We returned from the Gator Sunshine State to an overcast and drizzly New Jersey. Fitting, that. It made the industrial swamps around Newark Airport all the more “appealing”.

I’ll have a bit more to say about our annual week in Florida Grown-Up Camp some time over the weekend, but right now, my insides are tired, and I have a shitload of laundry to do (Even an Laundry Guy Extraordinaire doesn’t do laundry while on vacation). I also have to catch up on some blog reading and the most recent “Sopranos” episode. Priorities, peeps.

I would like to take a moment to thank Craig of mtpolitics.net and Eric, our favorite Straight White Guy, for minding the place while I was away. I forgot to warn Eric about Vinnie and Vinnie about Eric. Anyway, I’m happy that there was no bloodshed and that the next time I visit Eric it won’t be in a Jersey landfill. Seriously, thanks guys. That was some seriously funny stuff — way better than I can do at the moment.

Now, if I could just figure out why my left margin appears and then magically disappears. Hey, it’s better than coming home to pictures of gators (about which, I confess, I much fretted).

Yo! There goes the washing machine dinger. Later, y’all.

… you know, I just don’t get these Jersey guys… I really don’t… take Vinnie for instance, what an asshole… see, Jimbo asked me to come around every so often to make sure that his Bourbon didn’t get lonely while he was away… and that is just what I was doing the other night…

.. quietly minding my own business out on his deck, I was contentedly listening to my darling Patsy croon when Vinnie rounded the corner with a shovel in one hand and a half-burned cigar in the other…

Vinne: What da fuck?!… Who day a tink YOU are?… Where’s Jimbo?.. and where are your farookin’ pants?!

Me: … Howdy…. I’m Eric.. Jimbo is down in Florida hiding from gators and drinking vodka with a bunch of geriatrics that he knows… he asked me to…

… the burly Jerseyite curtailed my explanation.. Vinnie obviously didn’t like me almost immediately… which is a bit strange, really… usually it takes people a few hours before they decide they want to kick my ass…

Vinne: … You’re not from around deese parts, are ya, Ricky?… so Jimbo is in Florida, eh?… well, where are your farookin’ pants, redneck?…

… just between you and I, Vinnie was starting to get a bit active with the shovel… one could almost say that “brandishing it” was not far away on the horizon….

Me: …. Don’t get upset, sir… it’s all above-board, I promise… and you can trust Uncle Eri.. umm, never mind…. and yes, I’m from Tennessee… and my pants are on the kitchen table next to the Indian carry-out I’ll be enjoying for dinner…. but I’m no Redneck, sir… he’s this OTHER guy from up in Ohio somewhere…. see, I’m a guy Jimbo met from off of the internet… we bonded down in Helen, Georgia a few years ago over a few half-gallons of homemade Apple Brandy… and since then, well, we’ve been pals…

Vinnie: … Shaddup, redneck!… go inside and put your pants on… youse is making Jimbo’s deck look like a scene from “Deliverance”… wait… I tink I heard about dis from some guy over at The American Legion… are you the lowlife who painted Jimbo’s toenails red?…

Me… HAHA!… nope.. that wasn’t I, my New Jersey friend, that was someone else!… I just took the pictures!… hey, you want a Krisy Kreme donut?… I carried them all the way up to New Jersey from Tennessee to hand out as “Friendship Tokens“… here, have one… they’re yummy!…

… well, that is all I can remember right now…. well, that and the “ding” of that shovel smashing against my noggin…. I woke up a few hours ago laying duct-taped in the kitchen with a strange dream-like memory of guys with New Jersey accents laughing about some guy named Jimmy Hoffa and some parking lot… and something about Jimbo’s crawlspace and “paying off his markers“…. I must have been out for a day or so…

… I’m not sure I’m cut out to be chilling in Jimbo’s pad… but one thing is for sure… once I get a shower and clean off this duct tape residue, I’m keeping my damn pants on… these guys up here just don’t know how to relax…

This is recycled stuff from one of my other blogs, so I apologize in advance. I feel bad being charged with neglecting two blogs at the same time, so you get re-runs.

My kids have really enjoyed the “Thomas the Tank Engine” books and videos.

It’s kind of amusing for the adults, too. Most dialogue seems to go something like this.

Thomas (cheerfully): Hi! My name is Thomas, and you’re ugly!

James: Shove it up your piehole.

Narrator: This made Thomas cross.

[. . .]

Thomas: I’m sorry I called you a syphilitic ass-clamp.

James: That’s OK, I’m sorry I poured kerosene in your bunghole.

Sir Topham Hatt: You’re both very naughty engines.

Thomas and James: Get bent, fatso.

Narrator: And Thomas and James were sold to the scrap yard for $6/ton. Maybe part of them is in your silverware!

Good stuff, that Thomas. I think you could make a drinking game out of it. Every time an engine is made cross, that’s a drink. When an engine’s reach exceeds its grasp, that’s a drink, and when Sir Topham Hatt chews them out, you have to chug.

That oughta work.

But you should probably wait until the kids are in bed.

Hi Gang. Craig here from mtpolitics.net just popping in to “toss a turd in the cyber-punchbowl,” as it were.

If’n you didn’t know, I’m from Montana, the 4th largest state in the nation where we actually say stuff like “if’n.” We have a saying out here that, “Minneapolis is Back East and Spokane is the Big City. California is Off-Planet.” In my visits with Jim, I’m thinking that we might consider Jersey to be off-planet, too.

Case in point: In Montana, if you are walking down the street and see someone coming toward you, it is likely that one of you will say, “Mornin’!” as you pass. (Or “Afternoon! or Evenin’! depending upon the time of day, naturally.) The other will reply in kind, with the same greeting; only with the pitch direction inverted. The exception to this rule is if you are in Butte, where the correct greeting is “How she go?”

Jim and I were visiting about this and he remarked that in Jersey, the proper response to “How’s she go?” or “Mornin’!” would be either disembowelment, or a double-tap in the thinking machine.

Earlier this week, I happened to be on the campus of one of our two state universities. I’d just finished lunch and was on my way back to the parking lot and had to cross a street.

I approached the crosswalk and stopped, checking for traffic. Vehicles approaching from both sides stopped to let me and another gentleman pass.

As we crossed the street, he remarked to me that he’d been in Montana for quite a while and was still taken aback at how polite people were. He then went on to talk a little bit about how he’d grown up in a small town in California which had been swallowed into Los Angeles and so on, and people there used to be polite to each other until the people started moving in from the city . . .

I said, “Does it look like I’ve got time to sit around and listen to your fuckin’ life story?”

Sheesh. What an asshole. Couldn’t he see that I’m a busy guy with places to go, people to see and things to do?

Early tomorrow morning, we will be flying off with some of the Usual Suspects to our regular spot in Florida and what can fairly be described as “Summer Camp for Grown-ups”. After we arrive, one of our first stops will be at the same local liquor store we descend upon each year, and the owner will be giddy as a schoolgirl as we check out with the first installment of our “supplies”.

From there, it will be a visit to Publix (for some incidental edibles and stuff), which for us Yankees is a treat, as we have few supermarkets in Jersey that we like as much as we like Publix. The store employees are always very nice in comparison to the graduates of the Lodi Charm School to which we have become accustomed in Jersey. And, Bonus! Publix sells beer! (Supermarkets are not permitted to sell beer in the Garden State — the Liquor Lobby is POWERFUL).

Then it’s on to where we have our summer abodes, where we will commandeer a shopping cart, fill it with “libations” and on which we will affix our “Jersey Juice Wagon” sign. We will greet old friends from other parts of the country as far-flung as Washington State and the “Great City of Fort Wayne, Indiana”. Good peeps, all. Seeing the same people every year is a bit like a blogmeet, except no one (except Yours Truly) is a blogger. We sip, dip, and catch up. It’s nice.

I am pleased to tell you that I have left keys to the Rest Stop with some primo folks. I fully expect that Eric will leave his tracks here when he returns next week from Scotland. (He deserves a chance to “get even”.) I’ve also left a set of keys with daughter, TJ, who may stop by. Craig and Dogette were also invited to toss a few turds into the cyber-punchbowl. Both of them already have the run of this place (Craig built it), but Craig has lots of Life 101 going on at the moment, and Dogette will still be on hiatus for much of the time I am away. Still, either or both of them may show up to leave a word or two here.

I’d like to thank all of them in advance for minding the store, and I shall return some time around Memorial Day — give or take.

Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I do NOT travel with a laptop, and, besides, the whole “wireless” thing makes my hair hurt, so I won’t be checking up on you. So, please play nice while I’m gone.

It appears that the NSA has extremely sophisticated technology that can sift out and identify suspicious patters of telephone calls from the millions (billions?) of calls placed in the U.S. This could be a tremendous tool for thwarting terrorist plans.

Therefore, it seems perfectly sensible that some Americans are demanding that the program be scrapped and the data destroyed. Why stop there? Perhaps we ought to dismantle the NSA completely? That way, when some of us are blown to smithereens or killed slowly with biological or chemical agents, those who were not targeted can bask in the glow of knowing that their privacy was protected.

I believe it is true that some people (perhaps most people) are just not properly wired to do one particular thing or another – and I really do mean “wired” in the sense that their brains are just not configured to perform certain tasks or learn certain things.

For example, I know people who are as tone deaf as a stone.  They cannot tell which of two notes is higher.  Along similar lines, I knew a guy who could play the hell out of the guitar (including things like Santana type licks) but who could not reproduce the notes with his voice.  I have a friend who sometimes reads the mirror image of the hands on a clock, so that instead of saying, “It’s eight o’clock,” he will say, “It’s four o’clock.  I also know a couple people who cannot keep their “lefts” and “rights” straight, no matter how hard they try.

I do believe it is a matter of wiring.

My wiring flaw is that I have absolutely no sense of direction.  As I mentioned once before, I have no sense of where north, south, east, or west is at any given time.  When I was in Austin, I asked, “Which way is north?” and a half dozen fingers pointed in the same direction at the same time.  Obviously, they are properly wired.

I also have previously confessed to the strange malady of knowing how to get from point A (my home, for example) to point B, from point A to point C, and from point A to point D, etc. However, without explicit written-for-morons directions, I am utterly incapable of getting from point B to point C without first going back to point A.  And, of course, once I am lost, I am really schnitzled, because of the north, south, east and west thing.

Those days may be over, because yesterday I bought myself one of these babies.

I tried it this morning, and it worked like a charm. It “tells” you where to turn, and even if you screw up, it finds the next best way. And, the best thing is that I don’t have to worry about things like Mr. Template.

Now, with the help of technology, despite my defective wiring, I can go from point “D” to point “B”, and maybe visit point “C” and head back to point “D”, without ever once having to return to “A”.

It’s downright farookin’ remarkable.

Whatever will my Jawja buddies think?

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Found it at Lemons and Lollipops.

Just as I am beginning to think about what stuff to pack for the upcoming week in the Gator State Sunshine State, the alligators have decided to declare open season on peeps.  I’d like to thank the ratfinks my friends and readers who have posted comments and sent me e-mails in order to make sure that I know that alligators have killed three people over the last several days.

You bastards owe me for an industrial-sized bottle of Imodium. 

I just may have to spend the entire week on a barstool by the pool. 

I am not a particularly religious person, but this gives one pause and just seems so right.

Thanks to my frien Brian, the Air Force Vet.