Big Mike: It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad....

The Loved One was reclining on the living room sofa, gazing out the window at the lush Kentucky greenery as we chatted. One cat was nestled in the crook of her arm, another in the crook of her leg. She should have been as relaxed as the government regulations that have led to our current economic mess.

We were, in fact, talking about the economy, in addition to the wars, the environment and the overall state of the union - all of which, we agree, had been criminally mismanaged by George W. Bush and his consiglieres.

I'm glad we agree on such basic issues. I can't imagine sharing bathroom space, dinner dishes and the living room sofa with someone whose political views are as dissimilar as, say, those of Mary Matalin and James Carville. I recall when this horrifying two-headed gargoyle first made news, back in the early 90s. They were celebrated for their purported all-consuming love that overcame any differences they might have had regarding such trivialities as capital punishment, abortion, lending a hand to those in need and killing brown people for the sake of inexpensive gasoline. In fact, there were even a movie and a TV program based on their laugh-a-minute media personae.

So, despite the two of us singing to each other's choir, The Loved One seemed tense, almost bubbling over with ire.

"Didja hear that report on NPR this week?" she asked.

"No, which?"

"The one about the American woman in Iraq."

"Tell me all."

The Loved One raised herself up on her elbows. "It makes me so mad, I could..., I could...," she fumed. She paused for a moment to find the right words.

"Go on," I said.

"Well, she worked for Halliburton."

"Yeah, Dick Cheney's old outfit."

"The things I could do to Dick Cheney...," she spluttered.

"Uh huh."

"She went outside the barracks for a drink with four other Halliburton people, all men. One of them handed her a beer. She took a few sips and she was unconscious, just like that."

"They roofied her?"

"Yeah. Then they raped her, front and back. They manhandled her breasts so badly that they're deformed now. She woke up and one of the guys was still there, sleeping. She tried to get them prosecuted but guess what - private contractors in Iraq can't be prosecuted for crimes they commit there.

"It makes me so mad! She's there trying to protect the people of Iraq but who protects her - from her own people?"

"My god."

"Here's what I want to do," The Loved One said through narrowed eyes. "I'd like to sneak into Dick Cheney's house in disguise and torture him. You know how he doesn't think torture is all that bad, right? Only I'd do to him what those guys did to that woman and I'd make sure he was awake for it all. I'd want him to feel it all!"

Normally, The Loved One is the picture of compassion and sensitivity (except when we argue; but, I admit, I can enrage even a lamb at times.) For this brief moment, though, she was the emotional sibling of my next door neighbor Captain Billy, who regularly rages about Mexicans, Democrats, Arabs and other miscreants who, in his view, ought to be slaughtered.

The whole world seems to be mad. Kim Jong Il is waving his primitive little nukes around like a four-year-old displaying his penis. The Taliban is blowing up innocents in Pakistan. The Jews and the Palestinians, natch, are still at it. al Qaeda's probably cooking up some kind of perverse birthday cake for us at this very minute. And pasty, jowly, bilious white men like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly are shrieking at us every day on radio and TV, whipping the anencephalic dopes of this nation (of whom there are a scary many) into action.

You think the recent killings at a Marine recruitment center, a doctor's church in Omaha and the National Holocaust Museum are flukes? I'm afraid they're trumpet blasts for opposing cavalries. I'm afraid, period. When I say the whole world seems to be mad, I mean both angry and insane.

The world occasionally has a nervous breakdown. We may be headed for the padded room right now. And when my normally placid mate suddenly has a taste for blood, I wonder if the world has come unhinged already.

Big Mike: Aiming For Freedom

Startling fact: I'd never held a gun in my hand until I moved to Kentucky.

When The Loved One and I came down to Louisville two years ago, I found a massive outdoors store across the Ohio River in Clarksville. It bills itself as the largest of its kind east of the Mississippi.

What struck me first about the place, after I'd noted that it's only slightly smaller than NASA's Vertical Assembly Building, were the homey, ye-olde-shoppe-type signs on the front door directing customers to check in their weapons at the information desk. This policy, I'd learn after a few weeks in town, is rather liberal compared to those of grocery and liquor stores as well as government buildings here, all of which post prominent signs prohibiting people from carrying concealed firearms inside - period. Their policies regarding shotguns and rifles are left to the imagination.

Anyway, the outdoors store had a firearms department that would do for an NRA member what Viagra does for me. I'd never imagined that so many guns could be in one place outside of al Qaeda headquarters or the office of a hip-hop record producer.

I spent an hour and a half just looking at the guns. When I came to a case full of Glocks, the clerk asked me if I wanted to hold one.

"Oh, I don't know," I said nervously. "I've never held a gun before." The clerk's knees buckled. Once the shock wore off, he repeated his offer.

"In that case, you have to feel this," he said, pulling one out of the case. Gun aficionados seem to have a sensual relationship with their weapons. They talk about the feel of a gun in a way that makes it seem more like a sweetheart than a hunk of metal and polymer.

"Naw, that's alright," I said. "I don't have a license. I'm not a gun guy. I'd feel funny."

"C'mon."

"Really? Should I? You think it'd be OK?"

"Here."

He brought the Glock closer to me, like a pet shop clerk offering me a kitten. I tentatively grasped it. I actually curled my finger around the trigger and aimed the gun at a mannequin dressed in the latest camouflage.

"Isn't it beautiful?" he asked.

"Oh sure, " I replied, although I was lying. It wasn't beautiful. It wasn't anything at all other than a hunk of metal and polymer in my hand.

It took me moving to Kentucky to truly understand how deeply people in this great nation feel about their guns.

I listened in on a conversation between Printer Bob and All-American Allen at Dick's Pizza the other night. Barack Obama's face had appeared on the big screens and the two of them commenced lamenting the crumbling of our great nation. The talk got around to guns.

"I'll tell ya,"All-American Allen said, "when I went to the gun show in December, I never saw so much traffic in my life. You couldn't move."

"Oh yeah," said Printer Bob, who'd also attended.

"These people," All-American Allen continued, jerking a thumb toward the big screen, "they just don't get it. They don't realize that every time they say they're going to do something about guns, everybody goes out and buys more guns!"

"That's right," Printer Bob said. "Guaranteed. If they say the words gun control, the gun shows are packed for the next six months."

"Don't get me wrong," All-American Allen said, "I'm not like some of them. You see guys at the shows that have guns and ammunition buried in their backyards. I like guns but I'm not a nut."

"Same here. I only have the one gun," said Printer Bob.

"But look, if they come after my guns, they're never gonna get them. All I have to do is say I sold 'em to my friend. What are they gonna do about it?"

"You can never get rid of all the guns in this country."

"It's impossible! How are they gonna do it? The cow's out of the barn."

"This isn't France or Germany where they can just take 'em away."

"Whenever a country wants to take away your liberties, the first thing they do is take away your guns."

"We want our freedom," said Printer Bob.

"That's all," said All-American Allen. "That doesn't make us bad people. Believe me, I've never met a nicer, more caring group of people than gun owners. I mean it! If I had to take my wife to the hospital and I needed someone to take care of my kids, I'd call one of my friends - and they're all gun owners. All good people."

It's ironic that this exchange came a day after 26 people were killed in shooting sprees in Alabama and Germany.

"It sounds old but it's true," Printer Bob said. "Guns don't kill people; people kill people."

"I've never shot a person in my my life," All-American Allen said. "And I hope I don't have to."