i bought tickets to the gun show

No really -- I bought a ticket to the gun show on Saturday for $6. Sure, it was out in the nether regions of Northern Virginia's suburban sprawl (Big up Dale City!). And sure, the Nazi memorabilia and racist/sexist bumper stickers were flying off the makeshift booths as quickly as the Russian-made semi-automatics and German-made pistols (Hilary's place is in the house...just not the White House! Zing!). And sure, the whole shebang may or may not have been street legal (it definitely was not). But one thing's for certain -- I bought a goddamn ticket.


You know, there are very few times I feel awkward in situations. In fact, in the case that a rare awkward moment does arise, I quite enjoy that small moment of tension, mostly because I like to observe how others react to this type of meaningless distress (you can learn a lot about people this way). But until Saturday, never in my life have I felt so out-of-place, so awkward in any environment. Ever.

That says a lot because I've been in some pretty dang awkward situations. I've cried at work (awkward!); I've been caught talking sh*t about someone who ended up being within earshot just feet behind me (really awkward!); and, of course, I once got mistook for a Eastern European streetwalker by whom I thought was a regular gypsy cab driver, which resulted in me having to roll out of the moving vehicle (super-MacGyver-style awkward!).

But speaking typing of MacGyver, while at this shady gun show being gawked at not only as one of the few females in attendance, but as one of only two females with all of her teeth in attendance (the other one being my bestie The Law, of course), the illegal gun show wasn't a total loss. I did manage to find what might be the greatest book -- even perhaps better than True to the Game -- I've ever laid my dead, empty eyes on: the U.S. Army's "Boobytraps," published in 1965.

To quote from this prolific piece of literature: "Manufactured boobytraps are dirty trick devices...Certain basic principles, as old as warfare itself, must be followed to get optimum benefit from boobytraps. Knowledge of these principles will aid the soldier, not only in placing boobytraps expertly, but in detecting and avoiding those of the enemy." Whoa.

But more than the this work of literary importance's philosophical phraseology, are the detailed and informative diagrams, including:

The tricky boobytrap under bricks:

The classic boobytrap concealed in a book:



The ever-clever boobytrap in a pipe:



And, perhaps the dirtiest trick (literally) of them all, a boobytrap in your German chocolate (just think how much of a fudgey mess that would cause!):


This information is invaluable to me, as not only am I already quite familiar with explosive devices (wow, I think I can hear the government pen scrawling down my name on a terrorist watch list now...), but I write about such devices on a near-daily basis. We modern-day folk now refer to them as IEDs (improvised explosive devices), but you can count on the fact that I will now exclusively refer to them as boobytraps in any given professional situation. That is, the next time I pose a question to, say, some under secretary of science and technology, I will phrase it as follows:

"I understand there's been quite a bit of overlap between the Department of Homeland Security's explosives program and the Department of Defense's. How can you assure us that we --the taxpayer-at-large -- aren't paying for the same counter-boobytrapping technologies twice? How are the DHS and DoD counter boobytrapping programs working together to ensure money is flowing into different but cooperative counter-boobytrapping progams to help defeat boobytrapping both for use in the United States and overseas, where boobytrapping has really proven to be a problem? Boobytrap."

My job just got exponentially more awesome. Thank you possibly probably illegal gun show!

Now, why am I convinced this gun show may have been a little underground, you ask? Because when I tried to document my experience at the gun show, one of the many men with unusually bushy facial hair threatened to lynch me: "No photos in here! That's the quickest way to get kicked out and arrested!" Oh Dale City, Virginia! It's the only place I've ever been where shooting a gun is totally fine, but shooting a camera will get your "arrested." How fitting. But luckily, the man who looked like a scruffier Dog the Bounty Hunter, didn't wrestle wrastle the camera away from me and I was able to escape unscathed with one photo, which happens to sum up the gist of the shady-gun-show experience:


Yep. What's going on in this photo is exactly what it looks like. That dude is nonchalantly carrying a rifle in his right hand and is about to pick up a handgun with his left. However, this was not the most retardulous man to attend the gun show. Nope, it got much, much more retardulous, and, well, straight up retarded even, as the 30 or so minutes we were there wore on. But that incident, which I will call "Pardon the Expression: Socks," deserves its very own blog post. In fact, this whole week is going to be themed around this gun show, including posts on what to wear to the illegal gun show and what to do in and around Dale City after to the illegal gun show, including where to buy a tight romper. Yeah, I just said that. Romper. It's going to be one wild summer! Stay tuned...

But before I put the metaphorical bullet hole through the proverbial heart of this first gun-show-themed post, here's a photo I snapped of some the typical artwork being displayed on people's car windows in the gun show's parking lot:


That is some serious freedom painted all over the rear window of some guy's pick-up. Let that sh*t ring.