Dan of Riehl World View is hosting this week’s Carnival. I don’t expect I’ll be doing much writing tonight, as I will be prowling around the Carnival.

Special thanks to the always-engaging Mr. Snitch for compiling the posts for this week’s Carnival.

I’m sitting here drenched with sweat, but I wanted to write this while my latest lapse of good judgment is fresh in my cruller.

For reasons I will spare you, yesterday I did not have a chance to do the morning “walk”. Those of you who do that kind of thing regularly know that missing a day makes the following day’s walk more pressing. Unfortunately I awoke later than I had expected and after noodling around the house on the computer for a while and otherwise wasting time, it was 11 o’clock by the time I was ready to head out.

When I opened the front door of the air-conditioned house, it was like being inside a blast furnace. The sun was blazing, the air was heavy, still and chock full of humidity. Instead of immediately going back inside, I thought, “Don’t be a wimp, Jimbo. How bad can it be?”

It was very bad.

At about the 2/3 mark of a three and a half mile walk, the digital thermometer on the bank in the center of town was alternating between 91 and 92 degrees. Traffic was reasonably heavy at that time in the center of town, and the exhaust fumes from the cars and trucks stubbornly hung in the air.

I had drained my water bottle, and I had to choose between waiting in the sun to cross the busy street to buy a bottle of cold water or continue on just to get out of the heat. I chose the latter.

The last mile was most uncomfortable. Normally I use walking time to think about things to write, but today all I did was count steps until my private version of the Bataan Death March was over.

So, what kind of knucklehead goes out in the midday sun? That would be “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” … and Jimbo.

Would you like to win a prize for submitting the funniest videotape to “America’s Funniest Home Videos”? It’s easy!! All you have to do is to bring your video camera to the House by the Parkway the next time I am setting out and adjusting the lawn sprinkler.

The sprinkler is one of those oscillating units that looks like this. It is situated on the business end of a twenty-foot, green, reptilian hose that is coiled and ready to strike with the turn of the spigot. Once pressurized with water, it shoots a couple dozen little streams of water as the “sprayers” lazily move back and forth, essentially carpet-bombing the lawn with little water bomblets.

Of course, placement of the water bomber is key. Too far in one direction and it waters the sidewalk, while placed too far in the other direction it waters the house. A wrong move in the third or fourth direction results in watering the my driveway or my neighbor’s driveway, to the exclusion of a good portion of the lawn. Knowing this, I call upon past experience and place the unpressurized device where I believe the lawn might be optimally carpet bombed. Once it is placed, I unleash the water pressure that sets the water widget in motion.

I always put it in the wrong place.

So, now the unit has to be moved. Prudence would dictate that the water be shut off before tangling ass with the water bomber. However, proving that past experience doesn’t necessarily result in learning, I always assume that I can move the damned thing while it is oscillating and somehow manage not to get doused.

I carefully time the oscillations and dash up to the water-throwing beast and pick it up, deftly turning the water-spouting unit towards the ground while I reposition it. So far, so good.

However, when I flip the unit over so that it can resume carpet bombing the lawn, its multiple jets invariably blast water into my face and douse me from head to sharona. Strangely enough, this always shocks the hell out of me, once again, leaving no doubt that learning often simply does not take place.

The worst part is worrying that any of my neighbors might have seen what a horse’s ass I am, or that they had their video cameras at the ready.

Much has been written and broadcast about the efforts of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, to meet with the President in Crawford Texas. Arriving in Crawford in a bus on which was painted “Impeachment Tour,” Ms. Sheehan seeks to ask the President, among other things, “Why did you kill my son? What did my son die for?”

Without questioning the genuineness of this woman’s unfathomable grief, Kid Various, at The Idiom, posits an answer to her question. In addressing her question, Kid Various eloquently tells us why losing the war against Islamofascists is not an option.

A sample:

[T]he enemy cannot destroy the United States of America. Not with one nuclear weapon, not with ten. Nuclear strikes would be a disaster unprecedented in American history, but they could not destroy us. Only we can do that.

The post delves into the unthinkable consequences of this country’s failure to prevail. To say it is chilling would be a gross understatement.

Go read it all. Please.

Russ at TacJammer asks, “OK, now can we question their patriotism?”

Damned straight.

In a comment to this post (which focused on the rather alarming comments left on an old post), Mr. Helpful referred to his “Chef Tony” post and the collection of hilarious comments he had received, many from people who obviously (one wonders how) thought his post was on the level.

That caused me to remember THIS POST, which I wrote more than two years ago, and which still attracts some rather amazing comments. I think it’s fair to say that anyone with a teaspoon of gray matter in his or her cruller would know that the post is a joke. However, apparently there are people out there, light in the gray matter department, who thought it was the real deal.

There’s just no accounting for some folks.

Brent Bozell III wrote:

My son’s friend Todd Jones just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. At a celebratory gathering at his parents’ home, we chatted a while and I asked him what he thought were the biggest problems facing the military. Without hesitating, he shot back: “The terrorists, and the media.”

Read the whole thing.

I don’t recall ever having seen a Tennessee joke before, so I dedicate this to my friend Eric.

A Tennessee Mountain Woman went to the doctor and was told to go home and come back in a couple of days with a specimen.

When she got home, she asked her husband, “What is a specimen?”

He replied, “Danged if I know. Go next door and ask Edith. She’s a nurse.”

The woman went next door and came back in about twenty minutes with her clothes all torn and with multiple cuts and bruises on her face and body.

“What in the world happened?” asked her husband.

“Danged if I know,” she replies. “I asked Edith what a specimen was and she told me to go piss in a bottle. I told her to go fart in a jug and then all hell broke loose.”

Thanks to Brian, the Air Force Vet, for the e-mail

This frosts my Garden State stindeens.

The First Whammy came when our former governor hired his supremely unqualified boyfriend to preside over this state’s Homeland Security.

The Second Whammy came today when we learned that our current Acting Governor upheld the “Grand Tradition” instituted by Mr. McGreevey of handing out Homeland Security funds along party lines, rather than being based upon demonstrated need.

Enlighten New Jersey has the all the details.

I can only guess that this is what resulted in Newark having spent $300 thousand of Homeland Security funds on two air-conditioned garbage trucks.

Update: Roberto at DynamoBuzz is on the story as well.

It’s Sunday, and that means that it’s time for the Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers. Sharon at The Center of NJ Life is hosting this week’s Carnival.

Next week’s Carnival is being hosted by Riehl World View. If you would like to participate, please You can email your permalink to njcarnival@gmail.com

Now, go read.