The Curmudgeonly Tweeter

I have friends.  You might be surprised at that since I can be downright surly on occasion.  Maybe most occasions.  I have always wanted to be known as curmudgeonly, but curmudgeonly takes work.  Truly lazy curmudgeons are rare, so I may have to choose.

One friend writes wonderfully sophisticated stuff for Young Adults, along with a wonderfully creative creative blog she calls Harley May - because that's who she is.  She found a book she likes - follow the link and read the review - which has inspired a contest in which followers are to recreate scenes from the book.  Enclosed is Harley May's own recreation of one scene in which someone is driving a nail through a body part.  That's what we curmudgeons like to see.  Nails.  And body parts.  Especially body parts.

 

Anyway, I am telling you these things so you will know that even curmudgeons have a heart.

Harley May wants me to get on Twitter and engage in social networking. Does that sound curmudgeonly?  Damn right it doesn't.  (Curmudgeons say "damn" a lot.  It certainly makes me feel better.)  No self-respecting curmudgeon would stoop to tweeting.  Tweeting makes me irascible.

Newt 

Scene on the Beach

It's crazy season in Pinellas County - Spring Break - when the beaches fill with sex-crazed, nubile coeds who have flown or driven in from colder climes.  It's a happy time for those of us who cruise the sugar-soft sand wearing mirrored sunglasses and trying not to look like the dirty old men we are.

If you come - I'm talking to you, you dirty old man - here are some things to look for.

Ground zero for nubiles is Clearwater Beach.  It is no coincidence that Gulfview Boulevard, which parallels the beaches, is heavily laced with pedestrian crosswalks.  The road was, after all, laid out by dirty old civil engineers.  And the sovereign law of Florida requires motorists to yield to pedestrians pedestriating the crosswalks.  I can burn off a gallon of gas at a crosswalk, just waiting to yield to nubile pedestrians.  My wife gets impatient wondering why we are standing still in the road for no reason she can discern.  Motorists behind me get equally antsy, with blue-haired old ladies anxious to get on with it and their dirty old husbands wanting to take my primo spot at the crosswalk.

Walking the beach is far more scenic, of course, and I develop an acute sunburn every year about this time.  Do you know that if you hold your cell phone out in front of your face and talk to it, people never suspect you're really taking pictures? At least, I don't think they do.

For newcomers - dirty old men on their first visit, that is - you should know about the beach volleyball courts set up near Pier 60.  All the static sunbathing in the world does not beat nubiles in motion. In teams of six or eight.  One man's opinion, all right?  Well, no, actually.  You see, beach volleyball is a game whose rules are made in France (I'm not making this up).  If you subscribe to the Official Rules, as most dirty old men should, you get a rule book with this picture on the cover:

Well, as you can see there are a lot more nuances to Spring Break than meet the eye - or maybe not - but I must be getting on to it.  Till next time.

Newt