So today my column on buying my daughter, who’s 5 years old, her first hand gun runs. Here’s a preview.

My little girl is growing up. That very special change is coming in her life. She is about to blossom into a new stage of maturity. As a father, I have to face facts.

She’s 5 now; it’s time to buy her first gun.

I actually picked out her first rifle back when she was just 3. It’s a Remington .22-caliber rifle, just like I had when I was her age.

Except hers is pink. And it has a Hello Kitty emblem inked on its pink butt. (Just like her mom.)

That one awaits her being an age when she can handle it. I’m thinking 8, like I was.

No, her “first gun” that she’ll get to keep will be a plastic BB-firing Airsoft replica of a hand gun. Preferably an H&K replica, because when she’s old enough, that’s probably what she’ll find in all the little fast-access gun safes that may be stashed around the house. Near all points of entry and common seating areas. (You never know if a burglar will clear the string of Claymore mines out front.)

The full column is here.

• A new group is forming to fight the horrendously bad idea of a city-owned convention center hotel in a city that can’t pay for paving the streets. Boo-ya. As Heywood Sanders, author of the only non-biased study on the subject out there, has shown, if it made business sense to build a convention center hotel someone would have done it for profit instead of needing to dip into taxpayer wallets.
• Speaking of rose-tinted budgeting, anyone get the idea that when it comes to this year’s City of Dallas budget, City Manager Mary Suhm is shaving the cat a little close?
• New evidence from the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis shows that yep, the American Dream is alive and well and income mobility is a fact. The rich get richer, and so do the poor. When they try. Turns out you have to work at staying poor in America, despite what you hear from the chattering class.
• When they hit lows on Monday, I bought some AIG at $3.61, WM at $2.14, and BAC at $27.10, following the same contrarian strategy that netted me a nice gain when I bought Bear Stearns back when it hit around $4 and sold it when it rose to above $13. It’s a big gamble with AIG and WM, but I think BAC is sure to make a strong comeback and quickly, while the other two are just rolling the dice. Sold a bunch of AMR at $11.61 just because I figured it was time (bought most at around $5 a few months back) and was surprised by its performance in the wake of Ike. Maybe jumped the gun on that, but time will tell.
• Hurricane Ike’s Aftermath: Zombies?

Watching Ike bear down on Houston from the safety of a beach house in Pensacola (yeah, I know, weird, huh?) I discussed with the family how what some people call price gouging is really a benefit for disaster areas. It enforces rational rationing and discourages hoarding. People don’t buy up all the gas or bottled water, and large families double and triple up in hotel rooms instead of taking up three or four rooms at the Motel 6.

I was going to write something more lengthy on this today but this guy beat me to the punch. Enjoy.

Playing catch-up so just a little brunch buffet for you this morning.

• SNL’s great Palin/Clinton skit
• Today’s Science Find: Google could become the first entity to make the dream of creating offshore floating havens away from government control and taxes. They want to set up floating data barges free from control. Is it a first small step toward fulfilling a longtime pie-in-the-sky libertarian dream of free-floating artificial island societies?
• Mark the London Sunday Telegraph as the first mainstream paper to predict the end of the Obamessiah’s inevitable rise. Why? Read on.
• Finally, you can answer the call for MORE COWBELL. Upload your favorite tune to this site and get all the cowbell you want or need. (h/t Radley Balko)

Here’s my upload, “Take on Me”.

I’ll be back on Monday.

So I’m messing with the Polaris yesterday after soccer practice when the thing pulls me into the pool. Naturally I had my wallet, iPhone and some important business cards in my pockets. The screen goes all crazy and I think I’m boned. I checked on some sites on how to save a wet iPhone, and they suggested putting it in a sealed container with rice for 24 to 48 hours. OK, I can do that.

Wife gets home half an hour later and she sees me with the phone, a container, and a cup of Uncle Ben’s in the pot, boiling away. Asks why. Light goes off. Points out I’m lucky most of my shoes are the slip on kind.

Word of McCain’s VP came just a little while ago. Already up and running — www.vpilf.com

Awe. Some.

So I wrote this column for the Dallas Morning News about why I chose to move to Plano, and I swear it became a Rorschach test. I talked about how Plano is pretty damn diverse, though at the same time what I wanted in my neighborhood was a lack of diversity when it came to personal values. Seemed reasonable. But a lot of people only read what they wanted to read into it, rather than the words that were actually there. As I told Tim at D, it topped at 270 responses, and they were still trickling in a week later. This is probably small potatoes compared to big time writers, but it blew me away. I’d say about 80 percent of readers got it. About 10 percent of the readers called me a Nazi. And the remainder were from Nazis with standing invitations to speak. Or date. They sent pictures. I threw up a little.

I’ll probably steer clear of this topic for a while, since I don’t want to be pigeon-holed as a one-trick pony, but it’s something to come back to sometime.

I love my 5-year-old fiercely, but sweet Jesus I hate soccer.