It is said that if you live long
enough you’ll see everything that is worth seeing. . . .
Out in the yard a bit ago, as I
picked up fallen palm fronds after the zephyr of last night, I saw our resident
Indigo snake trying to escape me. Normally,
this pencil-thin thing, like a tiny, tiny blacksnake, will flee in a blink. But today he seemed much too long and skinny and slow. Turns out, he and another snake were attached
down where baby snakes come from and he was dragging his lover behind him in
his mad attempt to escape. So strange . . . yet funny. It seemed indeed a
two-headed snake, a head at both ends, front and rear. And like those two enormous manta
rays I saw pulled from the water up at Pensacola years ago, still locked in
their embrace ("Travel Tales #1," 3.7.11), this too must have been some sizzling sex, sure.
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Biking Bummer--A female cyclist
was hit and killed the other day up in Sarasota.
Even though she was in a crosswalk at the time, the 74-year-old motorist
didn’t see her . . . of course. The
report states that the cyclist “failed to notice the oncoming car.” Unlike crosswalks in Europe which are
sacrosanct and scrupulously obeyed, entering a crosswalk in America is like
entering a kill zone. If the biker above
blithely entered the crosswalk without looking, then it proves to me that she
was either 1) a visitor from Europe, or 2) had something other than life,
liberty and the pursuit of safety on her mind.
Clearly, if the lady was a US citizen, then she was not using her noggin.
I would almost bet that the most
missed answer on American driver’s license exams is:
When approaching a marked crosswalk you should:
a)
Slow down and stop if occupied.
b)
Speed up and race through if
occupied.
Judging by what I have seen from one end of the US to the other, “b” wins going away.
We have a couple of crosswalks
down by the island roundabout and pedestrians always seem a bit confused when I
slow the car to a stop and let them cross.
Generally, they seem a bit confused, act a little surprised, then embarrassed,
but soon wave as if grateful.
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Too Much Time—In their attempts to
keep as many subscribers on board as possible, the policy or our local fishwrap
is to cater to every crazed reader out there by printing whatever cracked crap
they send in, or so it seems. Case in
point:
Editor:
What in the world is going
on? According to the obituaries in your
paper nobody is dying anymore. They’re “passing
away.” Where is “away”? Lordy!
I have done my will, living will, health care surrogate, and all those
other things we’re supposed to do to make it easier on our families when we
die. Now I find out we’re not going to
die, we’re going away somewhere! And
what are we passing on the way there?
And do we have to do anything on the way?
Doris Crotchfield
Hmmm. I have an idea. When Doris kicks the can (hopefully, any day now)
please, whoever is in charge, please do not “pass” her and her stupidity on to anyone anywhere; just let Doris die, as per her wish, then plant
her dumb ass quick.
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There’s That Music Again—Like some
bizarre Twilight Zone episode, another local geezer has been claimed by a lurking
body of water. No canal this. A 67-year-old woman from neighboring Venice
was discovered floating face down in a pond the other day. Since “no foul play is expected,” admit the cops,
how did this woman just stroll into a shallow scum of water (along this hot, flat
coast, there are no other kind of ponds), and drown?
Perhaps the water contains a mineral or nutrient that the body craves
and these loons, with their minds mostly gone, are drawn to the water
like iron to a magnet. How else to
explain it? Repeat: This happened in Venice, FLORIDA, not Venice,
Italy. Although we do have a lot of agua hereabouts it is not as though water is right, left, center, above, below,
under, over, everywhere, and that people here fall from their balconies,
porches, sidewalks, or blob scooters and drown as they might in omni-water Venice, Italy. No, these people here have to make a serious
effort to drown . . . and seriously drown they do.
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