While weed-eating in the a.m. I momentarily forgot where the "eating" end was and when I squeezed the trigger the dude did a dido on my left ankle. No blood, just painful welts. And in the p.m., while Michelle and I were on a bike trail, I dismounted at trail’s end and plopped my flip-flop plumb onto a fire ant mound. In the two seconds or less it took for the pain to flash from the foot to the brain, these devils delivered enough “fire” to make a grown man yell.
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On the Road to McCovery--When a Florda judge sentenced George McCovery to jail for driving while suspended, she made the 345-pound man a deal: For every pound the fellow shed while in custody, the court would subtract a day from his sentence. Now really? Is this is, or is this ain’t, a hands-on correctional carrot any offender can understand? And thus, after sticking to a largely veggie diet, at the end of twenty days the prisoner had shorn 25 pounds from his lard-like load. The result: Nearly one month was whacked from George’s sentence.
McCovery? Sounds like a half-way house funded by McDonalds, Inc., where the obese who live on a diet of pop and Big Macs can come and lose lots of McPounds.
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Bad Santa? Bad Teacher? Bad Rescue? It’s a pity that we can’t just pick and choose who is rescued and who is not. For instance, we have the wonderful miracle of that little Jessica something-or-rather who was plucked from that Texas hole in the ground years ago; and the miracle of all those Chilean miners saved from certain death; and plenty more wondrous miracles around the globe. But then we also have the Florida Coast Guard miracle up at St. Pete the other day which rescued a guy from a small sinking boat. When the grateful gentleman’s name was run for warrants, it turns out that he was wanted for a probation violation regarding sex crimes against children. Is this is, or is this ain’t, an instance when the rescuers should have simply ordered the rescuee back onto the sinking boat and let nature correct one of its mistakes?
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Bad Cop/Good Cop—If you are a Sunshine State cyclist, life is tough. It’s bad enough skating through wave after wave of senile seniors down here who are not only bat blind but bonkers too. When cops get in on the act, however. . . . Such was the case over by Davie, Florida, yesterday when a detective ran over and squashed one of our number. Well actually, seems 47-year-old party animal, Doug Beebout, may have contributed to his own demise just a wee bit.
Seems Doug was totally tanked at the time. Also, the drunk was wobbling recklessly along with one or more cases of brewskie balanced on his bike. Whatever, whether a bike rider for recreation and health (like myself) or a bike rider from necessity (as per dead Doug), it seems like three or four of us are flattened every day in Florida just like wild squirrels.
On a happier note, a cop up at Lakeland returned home the other night to find two burglars ransacking his place. Hmmm . . . care to guess the outcome of this one? Score: Cop 2, Thugs 0.
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Over at nearby Port Charlotte, an inmate at the local nursing home is now in jail after he dealt an unwelcome visitor some serious senior justice. When an addled 84-year-old Alzheimer resident wandered into his room and refused to leave, old Tom Rhine grabbed his cane and gave the victim several hard cuffs on the coconut to consider. Of course, five minutes after receiving his beating, the victim could not remember how he got the knots on his head, much less who put them there. Fortunately, cops quickly solved the case when they spotted Tom still waving the cane.
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Caricature of the Day
