My friend, the Amazing Sol Lipkin, turned 100 last Friday, but that didn’t stop him from showing up on Monday for the Memorial Day Parade. This year, he got to ride the parade route in a vintage Cadillac convertible, while the rest of had to walk. Those hundred-year-old vets get all the damned breaks.

Anyway, I will be away from the computer, as several of us will be here attending the Big Bash being thrown by Sol’s family.

It promises to be quite a shindig.

UPDATE: Here is a news story about the party.

Holy crap! I received an e-mail from the U.S. Embassy in Chiang Mai,Thailand advising me that I was selected to receive a Visa that will allow me to come to the United States to “start a new life and work.”

Here are some of the details (exactly as they appear in the e-mail):

Congratulations,you have been selected as one of the lucky winners of the US VISA through our internet email extracting and screening machine,your application was applied and processed by our internet email extracting and screening machine which randomly extracts and scans millions of email adresses across the world.

This Special visa programme is new and was innovated by the US embassy in Kuala lumpur Malaysia last year november.The US Consulate in Chiang Mai launched the programme this year november,the programme is designed to be held every year ending.The aim and objectives of the programme is to give free visas to citizens of developing countries around the world to enable them travel to the US and start a new life and work.The Chiang Mai consulate released 12 visas in this regards and hopes to increase the visa number to 24 by late next year,you are among the 12 lucky people that won the visa and among the 5 foreigners that won the visa,7 visas were won by Thai nationals.

I hadn’t known about these internet email extracting and screening machines. Pretty fancy stuff, I think. I am speechless at the thought of being only one of 5 foreigners selected by this machine to win the visa. Amazin’.

All I have to do now is to send my name and address, scanned copies of my passport and the passports of family members and send the U.S. Embassy’s designated agent $355.

Once I do that, I will be in Fat City, because the following will then happen:

Providing the above requirements will assure you your visa certificate/acknowledgement card and visa security pin code which we shall scan to your email adress.With the visa certificate/acknowledgement card and pincode we shall send to you,the U.S embassy in your home country or your country of residence will stamp the 10 years multiple entry visa on your/members of your family international passport within 3 working days immediately you present these documents to them because the Chiang mai Cosulate has confirmed your visa,all they will do is to log in to the U.S Immigration network database and key in your visa pincode there they will find your visa winning details.

I am very impressed by the simplicity of the plan and the clarity with which it is presented. This is a sweet deal.

However, I absolutely must respond within 31 days, or I could lose this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity:

According to the united states code of conduct in the constitution Vol:189/965:Act 220Sl guiding all immigrations,green cards,visas and permit agencies:if non-response after 31 days you receive this message,your winners status shall reveal no interest and we would in response refer your visa certificate/code and acknowledgement card back to the U.S government/immigrations service center.

Damn! I’m glad the embassy reminded me about that pesky “united states code of conduct in the constitution Vol. 189/965: Act 220SI”. I sure as hell would not want my “winners status” to “reveal no interest”.

I truly feel sorry for all you non-winners, but I’m running out to Costco to buy a scanner so that I can get that passport information off to the embassy right away.

The thought of a new life in the U.S. makes me tingle.

I managed to cut myself shaving this morning.

I don’t know if it happened because I was in a hurry, or because, at the time of the incident, I was suffering through listening to excerpts of Hillary’s senatorial nomination acceptance. Perhaps it was both.

In any event, it wasn’t one of those little nicks that you don’t even notice until you’re finished shaving. No, I knew instantly by the pain in the region between my upper lip and nose that I had done some unintended facial surgery on myself.

The damned cut began to bleed immediately. I did the direct pressure thing, using toilet paper, of course, but it would not stop. I couldn’t just stand there all damned morning smooshing a wad of toilet paper against my lip. So, I then tore off a patch of toilet paper and just plastered it against the bleeding gash, thereby freeing up my hands to continue with the get-ready-for-work routine. The toilet paper patch now looked like a miniature Japanese flag on my upper lip, but it seemed to stem the blood tide long enough to permit me to brush my teeth, brush my great farookin’ hair and get dressed for work.

There was no way I wanted to show up at work with a bloody patch of toilet paper on my moosh, so I tried to carefully remove it from the gash. Ouch! This only served to re-open the self-inflicted wound. It appeared that this cut was about ready to volunteer to bleed all damned day, and I could not hang around home and wait for it to stop. I had to leave for work.

I then remembered a remedy I had used a few years ago on such an occasion. I ran a tiny bit of tap water over a tea bag and took it with me in the car where I pressed it against the bleeding hole in my face, hoping that it would stop the bleeding within the forty minutes or so it would take me to get to work.

The bleeding stopped within two blocks of my house. Amazing. That’s the way it worked the last time I tried it on a nasty cut. I learned about this useful property of the pedestrian tea bag years ago by reading this book, in which the author (an intern in an emergency room) managed to stop what appeared by be an intractable nosebleed** on a patient by using a tea bag — a remedy taught to him not in medical school, but by his Jewish mother.

The good news was that I was no longer bleeding. The bad news was that I had to go through the day with a scab on my lip that looks like a big ol’ nasty booger.

**The Tea Bag Treatment did not stop this guy’s nosebleed at Eric’s house in Tennessee, but I think that’s because I failed to remember that he probably should have wet the tea bag more and let those strong tea-drippings wend their way into his nose. My bad.

Note (Not that it’s all that noteworthy): As I was trying to keep from bleeding to death by holding a wad of asswipe against my lip, I was wishing I had an old-fashioned styptic pencil, which is a pre-historic widget that looks like a pointed piece of chalk that one uses to stop bleeding from razor nicks and cuts. My father used one, and I had one a zillion years ago. I wondered whether one can still buy a styptic pencil, and it turns out that they are still available. I’ll be buying one this week, but it probably won’t beat the Trusty Tea Bag when it comes to nasty bleeds.

Possible things to say when the Feds find $90,000.00 in cash wrapped in aluminum foil inside Tupperware containers in your freezer.

1. “Oh my! I went to a covered dish party, and I must have taken the wrong dish home.”

2. “Money? I don’t know anything about any money! Karl Rove must have broken into my house and put that in my freezer. Damned Republicans!”

3. “Money? What money? A guy came to my front door and said he was afraid his fish sticks would thaw before he got home, and he asked me to put them in my freezer for him and that he would come by tomorrow to pick them up. What a jokester!”

4. “It’s not my money. I only borrowed it from a guy to use in connection with my private investigation of a Republican appliance repairman I suspect of being dishonest.”

5. “That’s not my freezer! Someone, probably a Republican, switched freezers.”

The one thing you should say when the Feds tell you that the $90,000.00 was comprised of the marked bills that they videotaped you accepting from an FBI Informant from whom you solicited a bribe.

1.

I meant to post this the day after my return from Florida, but Life 101 got in the way. Better late than never.

There is nothing that will immediately suck the vacation-induced calm out of you like the mandatory trip to the supermarket after a vacation to replenish perishables (and to buy lots of sensible food, which you’ve sworn to begin eating regularly). My trip yesterday proved the rule.

Coming from the wide-aisled, brightly-lit Publix supermarket in Fort Myers Beach to the Black Hole of Calcutta atmosphere of our local supermarket was enough of a shocker, but the crush of Garden State Vulgarians and mouth breathers in the place was the clincher.

Parking Lot Assholes. These are the knuckleheads who, upon sensing that a shopper walking away from the store with a full cart of bagged groceries just might be vacating a parking spot, immediately stop the car and flip on the directional signal, taking it on the come that the apparently-departing shopper will walk to a nearby car. Of course no one can pass this jackass while he plays parking spot roulette.

There are, of course, numerous open parking spots just past those being guarded by the Parking Lot Asshole, but God forbid the Parking Lot Asshole takes one of those spots and has to walk an extra twenty steps to the store.

Even if the apparently-departing shopper does walk to one of the cars being guarded by the Parking Lot Asshole, all the poor slobs behind the Parking Lot Asshole still have to wait while the now clearly departing shopper loads her groceries into the trunk, enters the car, fishes through her purse, and lights up a smoke before starting the car.

If I were King, being a Parking Lot Asshole would be a disorderly persons offense that would get the offender mandatory jail time.

Negligent Indulgent Parents. I have a flash for all the people who think it’s perfectly fine to let their kiddies push the shopping cart around. It’s not fine. In fact, it’s a gottdamned nuisance. The kiddies have no sense that other people are trying to navigate a crowded aisles, and they invariably either smack into you with the cart or completely block the aisle, while mom or dad surveys the array of canned soup. I don’t blame the kids; they don’t know any better, but I damned sure do blame their dipshit parents who ought to know better.

The Old Lady and the Check. After spending more than an hour being jostled, jammed and frustrated by an interminable wait at the deli counter because of a clutch of people who insist on purchasing a quarter pound of every-gottdamned-thing in the deli case, I finally made it to the checkout line. Foolishly I thought I had finally caught a break, as there was only one person ahead of me. She was an old lady who was accompanied by a woman in her late forties or early fifties whom I assumed to be the lady’s daughter.

After her order was run through the scanner (and the daughter did not lift a finger to put a single item in a bag), it was time to pay. The cashier told the old lady what the final amount was, and the old lady looked to the daughter to translate what the cashier said into some unidentifiable East Bloc language.

I immediately knew, Jimbo, this is trouble.

There was several back and forth exchanges between the old lady and the cashier, each having to be translated by the daughter. Obviously, the outcome of this tripartite discussion was that the old lady could pay by check.

Of course, the old lady had to make multiple passes through her purse the size of a pillowcase to locate and produce her checkbook.

Then, she began the process of writing the check. I swear that one could have written out the entire Declaration of Independence in longhand in the time it took the old lady to write the check. She would write a little, look up at the register total, hold a discussion with her daughter in the unidentifiable East Bloc language, then write some more, look up again at the register and hold yet another East Bloc conversation with the daughter. This went on until I thought my head would explode.

Finally … finally … she handed the check to the cashier.

The cashier looked at the check and said, “You wrote this check out for $100 more than the total. I can’t accept it.”

This triggered more tripartite conversation, during which the cashier explained that store policy only permitted taking checks for no more than $25 higher than the total.

The cashier left her post to fetch the manager. After a few minutes, she returned with the manager, and the manager again explained that the store would not take the check for $100 more than the total.

I assume that the words “store policy” didn’t translate well into the unidentifiable East Bloc language.

There appeared to be a standoff.

I began to mutter, ”Yo, this is a goddamned supermarket, not a goddamned bank.” Mrs. Parkway shooshed me, lest I create a “scene”. I could feel my blood pressure hitting the red zone.

The Manager then disappeared to consult with her manager. She returned five minutes later with the verdict, which was that the old lady could change the amount on the check by cleanly striking out what she had previously written. She could write in a new amount and initial the changes. Five more minutes of tripartite discussion ensued.

By this time, I was aggravated enough to have a bathroom accident.

Once it was explained to the old lady in the unidentifiable East Bloc language what was necessary if the old lady was to leave the store with groceries, she began the process of correcting the previously written check. This went a bit faster, as one could only have written the preamble to the Declaration of Independence in longhand in the time it took the old lady to change the previously written check.

What really frosted my stindeens was that at no time did it seem to bother the old lady or her East Bloc speaking daughter that other people had been waiting behind them for nigh on to twenty minutes while they screwed around with a check for about forty bucks worth of groceries and tried to get a hundred bucks in cash.

I’ll bet they were also Parking Lot Assholes.

This year, as in past years, I marched with my American Legion Post in the local Memorial Day Parade. I carried a rifle as part of the color guard that led our unit down the main street in town. Unfortunately, with the exception of the two blocks that comprise the center of town, there were pitifully few spectators.

As we sweated our way down the largely empty street followed by the high school band, I found myself wondering why I bothered to participate. Sure, there were isolated pockets of people at the curb who clapped at we marched by, but it was not like parades of years ago with crowds along the entire parade route large enough to attract the pretzel and balloon vendors who always seemed to appear each year from God knows where. This year the pretzlel and balloon vendors were elsewhere.

Just then, a lady along the parade route stepped off the curb to hand me three lilies tied together with a red, white and blue ribbon. She said, “These are in memory of my father. Would you carry them, sir?”

Thanks to her, I’ll march again next year.

Many things happened in the world while I was away last week, but two things did not escape notice.

1. The people of New Orleans re-elected Ray Nagin

2. 63 million votes were cast for the American Idol.

The former shows that New Orleans is doomed, and the latter shows that the United States is doomed.

That is all.

Please take a moment to remember what the day is all about.

Thanks again to my friend Brian, the Air Force Vet.

When in Florida I did not spend any time on or near the water here, and here’s why.

The biologists begin to count. In three hours, from just a pair of airboats, they find 754 gators in one small section of Lake Okeechobee, one of Florida’s most concentrated gator habitats.

The slide show gave me the hot squirts. Don’t miss it.

Thanks (I think) to my friend Brian, the Air Force Vet

It is quite a challenge to do a recap of one’s vacation that is at least as interesting or amusing as the phone directory. Nevertheless, I shall try to hit the high points without putting you to sleep.

Yes, this year as in the past half-dozen years or so, the Usual Suspects moved the ongoing party from Jersey to the Gator Sunshine State. We toss our lily-white bodies onto a plane (except for the two who drove down, ugh) to hang in our May digs in Fort Myers Beach.

We spend a good deal of time having refreshments. Last year we commandeered a shopping cart to serve as the rolling bar, but this year the shopping cart could not accommodate the four coolers and one large tub that we brought to the pool each day. So we had to use one of those “rolly” things that bellhops use to roll luggage around. Fortunately, the people who are there the same week as us every year have come to realize that we only look like Vulgarians, but we are an affable and happy lot.

Speaking of the peeps, each year we re-unite with folks from places such as Chattanooga, Tennessee (They said that they have heard of some guy in Tennessee who sits on his deck in his birthday suit and types lots of dots), Fort Wayne, Indiana, Longview, Washington (where apparently the sun never shines), Shelbyville, Illinois, Rome, New York and Ashtabula, Ohio. They’re real good peeps, and I figure in a few more years they’ll finally learn that the answer to the question “Haya dooin’?” is “Haya dooin’?”

Gators
I know you sadistic turds want to know if I saw any gators. Some of the more sensitive of you, knowing I am shit scared of those disgusting creatures, sent me e-mails saying, “Yo, Jimbo. No need to worry. It’s not exactly as if you’ll be tooling around in the Everglades. There won’t be any alligators where you’re going.”

Well, guess farookin’ what.

There is a little bullshit pond across the street from our digs, and guess what was swimming around in that little bullshit pond.

One afternoon, two of the Usuals were taking a walk on the main drag past the pond and saw a six-foot gator swishing its way through the water. Of course, they couldn’t wait to call me on the cell phone, “Jimbo! Jimbo! Come out here. There is a goddamned alligator in the pond! You gotta come and check it out!”

Of course, I did not go check it out. I was certain that they were breaking my stindeens. However, we checked with the locals who work at the place and they said, “Oh yeah, he’s in there. We figure that he’s getting big enough that one of these days, the state may come and move him.”

Well, isn’t that just farookin’ swell. This pond is ten feet from where I walked every morning and is no more than 200 feet from my front door (good thing I was on the second floor). Needless to say, for the rest of the week, I gave that pond and its prehistoric inhabitant wide berth.

If that thing would have lumbered onto the sidewalk as I was doing my morning walk, I can imagine the coroner looking down at my dead ass, scratching his head and saying, “The best thing I can figure is that the poor bastard shit himself to death.”

I’m thinking that if they don’t move that damnable creature, by next year he will be fourteen feet long, and I’m going to need heavy meds.

Other Wildlife

Turtles. The place where we stay was cited by the “Turtle Police” for having regular outdoor lights on the property at night. They actually took pictures of the offending lights, at least two of which were over a stairwell (Oh, the humanity!). According to the Turtle Police, the lights somehow screw up the turtles when they meander ashore at night to lay their eggs. I don’t know how it screws up the turtles, but the Turtle Police say it screws up the turtles, so that’s that.

As a result of the Turtle Police bust, all the bulbs in the outdoor lights had to be replaced with yellow bulbs. Apparently yellow lights don’t screw up the turtles. Of course, if some poor bastard human can’t see the stairs so well when lit with yellow light bulbs and breaks his ass, that’s too bad. These Turtle Police Peeps are apparently very smart.

Sharks. You may have read that while we were in Florida, someone caught a 1,280-pound hammerhead shark that ate a 25-pound stingray for bait! Turns out that this monster was caught not all that far from where we were staying. Just when you thought it was safe …….. (Thanks to Rob for the link.)

Stingrays. Speaking of stingrays, I figure that Mr. Hammerhead may have been in the area because this is the time of the year that the stingrays come close to shore to lay their eggs. Indeed, signs are posted on the gulf beaches asking those who venture into the water to “shuffle their feet” rather than walk in the water so as not to step on (and presumably royally piss off) a stingray.

Boids. There were boids of all kinds in the area, including roseate (i.e. pink) spoonbills and egrets (lots of egrets). I also got a kick out of the boids with the long, curved beaks as they probed the holes in the sand on the beach for little crabs. I cheered each time they got one. I farookin’ hate crabs.

All in all, it was a bit too much wildlife for a guy whose brushes with the animal kingdom are pretty much limited to seeing backyard squirrels and passing the occasional dead deer on the highway.

Unfortunately, the week passed far too quickly. Furthermore, it only took one extended, blood pressure spiking visit to a local supermarket today to undo a week of fun and sun. Remind me to tell you about the old lady in the checkout line writing a check to pay for her groceries. It’s a wonder I’m still alive.