Excuuuuuuse me while I shit my pants!

As many of you know, I am scared shitless of alligators. So, when I read a story like this about crocodiles (the alligator’s badass cousin), I experience instant and potentially explosive intestinal motility.

It seems that 60-year old Barry Jeffries and his wife were fishing from a canoe in a waterhole in a national park in northern Australia, when an 800+ pound crocodile (like the one pictured above) followed their fishing lines to the canoe and dragged Mr. Jeffries out of the canoe by his arm, capsizing the canoe. The wife swam to shore, but the Mr. Jeffries has not yet been found and is presumed dead.

The suspected killer croc was shot the following day, much to the horror of the environmentalists and even the Jeffries’ family. It also turns out that the Mr. Jeffries and his wife were themselves environmentalists, who in the past wrote to a newspaper objecting to the possible culling of crocs after an attack in another location. In the letter, the Mrs. Jeffries wrote:

“A sensible assessment of the situation is more worthy than the sensational outcry that culling would save human lives. Most Australians never venture into these remote areas, and those who do know that preparation needs to be taken,”

I cannot imagine what kinds of preparations Mrs. Jeffries had in mind. The area where the couple had been fishing requires a four-wheel drive vehicle to get to and is posted as being a place where one can expect to find crocodiles. It seems to me that fishing in that water, under any circumstances, was a bad idea, and fishing from something as easily capsized as a canoe was a very bad idea. But, hey, what do I know. I’m just a guy who can happily live the rest of his life without ever being within a hundred miles of a gator or a croc.

Bonus: For a few hair-raising stories about these Australian crocs, check out this article. Here’s a sample:

“These animals are relics of a prehistoric age. They have no natural enemies except man and they fear nothing. They are known by a variety of names — crocs, lizards, mud geckos, bities, leather handbags — but they are always treated with respect born of fear. Fishermen in the north commonly say that if you fall out of your dinghy in a croc-infested creek, you’ll be back in before getting wet.”

I’d love to visit Australia some day, but I’ll make damned sure I go where the crocs ain’t

You know? Sometimes the planets, stars and other celestial things line up just right and great things happen, sort of like the Age of Aquarius. You remember that, right? The moon, the Seventh House, Jupiter aligning with Mars, hippies – Hell, it was a Broadway Show, a hit song and a movie.

I don’t know what house the moon is occupying at the moment, nor do I have any idea where Jupiter and Mars are in relation to one another at the moment, but something must be going just right in the universe because there is just no other way to account for the following cosmically wonderful things:

I simply have got to get me some flowers for my farookin’ hair.

My buddy Rob wrote a piece about “Southern Injuries,” which, not surprisingly, deals with injuries that, to a greater or lesser extent, are unique to the South. That got me to thinking about some of the maladies that we suffer in the Garden State.

Pothole-algia: This condition arises as a result of having one of the millions of post-winter potholes swallow the front wheel of one’s car. Pothole-algia comes in two distinct phases. The first phase is consists of the pain that shoots from asshole to neck when one’s tire goes into a pothole with the diameter of a garbage can lid and the depth of an Arctic crevasse. The second phase is characterized by the pain one experiences upon learning that it will be necessary to replace the tire, rim and front end of your car.

Toll-terror: This is a specific form of panic attack that occurs when one is trying to navigate from three fast-moving lanes into one of eight or more toll booths, depending on whether it is an EZ Pass lane, a Token or Exact Change, or a Cash-Receipt Lane, and one is victimized by an out-of-state driver who is, understandably confused by it all and who invariably cuts across eight lanes like some kind of kamikaze.

Post-Toll Despair: This condition is marked by the hopelessness one feels when emerging from one of the eight or more toll lanes and all eight lanes have to immediately squeeze into three lanes. The sense of despair is most serious when you paid the toll in the left-most lane and, after having paid the toll, you must somehow cross a veritable sea of cars to get to the right lane in order to immediately exit the highway. For out-of-state drivers, this can be most terrifying and can result in night sweats and/or self-destructive thoughts.

Black Ice Helplessness: This is the complete loss of control accompanied by fear of impending death that you experience when you realize that you have hit a patch of black ice (very slick and not very visible) while going down a hill and at the bottom of the hill is a busy, truck-filled, cross street. The condition has been known to result in an involuntary discharge of the bowels as the essentially free ranging vehicle slowly spins its way toward the killer cross street.

Windshield Wiper Hypervision: This condition occurs when one is driving on a multi-lane highway in a snow/sleet/ice storm and the windshield wipers only clear away a small portion of the windshield (usually about an inch wide), leaving the rest of the windshield opaque with snow/sleet/ice. Not only does it strain the eyes almost to the point of ocular explosion, but it also causes severe orthopedic problems. This is so, because the “clear” portion of the windshield is never at eye level and, therefore, requires rather dramatic contortions by the driver. Finally, because Windshield Wiper Hypervision is often accompanied by a rear window and rearview mirrors that are covered with snow/sleet/ice, changing lanes to ultimately pull off the highway is impossible for all but the most daring and/or religiously plugged in.

Circlecide: This is the realization of the possibility of sudden death or serious injury that exists each time one prepares to navigate one of New Jersey’s many traffic circles, which were most certainly designed by one of Satan’s Lieutenants. The possibility of death increases geometrically with every out-of-state driver who enters the circle.

Recently while hanging around, boozing it up having cocktails and shooting the shit discussing interesting and topical matters with the Usual Suspects, the subject of telemarketers came up. The specific topic of conversation focused on the manner in which each of deals with telemarketers.

The general consensus seemed to be that, upon learning that one is dealing with a telemarketer, the phone is simply hung up, sometimes (but most often not) preceded by a “No thank you,” or “I’m not interested.” However, The Original Bill, one of the Usual Suspects, shared an approach he has used at least once, and which had me in absolute stitches.

He explained that the telemarketer in question, a female, was particularly aggressive. Apparently prepared for the quick hang-up, she launched immediately into a barrage of questions, such as “How would you like to save 25% on your next purchase of XYZ?”

Bill responded, “I’m not interested” to about the first three questions, but did not hang up the phone. His goal was to make the telemarketer hang up.

The telemarketer kept pounding away at the sales pitch without regard to the ‘I’m not interested” responses or simple silence.

Then, The Original Bill** “pulled the trigger”:

Bill: “Do you have big tits?”

Telemarketer: (complete silence – amazing)

Bill: “I’ll bet you have really big tits.”

Telemarketer:

Bill: “Are they firm and perky, or are they nice and soft?”

Telemarketer: CLICK

When we asked if he was worried that the woman would report him as some kind of weirdo stalker, he responded, “Bullshit! I didn’t call her; she called me!!!”

I still laugh when I think about it.

**The Original Bill has excellent manners and is most certainly not some kind of mouth-breathing telephone slob. This was an experiment he conducted, and, as you can see, the result was as planned.

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.