Photo by Andrew Derksen/FDACS/DPI

You wouldn't pick up a Lissachatina fulica, but your kid might.

Beautiful spring weather, it's not hurricane season yet, nothing to worry about outside except the occasional mosquito, giant deadly snail and annoying neighbor kid.

What-whut? Giant deadly snail?

Yep -- if various sightings around town are to be believed, the Giant African Land Snail (Lissachatina fulica) has made its way to Texas. (Fox News, go ahead and insert your joke about it being an undocumented alien right about here.)

No one knows how it got here. The snail can reach up to eight inches in length and nearly five inches in diameter -- in other words, a size no one in their right mind would ever touch. So when your kid runs into the kitchen holding it in his hands, you've got trouble.

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He didn't make the list, somehow

There were plenty of moments that you expect from an NRA Convention.

You expect to see fear-based rhetoric with the best of them -- you count on hearing the murmurs of confiscation and tyranny, of the misguided concept that the only way to keep a government at bay is the 9mm wedged into your wife's bra. (As Glenn Beck alluded to over the weekend, the only thing -- the only thing! -- keeping your wife or sister from rape is a gun. The only thing.) You expect to be filled with the sort of nationalism that would make Hirohito proud. You expect to question the future of this nation and your place in it.

But there are, fortunately, some things that escape expectation. There are aspects and people and moments that make you realize there's still a bit of variation among those who attend and in the ends they all carry with them. A list can't capture anywhere near the bizarreness of it all, but, well, we'll give it a shot:

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Texas: Where never is heard a discouraging word (for bidness).

Even as the ruins of the West fertilizer plant continue to serve as a reminder of the dangers of lax regulations on businesses, Governor Rick Perry keeps bragging about how few regulations there are in Texas affecting honest, civic-minded entrepreneurs who would never, ever cut what few corners exist here.

His latest brag: Chief Executive magazine has named Texas the "best state for business" for the ninth year in a row.

"This vote of confidence from business leaders across the nation further highlights that Texas is the epicenter for economic prosperity in this country," Perry said. "I will continue to promote the conservative principles of restrained spending, low taxes, predictable regulations and fair courts that have guided us over the last decade in order to ensure that Texas remains the nation's healthiest economy for the next ten years."

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Opposing slavery is the same as opposing gay rights, right?

I don't think there are many out there that would say Rick Perry is unprincipled. The epithets are plenty, and his mistakes are many, but there are few that would claim that Perry is anything approaching the slippery flip-floppery of Mitt Romney. He's a man of his word.

Thus, when Rick Perry, flying in the face of national sentiment, continues to believe that the Boy Scouts will somehow wither and die should they allow gay scout leaders, it comes as simply yet another nail in his principled coffin. It's not especially newsworthy. But when Perry says he believes opposing gay leaders is akin to, ahem, opposing slavery, well: Then we have something to write about.

First, the video proof:

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"Pass the turmeric potatoes, please..."

Back when Hair Balls was carefully considering which college to attend (i.e., flipping a coin), we were mostly concerned with what campus had the most liquor stores within walking distance. The furthest thing from our mind was whether any dining hall menus offered chickpea masala, like Rice University, which Greatist.com just named the fourth-healthiest college in the country.

Whole-grain-sandwiched between Virginia Tech and Washington University, Rice's cafeterias feature tons of vegetables. (We're quite proud of the fact that we never once even saw a vegetable in our six-and-half-year college career.)

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photo by DonkeyHotey

Death and taxes are the only certainties in life, but in the case of Gladys House, the actual tax bill has been a question she's been wrestling with since the late 1990s.

House is a longtime Fourth Ward activist and head of the Freedmen's Town Association who has fought for years to preserve the neighborhood -- founded by recently freed slaves after the Civil War -- from developers looking to tear down the shotgun homes and businesses so the area can be redeveloped. The efforts of developers have been largely successful and many have been priced out of the area in recent years. Now House may lose her own property to the tax collector.

Many of the buildings were abandoned and badly in need of repair in the area. In the late 1990s, House took over the home next door to hers, 3619 Hurley St., successfully laying claim to the property and completing a process known as adverse possession (basically a fancy term for squatter's rights), doing repair work and agreeing to pay the back taxes on the place to make the property her own. Taxes hadn't been paid on the place since 1975, she said.

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Ted Cruz kept the NRA Convention's audience enraptured through his legal explanations of the Second Amendment.

There was a point in Rick Santorum's history lesson, a point in the former Pennsylvania senator's spiel last Friday about the horrific transition President Obama has yet in store for America, when the 20,000-strong audience at the 2013 NRA Convention sat perfectly silent. Bathed in blue flood-light, all the star-and-stripe hats and silk-screen shirts remained rapt. They listened to Santorum rage on the secularism of the Obama Administration, of the parallels between the "godless" French Revolutionaries, the ones who "burned churches and killed clergy," and all that's coming from the White House.

"Obama's vision for the US is the same vision running wild in Europe for the past two centuries!" Santorum thundered, a bit grayer than last year, just as much faith in his oratory as before. "It's is a secular culture -- it's a dying culture!" That's why the French opted for fraternité -- brotherhood -- rather than paternité -- homage to the Father, to the Creator above. That's why it failed. That's why Napoleon, rather than Jésus-Christ, ground the French under his heel.

And just before Santorum's coup de grâce, just before Santorum -- whose speech was easily the best of the afternoon's lineup -- jumped the audience into its thirtieth standing ovation of the day, a quick scan of the crowd revealed a group of thousands soaking in the juxtaposition, soaking in the history, as much as possible. This was a group of people for whom citing America's greatness carried no sense of irony. This was the group for whom discussing America's position as the last and best bastion of freedom -- so long as we're not discussing gay marriage, or drug usage, or reproductive choice, or gambling in Texas -- was a given. This was a group that saw no daylight between the Second Amendment and an undying faith in democracy -- this was a people, to paraphrase Obama, who cling to guns as religion.

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Pastor Williams: Better at mug shots than social media, apparently

For those under 30, it's a distinct reality that much of what we've known of organized religion is one sex scandal after another. Granted, those of us raised in the Catholic Church had a closer look than most -- I'm still unsure if the Father Nguyen to whom I once confessed, and who was later defrocked under sexual allegation, is currently imprisoned or not -- but between Jack Schaap, Ted Haggard, and Eddie Long, it seems that you can't toss a bucket of holy water without hitting a pastor trying to leave his sexual imprint on today's kids.

Now, coming out of The Church of Corinth, located just outside Dallas, comes another purportedly lascivious pastor lusting after one of his congregation's youth. And not only is there audio proof attached to the allegations of sexual impropriety, but we also have accusations that the church the pastor's left behind if trying to prohibit anyone from sending their public thoughts and prayers to the girl he allegedly attempted to force to disrobe.

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We know exactly what we gonna do, what we gonna do, when they come for us: tell 'em it ain't our crack!

If you've ever been jealous of the (alleged) perps on "COPS," resplendent in their beer-soaked wife-beaters and mullets, shouting about how that crack rock in their back pocket wasn't really theirs because those really aren't their pants, as they're forced to the ground in front of their trailer while a baby-mama and a pit bull exchange tormented yelps, and eighteen officers stand watch with Tasers, now's your chance to shine: the venerable TV show, now in its 86th season, will soon be filming in Beaumont.

Beaumont Police Chief Jim Singletary told the Police News that a "COPS" producer called him and "said he did a little research on us. He's from Texas, and he likes to do Texas police departments. And he's heard some good things about our department."

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Photo by Barry Sigman

Let this wench put some ale in your mug.

Do you long to speak in a British accent all day? Do you feel comfortable in tights or cod pieces? Are you a huge fan of crying children who kick you in the shins, annoying teenagers who yank on your clothing and busty wenches? Well, my good fellow (or me lady), we may have just the thing for you because the Texas Renaissance Festival is holding auditions for six of its lead roles including King Henry VIII, the Fairy Princess and Mother Earth. Of course they always need busty wenches, aye, gov'nah?

It's a chance for you to flex those acting muscles and your jaw line as you scarf down turkey legs the size of your head. Auditions are also being held for other talents like juggling, story telling and music, so bring your lute and don't be afraid to swallow fire. This is the chance of a lifetime!

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