Another Thing You Don't Often See in the North

The Florida legislature gathers altogether too often in Tallahassee to consider new ways to deviate from the mean.  A debate is raging there today, as it has for the past three years, over whether to outlaw sex with animals.  It took the unfortunate death by accidental strangulation of a sweet young goat named Meg to bring this issue to light.

I swear I am not making this up.

I suppose I should say something clever, like how the supporters of sex with critters are being led by Meg's husband, Billy Joe Jim-Bob, but that would be wrong.

God, how my muse loves this place.

Newt

Snowbirds, Rednecks and Crackers - An Appreciation

Despite wave after frantic wave of snowbirds, Florida remains, at its heart, a southern institution.  If you think not, consider a locally bottled beer that says it is "like a California pale ale, except made in America."  I wish I'd thought of that line.

You can tell how far south you are by the local expression for "you" (plural).  If you live in the North, you say "you," and southerners are folks who say "you all."  If you all say "you all," southerners are folks who say "y'all."  And if y'all say "y'all," southerners are folks who say "all y'all."  Real native Floridians are few, but they all say "all y'all."  If all y'all are real native Floridians, however, southerners are those who say "all y'all" while barefoot.

Motorcyclists who get old and retreat to Florida promptly buy 3-wheel bikes.  Old farts on tricycles are more common down here than old farts in new Corvettes, although not by much.  I saw a Harley-Davidson the other day that looked like a 3-wheeler.  Well, it happens, embarrassingly enough, that Harley does make such a bastard machine.  But this guy had modified his 2-wheeler by adding a pair of outrigger wheels.  Yup, training wheels on an H-D. I was embarrassed for him.

Speaking of embarrassed, I've always wanted to crawl into a hole when members of my supposed profession trumpet how great they are.  One of the far-too-many such legal clowns down here - we'll call him "Peter Ticktin ," because that's his name - calls his website "LegalBrains.com."  You could look it up. 

Hereabouts, there is a hybrid retail industry that combines the ubiquitous gun shop with the ubiquitous pawn shop.  I'm trying to think of something to say about this that won't piss off the wrong people.  That probably wasn't it.

Newt

Writing Through Tears

I meant to compose a light romp through the vagaries of Florida life based on some curious things I have seen here lately.  But as I checked into the Internet, I clicked again on the news and again got caught up in the hundreds of images of devastation in Japan.  As much as I would like to get back to my carefree lifestyle here in my dotage, I just can't look away from the painful pictures.  Today's estimates of 10,000 dead must be pitifully low. 

In other news on the same website, this headline: "Users complain iPhone clock bungles time change."

Sadly

Newt

Tinkling on My Lanai

Despite temps in the low 80's and balmy breezes off the Gulf, despite my indolent lifestyle and occasional over-indulgence in just about everything, this Florida retirement gig is not all it's cracked up to be.  You should understand, for instance, that as I sit here on my new lanai, slaving over a hot keyboard, the vicious Florida sun is shining in my eyes.  Really, it's hard to make out the screen.  But I persevere, mostly as an exercise in persistence.

Here are a couple of Florida facts that will warm the toes of northerners who just got whacked with another half-foot of white and sparkly.  First off, my lanai is under a live oak tree.  No, not the opposite of dead oak, but a nasty species of oak that seemes eternally confounded by the fine weather.  Northern oaks know enough to shed their leaves in the fall with a thud, so you can rake them and haul them away in a single outing.  Maybe two.  Okay, red oaks, maybe a little cleanup in the spring.  Still, that's a civilized way to run a forest.

The flummoxed oak in what I jokingly refer to as my front yard tinkles leaves constantly, all year.  Or close enough.  They tinkle on my roof, the roof of my new lanai.  My lanai where I celebrate my indolence with a cold glass and keep sunglasses handy.  Tinkle.  Tinkle.

The roof of my lanai, like everything else on the property, is made of aluminum, except of course for the wide expanses of bathtub caulk that hold the place together.  If you have not heard oak leaves tinkling on aluminum, then you have no firm grip on the concept of annoyance.

To say nothing of acorn season, which lasts six months.  Acorns don't tinkle on aluminum.  They clang like Big Ben on Ritalin.  Do you know how many acorns fall from a good-sized live oak in heat?  I do.

The oak trees are not the only airborne threat to my peace.  My aluminum-clad lanai provides a runway for rutting squirrels taking off and landing.  Squirrels, like oak trees, are in rut all year long.  A bonding pair of half-pound squirrels hustling over aluminum can be deafening. Like living in a giant squirrel-powered snare drum.

My father-in-law down the street came back from the war (The Big One, W-W-I-I), with a small arsenal of portable weapons of localized destruction.  I know where he keeps them.  Push me hard enough, damn squirrels, and I might just start blazing away. 

So, Gentle Reader, before you move to Tampa Bay, mull over the cacophony you might face on your lanai.  Tinkling and clanging and snare-drumming, I must tell you, are crappy conductors of indolence.  And then there's the possibility of a rain of shell casings pinging off the roof.

Newt

Risen from the Ashes

OK, the bleeding has stopped, and I'm out of bathtub caulk.  Siding on the front porch (say "luh-NYE") is up, the wiring done.  OK, twice on that last:  I put a nail through a wire the first time and blew a fuse, but that was just one of those random things that even we experts sometimes encounter.  Furniture is purchased and placed.  Anticipating unprecedented public demand, I'll post pictures as soon as the artwork is done. (Betsi Burgess, where ARE you?)

So, what's wrong with this picture?  I can't even entertain on the lanai this week.  Why?  Because my 9-year-old granddaughter Katy insists on sleeping out there on an inflatable bed.  Sweet.

Newt