deal with women who watch reality shows.  I cannot however, in this life or the next, deal with a woman who looks like a man.

Even slightly mannish features creep me out in ways not even Richard Simmons could do.  There’s just no way I could see myself embracing you intimately or puckering up to give you a kissy without my inwards screaming out, “MAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!!!!”

So you see, it’s not you, it’s me.  I do hope though that you will someday meet that special guy who thinks a mustache on a woman is sexy, and that the two of you will be very happy together.  I however, must sadly follow another path.

So, best of luck to you, and here’s a little parting advice: do try to shave every now and then, ok?

Much love,

Lincoln

No of course I didn’t send it, but I was in a conundrum.  I didn’t want to blow her off, but I didn’t want to tell her straight up that I was only interested in women who looked like women either, so what’s a stud like me to do?

Then a thought came to me: make her think she’s rejecting ME instead.   Brilliant!

So I did some surfing to find the dweebiest, weeniest photo that still looked authentic enough for me to use as a picture of “myself,” then wrote her a friendly email in which I casually mentioned being heavily in debt and living with my parents, but she needn’t worry, I worked a prestigious job as a low-level clerk, so it should only be just a few more years before I can finally move out on my own.   Say, when I’m 36 or so…

Here’s the photo I used.  Poor guy, whoever he is I hope he never sees this post:

It’s been a few days now and I have yet to receive a response from her.  Dude, I awesomely rock.

No not me, the other guy. My photo gallery is now online, so this is a good opportunity for me to upload my first batch of photos, this being from when I passed through D.C. a couple of years. What an awesome place too, I definitely plan to go back for a more extended stay, if for no other reason than to have a heart to heart chat with my buddy Abe on why women are so evil. I should be uploading more photo albums from my collection, so stay tuned. You can comment on and rate the photos too, but the system is a bit rudimentary, so best to just fire up the slideshow and enjoy my photographic brilliance. 

Now that it’s been two years since I created this blog, where do I go from here?

Looking back, it’s interesting to see how things played out.  When I first started out in 2006, I blogged under the assumption that I would be eventually be attending law school later that fall.  I thought the name “Habitation of Justice” was a suitable name then, and the blog would have basically been a chronicle of my adventures in law school, as well as my subsequent journey into the legal profession.  Since I was so focused on getting everything in place so I’d be ready in time for school, I rarely posted for the first year.

Eventually though I had to defer my enrollment when my hopes for a scholarship fell through.  The deferment lasted a year, but nothing had really changed by the time it ended, so I had no choice but to withdraw.  I made one more try by attempting to go to school part-time at a local university instead, but eventually those plans fell through as well.

When it seemed like my whole future had collapsed, I eventually became fixated on making money off my blog, and spent the rest of 2007 working towards that end.  I devoured everything I could find about making money online, getting more and more frustrated because most of what I read were actually tips that I had already read off dozens of other sites, so I ended up reading the same fricking material over and over again.  Yet this was an idea I wanted to work so bad because I hated my job, and the allure of being able to live off the Internet was a really strong one.  2007 was all about establishing my blogging identity and doing whatever I could to bring in the traffic I needed so I could turn my blog into a money making machine.

That of course also met with miserable failure.  I had a huge identity crisis to deal with in that I just didn’t know what my blog should be about, and I knew I had to find a niche I was passionate about but still could make good money in.  I dabbled in doing paid reviews and other gimmicks here and there, but nothing really met with success.   All I could do was burn with envy at those who had become wildly successful with their own blogs, and nothing I could do could even remotely come near to their level of success.  The kicker was reading about a 19 year old weenie punk of a teenager who was raking in tens of thousands of dollars a month by running fake review sites containing hidden affiliate links.  They seemed to make money without even trying, and they did it with impunity.

Eventually I just gave up.  2008 began with me resigning myself to the fact that I would never get anywhere in life, much less with my blog.  I had no skills, no talent, nothing I could offer that could make this whole endeavor worthwhile.  The initial hope I had during the beginning of the year quickly dissipated as my health started to deteriorate, and I sunk even lower in despair and loneliness, fearing that I would forever be trapped in a dead end job and a dead end life.

But then somewhere along the way, in the midst of all that self-pity and despair, hope once again began to spring eternal.  The more I thought about law school, the more I began to believe God was doing me a favor.  I was happy enough to accept that such was His will, but what I was NOT happy about was being strung along for over a year when I kept asking and begging for confirmation that I was going down the right path.  Yet when I think about it, maybe it took so long to get an answer because I was meant to learn something in all that, and who knows what kind of chain of events that whole experience set off too, which I may not ever truly realize the depths of until later on in life.  They say sometimes the journey itself is more important than the destination, and I think that wise proverb applies here as well.

I also started to realize that part of the reason I had such an identity crisis was because I was trying to mimic other people’s lives (and subsequently the successes they enjoyed.)  I was trying to fit the square peg that I was into the circle of life, and as long as I continued to do that I’d never be able to move forward.  When I finally began to accept that my life was being defined by a complete different set of standards apart from the world’s own, I started to feel much better.  And my blog at long last began to take coherent shape.  My journal here is ultimately, a personal one, a catalog of both my physical and spiritual journey through life.  And that is probably what it will always be.

It also occurred to me that the driving force of my personality was my humor.  It was both sardonic and sententious, expressing an outright disdain of life’s petty silliness and the world’s stupidity, especially those of Christians who should know better.  Laced in sarcasm and saltiness, my voice was a fire breathing one, crying out in the wilderness that is the Internet, and because of it I would alienate all, and yet somehow, I would also allure all.  My life was nothing else, if not a paradox.  Here the laws of physics come to an end, and the laws that only God can control begin to take hold.

I still dream of a life of self sufficiency, where I no longer have to be tied down to one place, but can travel freely and live freely, (writing about these experiences on my blog of course), and doing those things that never would have been possible had I had a wife, a family, and a house that surely would have kept me chained down with obligations I doubt I could ever fulfill.

That’s why I feel the road calling out to me.  It beckons, with its hidden dangers (as well as hidden promises.)  There may soon come a day when I will don my leather jacket, and ride my Black Stallion to wherever that highway takes me, hoping to find that spiritual and physical dwelling where true justice reigns supreme.

The Habitation of Justice.  

With nothing better to do, I decided to hit the local mall to grab up some Auntie Em’s pretzels. Just as I was about to walk inside, I noticed this very pretty girl walking maybe a few feet behind me, so I held the door open for her.

I could see right away that she not only wasn’t going to say thank you, she wasn’t even acknowledging my existence, as if the door were electronic and had opened by itself. Ah well.

So I let go of the door.

The door was heavy and had slammed into her legs before she made it all the way through. Stunned, she took one angry look at me and said, “What the F&%# is wrong with you?!?”

Ah, so I do exist after all!

“This is the 21st century. Open your own damned door.” I then blew her a kiss and casually used another door to walk inside.

I could hear the obscenities continue behind me as I walked in. Man, what a mouth she had on her. Tee-hee.

My pretzel was extra tasty by the way.