Tossers! In May, Britain’s Norfolk District Council banned the traditional barroom game of “dwile flonking” just as the inaugural “world championships” were to take place at the Dog Inn pub in Ludham, Great Yarmouth. The game, which some believe has been played since “medieval times,” calls on players to fling a beer-soaked rag from the end of a small stick toward the face of an opponent, and in the event the tosser misses the target two straight times, he must quickly down a half-pint of ale. The council called the game a “health and safety” problem.

Unfairian Virginia state inmate Kendall Gibson, who is serving 47 years for abduction and robbery committed at age 18, has spent the last 10 years in the prison’s “hole,” 23 hours a day in a cell “the size of a gas station restroom” (wrote an Associated Press reporter), not because he’s a danger to the prison population, but because he won’t cut his hair. Gibson is a Rastafarian and says his dreadlocks are devoutly authorized by the spiritual Lord, Jah. (A 1999 Virginia prison regulation requires administrative segregation for long-hairs.)

Great Expectorations People who live or work in New York City believe themselves to be among the world’s toughest and hardiest, but at least 51 of them are apparently legendarily soft: the 51 city bus drivers who between them took 3,200 days of paid leave last year to “heal” over the single workplace “injury” of being spit on by passengers. (Thirty-two other spit-upon drivers did not request leave.) An official with the Transport Workers Union called spitting “physically and psychologically traumatic” and requiring “recuperat(ion).” In related news, the prominent Howrah bridge in Calcutta, India, has become a serious safety risk, according to a May report for the Calcutta Port Trust, because the steel hoods protecting the pillars holding up the bridge have been thinned by 50 percent in recent years. Engineers believe the corrosion has been caused almost entirely by the chemicals in gutkha, the popular chewing tobacco/herb concoction, which produces expectorants routinely hocked onto the bridge by the 500,000 pedestrians who cross it every day.

¡Viva Las Ardillas! Arizona (viewed by some as hard-hearted for its April law stepping up its vigilance for illegal immigrants) showed a soft side recently, implementing a $1.25 million federal grant that it believes will save the lives of at least five squirrels a year. The state’s 250 endangered Mount Graham red squirrels risk becoming roadkill on Route 366 near Pima, and the state is building a rope bridge for them to add to several existing tunnels.

By The Book In May, the chief media spokesman of the Nye County, NV, sheriff’s office, Det. David Boruchowitz, announced to the press the arrest of a man charged with burglary and assault. The suspect’s name, he reported, was Det. David Boruchowitz. The chief investigator on the case, Det. Boruchowitz told reporters, was Det. David Boruchowitz. (Three days later, the charges were dropped, but that announcement was made by someone else.) Also, in Rehoboth Beach, DE, it is illegal for men and women to publicly reveal their genitals and for women to reveal their breasts, but Police Chief Keith Banks, confronted in June with complaints about some beachgoers flouting their shapely breasts, said there was nothing he could do. Banks said the offenders were actually biological males in the midst of hormonal transgendering. As Banks explained, “(T)hey had male genitalia. Therefore, they were not guilty of a crime.” Lastly, in April, Prince Edward Island (Canada) judge John Douglas acquitted minor league hockey player Chris Doyle of assaulting his former girlfriend, though Doyle had arrived at her home uninvited, had annoyed and berated her, and would not leave. The girlfriend was injured when Doyle punched a door, causing it to smash against her face, but Judge Douglas accepted that Doyle honestly did not know she was behind the door. Said the judge, “If he was charged with being a colossal a**hole, I would find him guilty. Of ‘assault causing bodily harm,’ I find him not guilty.”

Flagrant Fragrancy Homeless New Jersey man Richard Kreimer said in February (2006) that he had settled, on undisclosed terms, part of his most recent lawsuit, against a transit company and two drivers, for having denied him rides because of his foul odor. Kreimer’s history includes a $150,000 settlement with the public library in Morris County, which had tried to keep him out because of his odor, and, by his count, $80,000 in additional lawsuit-related income (though some went for legal expenses). Kreimer filed another foul-odor lawsuit in February against a transit company and a train station in Summit.

Pesky Doctrines! Many jihadist recruiting pitches are dry and pious, but in May, the Somali activist Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, 26, who was born in Alabama, began streaming Internet rap “music” videos to encourage warrior sign-ups. (Sample verse: “It all started out in Afghanistan/When we wiped the oppressors off the land/The Union crumbled and tumbled/Humbled, left them mumbled/Made a power withdraw and cower.”) Actually, there was no music but merely al-Amriki singing, presumably because in the version of Islam favored by Somali jihadists, “music” is not permitted.

VIRGO: You’ll achieve every goal you’ve set for yourself later this month, and this act of concerted focus will ripple out and have a similar effect on those you don’t even know. That guy you flicked off for cutting in front of you three weeks ago had the good sense to write down your plate number, and his goal, unfortunately, is to track you down and kick your ass good and proper.

LIBRA: You didn’t run out of gas last month; you only needed a pit stop. Refreshed and refueled, you head back out onto the track a full two laps before anyone else — at least until you have to take another pit stop to void your bladder of the 2-liter Colosso-Gulp of Dr. Pepper you foolishly chose to guzzle down at the first pit stop. Coming in last does suck, but boy did that feel good.

SCORPIO: You have a gift for sensing what people are thinking long before they act. Now if you only had the foresight to study jiu-jitsu years ago you’d be able to avoid the wickedly executed leg-sweep coming your way in about five seconds.

SAGITTARIUS: You know what’s good for you and what’s not. You just need to be reminded once in a while, and right now is “once in a while.” Running for exercise is good for you; running from your jilted, bat-wielding fiancée on a full stomach of Canadian whisky and a Super Sausage Philly Cheesesteak pizza is not. Stopping, dropping, curling yourself up into a ball and playing dead is probably your best bet at this juncture.

CAPRICORN: No matter how considerate you try to be, a renter will never care so much about his dwelling as the actual owner. However, your efforts to duct tape the hole you made in the roof have not gone unnoticed. It was a well-intentioned repair, but one that also requires at least three costly permits. Expect a visitor bearing $750 worth of fines and citations.

AQUARIUS: Sometimes you can’t see the positives of a poor situation until they’re actually manifested. I mean, who could have foreseen that those M-80s would have taken your hand off? And who would have thought that having a claw was actually pretty cool? You’ll get plenty of pity and attention from curious members of the opposite sex through October, but good luck eating blueberries.

PISCES: In the coming weeks you’ll get plenty of compliments you feel you don’t deserve. But are you being too modest? Very unlikely. Daring and ambitious you undoubtedly are, but sensitive? You? Weren’t the guy who muscled your rich aunt into financing your terrible new business? Sure, you tended to her every need and gave her the attention she’d long been lacking, but $50,000 to develop a line of hormone-free kitten cutlets? Back to the drawing board.

ARIES: You’ve given yourself a complete makeover and are ready for a fresh start. You’ve never felt so good about yourself, and, quite frankly, you’ve never looked lovelier. You only wonder why cross dressing hadn’t crossed your mind earlier.

TAURUS: Things always turn out better in fairy tales, don’t they? Well, certain fairy tales. You’d like to think that the end of July will find you kissing a frog who turns into a prince or stumbling across a pot of gold in the forest. Incredibly, you’ll be lured into a witch’s gingerbread house and thrust into an oven only to escape over a bridge from under which a hungry ogre will awaken and devour you.

GEMINI: The furthest thing from your mind this month is the possibility of failure. But don’t get your hopes up, sister. Is being known as the girl who won “Honorable Mention” in the wet t-shirt contest something worthy of celebration? Not in this case. A Bolivian transvestite came in first and your obese boyfriend took home both second and third place trophies, oddly enough.

CANCER: Don’t worry, be happy! Everything about your life right now seems terrible, but look a little closer and you’ll glimpse a distant light at the end of the tunnel. It all comes down to numbers this month: Buy a lottery ticket and pick numbers based on your monthly car payment, the balance you owe in child support, and the birthday of your favorite basketball player and you’ll win another lottery ticket you’ll lose on.

Double Ds of Summer
• Judy Forney •

“Honey,” I lowered sunglasses from wave-tumbled hair to shield my eyes and looked over at my hubby, who sat in the shade of our beach umbrella reading a book. “I was just thinking about… Whoa! Check that out…”

“What?”

“Obviously something NASA has been working on… ”

“Where?”

I nodded my head in the direction of the surf. “There. The Inflatable Gravity Rejection Device that gal’s hauling around in her bikini top.”

“Geez, Judy, I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“What?”

“Point things like that out to me all the time.”

“I can’t help it. You know I’ve got an obsession with that particular inequality amongst women. And by ‘women’ I mean me.”

“Yeah, but one of these days I’ll be the one caught staring… ”

“Well, what’s she gonna do? March up here and demand an apology?”

“No, her buff and beefy boyfriend will come along, kick sand in my face, blacken my eye, and demand one.”

“Oh, come on. All we’d have to do is explain that I made you look… ”

“And that is just wrong on so many levels.”

“Ha! All I’m saying is that it’s not entirely fair. I mean, it would have been nice if in this lifetime my… ahh… cups, so to speak, could have overflowed a little.”

“You know, it would be hard for folks to believe the amount of time you and I spend discussing boo… err… female anatomy.”

And with that, the guy went back to reading his book and shook his head slightly as if wondering, once again, about the sanity of his spouse.

But anatomy, female or otherwise, wasn’t what I’d intended to point out. No, the double Ds on my mind had had nothing to do with cleavage. I’d been laying there feeling the sweat, which was too lazy to trickle puddle onto my back, and thinking about the phrase “Dog Days of Summer.”

I’ve read that it was coined by the ancient Greeks. During the hottest months of the year they could look up and see both the sun and a very bright star sharing space in the heavens. That bright star was the Dog Star, and the Grecians figured it had to be adding wattage to the sun. They were concerned that the extra juice was gonna blow the whole celestial system, kind of like screwing a 90-watt bulb into a lamp that requires only 60, and that the sun would overbake the entire world.

Anyway, they pegged August as an especially risky time. Men became too languid to move. Folks would be fevered. Hysteria would rule. Women would have fits and frenzies. Some thought the sea would boil. But the very worst of it? The fear of all the wine turning sour! Sounds pretty nasty, huh?

And what I’d been trying to tell my hubby earlier was that living here on the Space Coast I knew just how those Greeks felt. Languid? Doesn’t even begin to cover it on afternoons when a girl has to choose between moving through the muggy heat or just lying still and decomposing. We all gotta go sometime, right? And although the Atlantic isn’t boiling, I swear the waves are warmer than the water in the swimming pool at our condo. As for fits and frenzies, well you should see me after I first kick off flipflops and step onto burning hot sand. What are the song lyrics from the movie “Flash Dance”? “She’s a maniac, maniac on the floor/and she’s dancing like she never danced before… ”

All I can say is thank goodness for ice chests and plastic bottles of wine. If only the old Grecians had invented those instead of wasting time on democracy, geometry and other obsolete junk, they could have relaxed a little.

“Honey?”

“I am NOT looking… ”

“I wasn’t gonna ask you to, but listen — ”

“Reading. Not looking.”

“No, what I started to say earlier was… ”

“Eyes glued to page.”

Geez Louise, I thought to myself as I crawled into the shade of the umbrella and poured a glass of cold chardonnay. What’s the use of even trying to have an intelligent conversation with the guy? He’ll just go all off-topic on me, as usual…

Happy Double Ds, Beachside!

Wackjob Wisdom
• David Sherman •

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.

Welcome to Aquarian Wackjob Air. Please fasten your seatbelts and prepare for take-off. You need not return your trays to their upright position, as a cocktail may actually prove helpful during this flight. Any of you who are running BS filter technology my wish to turn it off now, as the following page is certain to overload it completely. Those of you who’ve flown with us before know this to be true. Please enjoy the flight, and remember our motto at Aquarian Wackjob Air: ”We are the Dreamers.  We are the vorpal blade which slays the jabberwocky of pedantic thought and soars beyond the excremental ether of all that cannot be.” 3 – 2 – 1 . . .

Modern science is a wonderful thing. At least it could be, were it not hijacked at every turn and perverted for profit. We used to cure things, but now it’s far more profitable to just treat them. The victories over measles, malaria, and polio are forgotten in the profits of a boner pill and restless leg syndrome. No one read Sinclair Lewis’ “Arrowsmith”! We are the constant proof that while genius has limits, stupidity is under no such restraint. We invented cars — we got smog. We invented elevators — we got urban crowding that would make a microbe claustrophobic. We invented computers — we got 37 quadrillion ways to stream porn to the phone in our pocket! We built rocket ships that could fly to the moon — and then we just quit and walked away. What?

I remember when they told us in school that the planet had just reached a population of 4 billion. It was a big deal. Now we are over 6 billion, which in modern terms is 6 giga-people, and no one bats an eye. There are currently more people walking around on this planet than all of those who have come before combined. At our current rate, it won’t be long before the pressing question of any evening won’t be where to eat, but rather, “Will we eat?” Famine will no longer be something Sally Struthers goes on about; it will be our everyday existence. People, there’s only so much food. This beautiful little blue ball of ours might just as well be a terrarium when it comes to matters of finite space. We’re cool for now (Though we certainly don’t share well. Hence, Sally Struthers.), but eventually we will have overpopulated beyond a level the planet can sustain. Then what?

Then we will kick ourselves in the place where we keep our collective heads, because we couldn’t be bothered to fund NASA! Yes, NASA, the people who once built a vehicle out of materials they had to invent along the way, equipped it with a computer with one thousandth the capacity of the one your daughter is texting on right now, crewed it with three lunatics whose bravery still transcends mortal norms, and then launched it to the moon. They are also the same people who are our best hope for ever finding a way to reach out so far into space as to find planets suitable for colonization, which is our only way out of the terrarium. Maybe that will be our epitaph: “They couldn’t be bothered to find a way to fund the group who had the best chance of ultimately saving their entire species?” Or will it be something more succinct, like: “Don’t bother me, I’m tweeting!” We live in a terrarium, and we won’t fund glass cutter technology. That’s just stupid.

With that sort of mindset man would have never gone from hide-covered coracles to the sleek little caravels of Columbus, and thus to a “New World.” I realize that it will be just as hard to go from, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,” to “I’d like two tickets for the Altair Colony, with a layover on Ganymede.” But every journey begins with a first step. Neil Armstrong took our first step, but since then we’ve become bored with the whole concept of travel and have pulled over to the side of the road for a nap. Our forty winks have turned into FORTY YEARS! Even the Griswolds did better than that!

Yes, the sheer magnitude of distances involved can be a little daunting. Even estimating the size of our universe is difficult, and that’s for people who have the math skills. For those of you who can’t calculate gratuity, perhaps analogy will better serve. Fortunately, all members of Aquarian Wackjob Air speak fluent analogy, so here goes: Think of Earth as the universe. Brevard county is our galaxy. Our solar system is an unnamed, undeveloped, unpaved block in south Canaveral Groves. Our planet is the trailer. (And, no, it is not even a doublewide.)  Those who let NASA go unfunded would have us living under the bed. They would discourage any attempt at crawling, they would dismiss walking as the stuff of fairy tales, and they would denounce vehicular travel as the rantings of delusional minds. And they think we’re crazy?

Now for a final Aquarian twist to it all — the planet moves. As it nears and recedes from the sun its atmosphere expands and contracts, i.e. the planet breathes. By way of both the fires at its core and the decay and re-absorption on its surface the planet eats.  Hell, the planet even poops. What do you think oil and coal are? Planetary feces. Colon-clogging Quarter Pounders from eons gone by. In Aquarian Wackjob Science (an oxymoron, if ever there was one), if it moves and breathes, eats and poops, IT’S ALIVE!

“But it can’t reproduce!” cry the myopic masses. Neither can a four-year-old… yet. I say the planet can reproduce. That’s our job. We are the seeds, and our role in the planetary scheme of things is to spread across other worlds, reproducing not only ourselves but also all that is best and most noble from our world. Unfortunately, we have gotten a bit sidetracked. We based our entire infrastructure on the bodily waste of our planet. We were meant to be seeds, but we morphed ourselves into intestinal parasites! Maybe that will be our tersest epitaph: ”E.S.A.D.”

Thank you for flying Aquarian Wackjob Air. We now return you to your polling place.

Zero Love Briton Robert Dee, feeling humiliated at being called the “world’s worst tennis pro” by London’s Daily Telegraph (and other news organizations) sued the newspaper for libel last year. After taking testimony in February 2010, the judge tossed out the lawsuit in April, persuaded by Dee’s having lost 54 consecutive international tour matches (all in straight sets). Fearful of an opposite result, 30 other news organizations had already apologized to Dee for disparaging him, and some even paid him money in repentance, but the Telegraph had stood its ground (and was, of course, humble in victory, titling its story on the outcome, “‘World’s Worst’ Tennis Player Loses Again”).

Make That One Star According to an April lawsuit filed by an employee of the five-star Ritz-Carlton resort in Naples, FL, the hotel complied with a February request by a wealthy British traveler that, during their stay, his family not be served by “people of colour” or anyone who spoke with a “foreign accent.” The hotel has apologized to the employee, but denied that it had complied with the traveler’s request. (Lawyers for the employee told the Associated Press that nine witnesses and a copy of a computer entry prove their claim.)

Whistle Stop Betty Lou Lynn, 83, was mugged and had her wallet stolen in her new hometown of Mount Airy, NC, in April. Lynn is the actress who played Barney Fife’s best girl, Thelma Lou, in the “Andy Griffith” TV show and had lived in Los Angeles until she became alarmed at the city’s crime rate. She decided in 2007 to move to the quieter, peaceful Mount Airy, which was Griffith’s birthplace and the model for the TV town of Mayberry.

Magic Juice Donald Wolfe, 55, was charged with public drunkenness in March in Brookville, PA, after neighbors spotted him giving, as he described it, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a roadkill possum along Route 36. A 62-year-old man suffered second-degree burns after launching himself on a makeshift, rocket-powered sled in Independence Township, MI, in January. Witnesses said he put on a helmet, then strapped a contraption consisting of a motorcycle muffler, a pipe, gunpowder, match heads and gasoline on his back, and had someone light the wick to send him blasting through the snow. Also, last September, James Jones, 33, and a friend were issued disorderly conduct citations by police after witnesses reported that the pair, inebriated, had placed their genitals on a vegetables’ weighing scale in a supermarket in Edinburgh, Scotland. (They were acquitted in April 2010 when the only witness admitted that she only saw the men zipping up after claiming to have weighed themselves.) Lastly, warehouse workers at the Copenhagen, Denmark, brewery that makes Carlsberg beer went on strike last April after the company cut back on its allowance of providing up to three free beers per shift, which workers thought made their mundane jobs easier to take. As of April 1, only one beer per shift was provided, and only at lunch. (The previous “right” belonged also to delivery drivers, according to a Reuters report, but it was not clear how that right squared with drunk-driving laws.)

Vikings Gone Soft It’s clear, based on a May Time magazine dispatch, that Norway’s felons and miscreants are of a superior class than America’s. When Norway’s brand-new Halden prison opened in April, the country’s King Harald V headlined a glitzy gala that celebrated what has been called the world’s “most humane” lockup. Among the facilities: a sound studio, jogging trails, a guest house for inmates’ visitors, and a scrumptious-smelling “kitchen laboratory” where murderers and bandits can learn to cook. Guards are unarmed (half are women) and intermingle with the rapists, drug dealers and others, dining with them and joining them in intramural sports. The recidivist rate for Norwegian prisoners in general is only 20 percent (versus 50 percent to 60 percent in the United States), but it is still early to tell whether Halden’s prisoners will find life behind bars so pleasant that they don’t mind risking another stretch there by returning to crime.

Special Species Among the new species first reported this year are a “nose” leech, a “Dracula” fish, a “psychedelic” frogfish and a “bombardier” worm, according to scientists at the University of Arizona and medical school researchers in Lima, Peru. The Peru-based leech, which is fanged and probably has been around since the time of dinosaurs, prefers nasal mucus as a habitat. The “Dracula” fish of Myanmar, with “canine-like fangs,” has an extraordinarily flexible mouth. The multicolored frogfish has apparently adapted to live among the colorful, venomous coral off Bali, Indonesia. The “bombardier” worm, found in California’s Monterey Bay, releases glow-in-the-dark projectiles when threatened.

Just Say “Know” Jacob Collins, 28, was arrested in April and charged with burglary of Matlack’s Hometown Pharmacy in Landisville, NJ, despite the fact that the medicine he stole was probably by mistake. Police said they were almost certain Collins was after the painkiller “Oxycontin” but instead swiped a supply of “Oxybutynin,” which treats overactive bladder. On the other hand, Sean Almond, 43, was charged on the same day as Collins for allegedly robbing the Kangaroo Mart on Wilroy Road in Suffolk, VA, and could have used some Oxybutynin. Almond was caught immediately after the robbery because his getaway was delayed. He was spotted in a nearby alley, where he had been overcome by a sudden urge to relieve himself.

Le Jeu de la Mort A recent French documentary in the form of a TV show called “Game of Death” mimics the notorious 1950s human-torture experiments of Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, who would coax test subjects to administer increasingly painful jolts of electricity to strangers to assess their obedience to an “authority figure,” even if contrary to their own moral codes. As in Milgram’s experiments, the Game of Death “victims” were actors, unharmed but paid to scream louder with each successive “shock.” According to a BBC News report, 82 percent of the game’s players were willing torturers, a higher percentage than Milgram found, but the TV show’s subjects had greater encouragement, cheered on by a raucous studio audience and a glamorous hostess.

LEO: Try to think of yourself in your glowing youth: popular, charmingly handsome, and diligent in your work, because it will help you weather the icy reception you’ll receive at your upcoming high school reunion when you’re remembered as the weird-looking kid who got kicked out of detention for huffing glue from a paper bag.

VIRGO: Yes, we all know that you’re just as much of a red-blooded American patriot as the next guy, but try to refrain from burning Old Glory in front of the local VFW this July 4th. It’s unlikely anyone will come to your defense and even more unlikely that anyone will even bother to call 911 when the flames start licking the sleeves of the Rage Against the Machine concert t-shirt you paid $29.95 for.

LIBRA: If there’s one thing your friends can’t stand about you it’s your selfishness, untrustworthiness, boorishness, aggravating smugness, and shoddy appearance. So let’s make that five things your friends can’t stand about you — six, if you count your rotten teeth as a subset of your shoddy appearance. Seven, if you count your choice of attire. I’d better stop there.

SCORPIO: Every now and again a person comes along and makes a mark on us we won’t soon forget. Even rarer is when two make their mark at the exact same time. That’s two black eyes you’ve got now, champ; one from your devoted wife, and the other from your disgruntled Brazilian mistress.

SAGITTARIUS: Sad to say that things look awfully bleak for you this month. Put on your $300 Ray Bans and things look even bleaker. But at least you look cool, and isn’t that all that’s ever mattered to you anyway? Try my pair of BluBlockers on for size. You’ll look like an ass and things will still look bleak, but without the annoying glare.

CAPRICORN: You’ve got a lot to cross off your lengthy “to-do” list before begin to see any signs of progress. I recommend crumpling it up and starting from scratch. Start a new one, write “Stop making such lengthy ‘to-do’ lists” at the top, cross it out, crumple it up, and start a new one that says “Buy a waste paper basket.” Then work from there.

AQUARIUS: Potential lovers can tell a lot about you by scanning your impressive DVD library, a collection you’ve put years of thought into. “Out of Africa” and “The English Patient” paint you as a hopeless romantic when prominently displayed on your living room shelf. The stash under your bed, however, paints you in an entirely different light. “Swedish Slut Smorgasbord, Volume VII” never won any awards, and certainly won’t win you the affection of the cute dental hygienist from Stockholm you met at a convention last week.

PISCES: If happiness is so important to you, then why do you persist in associating with people whose only aim is to bring you down and tarnish your sense of self-worth? It’s a damn good question, and one I’d like to submit to your newest “BFF,” Dick Cheney.

ARIES: Efforts to curb your self-destructive addictions will come to naught next week when you realize that your life was much richer when you embraced them wholeheartedly. Closing down your Whiskey, Bacon, and Tobacco Emporium was a bad move. Especially with the economy the way it is now.

TAURUS: It takes two to tango, Bull, but as you learn later this month, it takes at least eight to dance the neighborhood wife-swap lambada. By mid-August you’ll have learned the three-man jitterbug in a concrete holding cell in Sharpes. Draw the blinds next time.

GEMINI: If I were your boss I’d have fired you months ago. Moreover, I’d make your dismissal sting even more by getting personal and pulling out the race card. Now get out of my office, you fat WASP!

My wife, Mary, has worked from home for the past year or so, and as a result, she’s gotten more and more lazy and, dare I say it, much heavier due to her incurable sweet tooth. She rarely gets out of the house or lifts a finger to do anything; I do all the shopping, errand running, and cooking. I consider myself to be a pretty good cook, and she seems to like the meals I prepare. But the other night, something outrageous happened. I’d just cleared the table and went into the kitchen to prepare dessert and realized I’d forgotten to stock her favorite cookies. Well, that did it. She flew off the handle and threatened divorce. We’ve always argued a lot about minor things — Mary’s very particular — but this is just too much. She still hasn’t calmed down and is dead set on separating. Despite everything, I love Mary dearly and want to fix things between us. You’d think that her anger might have roots in some other, larger issue. But no. We’ve been back and forth over it, and she insists that it’s all about there not being any Nutter Butters in the cupboard. This is ridiculous. What on earth should I do?

Michael G.
Merritt Island

As odd as it sounds, Rusty, I ran into a similar problem quite recently. It’s my habit to stock a variety of post-coital snacks for my many lovers. After strenuous, passionate lovemaking, I always offer my females a selection of imported baked delicacies on a silver serving tray bedded with fresh and fragrant gardenia petals. On the occasion in question, I padded into the kitchen to bring one my conquests some goodies and found that my flunky, Hernan, had failed to replenish the larder with biscuits and sweet treats before he left for vacation. In a panic, I rifled through his basement room and managed to find two lone cookies of very low quality. I considered giving her the Double Stuf Oreo, but decided against it. So I went back upstairs and gave her the Vienna Finger! Nabisco!

Dear Romeo,

My girlfriend has a problem with oral sex. Not with me performing it on her — oh no, she’s all about that — but she never, and I mean never returns the favor. She claims that girls just don’t like doing it, and since she’s the only girl I’ve ever been with, what else can I say? She says she polled her girlfriends (and she has lots) and they all say they do it begrudgingly, that it’s gross, and they do it more out duty than enjoyment. Is this really true? Do all women secretly hate doing it?

“Justin”
Cape Canaveral

Jeremy, the idea that all women hate performing fellatio is completely and utterly fallacious. I hate to ask, but are you keeping on top of your hygiene? The difference between the act being a chore and a pleasure for women rests on personal cleanliness. One must always have a clean fallacy.

Mr. “Pomodoro,”

I’m disgusted and offended by the advice you give out in your monthly column. These people are in desperate need of legitimate help with pressing romantic issues. I have a mind to submit my own advice column to replace your outdated, sexist “insights.” You should be ashamed, making passes at vulnerable women seeking comfort and reassurance. How do you look in the mirror every morning?

“Miss Nefertiti”
Melbourne

I look handsome and desirable every morning, thank you! From the moment I awaken and look up at my reflection on the ceiling, I look toned, smooth, and tanned like George Hamilton. And I am half his age! In the bathroom mirror I look wise, distinguished, and worldly like Larry King. And he is many years older than me! In the mirror on my espresso machine I look rugged and adventurous, much like Ernest Borgnine in his youth. In the mirror in my refrigerator by the crisper drawer I look ready for action and my hair is luxuriant and silky. In the mirror I have on my shoe to look up women’s skirts, you look old, jealous, and bitter. Nice to see you!

Romeo,

I know this isn’t romantic in nature, but it does have some shocking repercussions for sea lovers such as yourself. What do you think of the BP oil spill? Any ideas on how to plug the hole?

F.H.
Satellite Beach

As much as I enjoy hole plugging, I think the first thing we should do is fire all those responsible for the unfortunate disaster. Every last one of them should be given the sack. And they should all be brave and take it on the chin. Sounds like a job for the Teabaggers. Easy now!

Dear Romeo,

I’m dating a Brazilian girl and while we were watching one of the soccer games we began wondering what you thought of Brazil’s chances of winning. Do you think they have what it takes this year to make it to the final round, and possibly, bring home the World Cup?

“Chris”
Cocoa Beach

I do have some thoughts on this, Kevin. I was sad to see the Italians exit so early, yet I have been impressed with several of the lesser-known teams, Ghana for one. But Brazil? They are always favored to make it to the final round, if not win the entire thing. But I have some experience with the Brazilians and am not sure if they have what it takes this year. They’re really not all that great anyway. I symbolically scored with 11 Brazilian girls during a vacation to São Paulo a few years ago and they gave me quite a workout. I won in the end, but no one gave me a cup. I wish someone had, because my essentials still hurt every time I hear the opening notes of “The Girl from Ipanema.” GOOOAAAL!

Ditch Fish
• David Sherman •

In years gone by, it was common practice for political candidates to hire a wagon with a band to head a parade through town. Bands being rather scarce at the time — even more so bands riding on wagons through the streets of a town — this would invariably draw a crowd. A crowd would follow until the bandwagon stopped, only to find that when the wagon stopped, the band stopped, and the polly-tickin’ began.

Most would listen, at least for a little while, if for no other reasons than curiosity and simple politeness — after all, the man had hired a band on a wagon! Some would stay longer. Nothing else to do. Maybe this guy would be better than the last one. They might even stay through the whole speech in the desperate hope that the band would play again. Some would stay to the bitter end, however many speeches that might entail, and usually just stared at the purdy wagon and that shiny-big-brass-tuba-horn. The curious, the bored, and the slack-jawed, these were the founding members of most modern political parties… and whoever collected the most of them WON! Is it any wonder, with such a system for choosing our leaders, that we bestride an empire whose influence spans the globe?

Note, I do not say “the founding fathers;” that would be an altogether different group. The people in that group were never even in the crowd, nor were they on the wagon. They were not even among those who simply watched the bandwagon go by their homes yet chose not to follow. Truth is, their homes are far away, in another part of town where such a coarse spectacle as a bandwagon would be neither appreciated nor allowed. They can barely hear the band from their homes… But they’re the ones who paid for it, as well as the shiny-big-brass-tuba-horn and the wondrous, purdy wagon on which they ride. They’re also the ones who picked the politician who’s giving the speeches they told him to give.

Here’s the scary part: We, the electorate, have not changed very much over the intervening years. Some of us will follow politics for a little while, just before elections. Hey, it’s a wagon with a band on top! Some of us listen for a long time. Maybe this man (or woman, now that those years have gone by) will be better than the last one. Sadly, the slack-jawed crowd is still in attendance. In fact, in recent years their numbers have exploded. Unfortunately, the largest group of all got no mention above. They are the ones who never even bothered to look out their windows, and that group comprised the overwhelming majority of the town! It still does!

Scarier still: The Founding Fathers (now very well capitalized, thank you very much!) have changed even less, save that their techniques have been somewhat refined over the years. For the most part, the wondrous wagon with the band on top has been replaced with TV ads.  For the lovers of music, there’s talk radio. And for the slack-jawed, you can even buy an entire alleged “News Network” (Fairness and Balance subject to negotiation). Once in while they even trot out a wagon, just to give things that “folksy” air. Of course the new wagon is much purdier than the old one, but this one is also plastered with links to websites, and the band has been replaced by a killer PA system and that shiny-big-brass-tuba-horn in now just somebody’s MP3 player.

Many of the new wagons also now have Bibles, lots of Bibles. I’m not sure why. If I held something to be as Holy as I believe many of these people hold their Bibles, I surely would not want it sullied in the dirty waters of politics. But that’s just me. Hey! What if the Bibles were just put there by The Founding Fathers as a way to lure in those to whom the Bibles are Holy? No, that’s going too far. No one could be so callously disrespectful of the sanctity of someone else’s Faith as to co-opt the words of their Holy Scripture, and thus through their duplicity, many of its followers, just for political gain. Could they?

I think I would check those Bibles for hooks — hooks that might be attached to pole held by one of those Founding Fathers just waiting to reel in another one. (More likely a paid flunky thereof, as Founding Fathers rarely do their own reeling anymore.) I guess the same might be said of their internet links, their radio, their TV, and all the rest of it as well, though I can’t imagine where one would set the hooks.

Lastly, and before anyone gets too enamored with the whole fishing analogy, let me clarify one thing: We, the electorate, are not viewed by The Founding Fathers of either party as sly barracudas or huge and powerful tuna or grouper. We are not fierce marlins ranging the deep open Sea. We are tilapia, and we live in a ditch. For the most part, we have been farm-raised, in very small ponds, on a strictly limited diet whose nutritional essence would make gray water vomit.

Sinclair Lewis, meet Upton Sinclair.

Spirits of 1776
• Judy Forney •

… or Declaration of Interdependence … or All my Rowdy Friends are Gonna Sing Tonight

If you’ve studied animated television, then you realize I ripped off my title style from old episodes of “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” That’s called freedom of speech, or maybe freedom of the press. … Or maybe my pilfering doesn’t even fall under any constitutional law or amendment. And that’s okay, because I was born in the good old US of A.

I can be ignorant of facts. And just like Squirrel and his buddy Moose who both foiled many a bomb explosion planned by the nefarious Boris and Natasha, I am a great American. (Nah, “Our Heroes” weren’t Canadian. That’s just propaganda put out by the Dudley Do-Right people). I know I’m true red, white, and blue because I listen to the radio. Seriously, if I were to call the Sean Hannity Show, Mr.Hannity would be able to tell just by the sound of my voice.

Also, if you’ve studied the Revolutionary War (like I just did for a painstaking 17 minutes on the internet), then you are aware that the colonists, though somewhat angry with the British tea taxes, were really pissed about being dinged with a surcharge on molasses, the Caribbean molasses New Englanders distilled into 90-proof rum. Now the tea thing has never made sense to me. I’d possibly understand if way back in the 1700s they’d blended specialty brews and the girls had gone out on harbor raids with the guys.

“Taxes on Lotus Blossom Green? Dash those Redcoats!”

“No worries. We men will hoist it over the ship’s side and into the bay!”

“But what about our oxidants that need anti-ing?”

“… Or our cellulite that needs smoothing?”

“Dang it all, ladies, we can’t put up with English oppression!”

“… But it is July. Short shorts season! We need our tea!”

Hmmm… See, it could have happened that way when you figure there’s not a lot we gals wouldn’t pay or do to un-wrinkle or de-bump. As a group, we very well may have waved white flags and happily learned to drive on the wrong side of the road.

Anyway, back to the rum. As I’ve pointed out, women of the past may have been willing to pay anything for the perfect cup of detox, but I’m pretty sure the men would have needed their choice of elixir to stay cheap and available. You might think that would have been because a guy needed a nip or two to convince his wife that real dudes wore ruffles…

“Benjamin! Why are you in my closet… again?”

“I just wanted to borrow the white organza. You know, the one with yards of lace… ”

Or you might imagine that donning those tight breeches required a flagon-o-courage before a man went strutting off to town meetings. Unless of course he happened to be Dan’l Boone. (Even as a 12-year-old girl I thought Fess Parker was hot.) But the real reason the rebels gathered to rabble over rum? Yep, that’s right: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of the perfect neighborhood bar.

Fast forward a few centuries. I sometimes dress out of my hubby’s closet. He, mostly, stays out of mine. But we, in league with a couple of compatriots, have mustered together to carry on were our forefathers left off. The four of us have been out fighting the good fight. And it’s not always been with a cup of tea. We’ve wandered into bars so big and boisterous that our conversations had to be shouted. We’ve cabbed it to faraway dives rumored to be “IT,” only to find the dives had already dove off the deep end. We’ve soldiered through unbearable conditions: awful music, horrid food, snail-paced service. And what’s worst of all? Just like what George Washington endured — paddling across nearly frozen rivers, trudging uphill in the snow, and then finally shouldering our weary way through a crowd to find nothing to do but order another round. No pool tables, no darts, and — YIKES! — no karaoke. I can report to you that it’s been a long, treacherous, and sometimes headachy journey. But it’s been worth it. Our quest has at last led us to the perfect place to party. We’ve found a haven where we can cue up, tee off, score a few bullseyes, and belt out a couple of rowdy tunes.

So come on down to the Pour House on South Patrick Drive. Join me, Moose, Boris, and Natasha in a drink, a game of eight-ball, and a song. As Gretchen Wilson sings:

“I work hard, I play harder. I’m a good time’n American daughter… ”

Yep, Mr. Hannity won’t need to tell you that, along with the frogs in our voices, you’re hearing patriotism.

Not that I’d want that guy in “my” bar. But hey, it’s still a free country.

Happy Fourth y’all!

Nailed Former baseball star Lenny “Nails” Dykstra recently started accepting clients for his investment advice service, charging $999 a year, according to a March Wall Street Journal report. His Web site discloses that while Dykstra is “NOT” (his emphasis) a “registered” financial adviser, his “proven track record has caught the attention of many.” (Dykstra filed for bankruptcy in July 2009 to stave off more than 20 lawsuits against him for entrepreneurial ventures gone bad, and in November, the bankruptcy judge denied him the right to reorganize his debts, converting his case to a chapter 7 liquidation.)

Planned Barrenhood Virginia state legislator Bob Marshall, speaking in February in opposition to state funding for Planned Parenthood, said the organization is partly responsible for the number of disabled children in America. According to the Old Testament, he said, being forced to bear a disabled child is punishment for the mother’s having earlier aborted her first-born. “(W)hen you abort the first-born … nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.”

Boobquake In mid-April, senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi issued a warning that recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and elsewhere were caused by women’s loose sex and immodest dress. Immediately, Jennifer McCreight responded on Facebook by urging women worldwide to dress provocatively on April 26 to create “boobquake” and test the cleric’s theory, and at least 90,000 women promised they would reveal serious cleavage on that date. On April 26, following a several-day drought of earthquakes, a Richter-scale-measuring 6.5 quake hit just south of Taiwan. (Slight advantage to the ayatollah, since a Purdue University seismologist observed that a 6.5 quake was not uncommon for that region.)

Only In Borneo Researchers from Royal Roads University in Canada reported last year that the large, carnivorous pitcher plants of Borneo prefer to eat insects and spiders, but where those are in short supply, as in the Philippines highlands, the pitchers have grown to a size accommodating an alternative source of the nitrogen they need. The pitchers have “learned” that if they produce copious amounts of nectar, it will attract the tiny-mouse-sized tree shrew to harvest it, and the shrews, trapped inside the plant, will leave droppings directly on the spot most advantageous for the pitcher to consume them. Said professor Charles Clarke, discovery of the arrangement “totally blew us away.”

Absolutely Fabulous! Blair Fowler, 16, delights her frenzied fans as a “haul queen,” inspirationally “shopping for glory” by smartly tearing through stores and then displaying and expertly describing her purchases on Internet videos. A March Times of London dispatch from Los Angeles noted Fowler’s acclaim “for her ability to deliver a high-pitched 10-minute lecture on the merits of skinny versus low-riding jeans, apparently without drawing breath.” According to The Times, at least 100,000 “haul” videos are available on YouTube, mostly from “amateurs.” Fowler’s videos, though, have been viewed 75 million times by “haul” wannabes (mostly teenage girls). Also, Swiss clockmaker Artya announced in March the creation of a wristwatch set in fossilized dinosaur feces (with a strap made with skin from an American cane toad). Designer Yvan Arpa told the Associated Press the watch would sell for about $12,000. And the spa Ten Thousand Waves near Santa Fe, NM, is only the latest U.S. facility to offer as a “signature” treatment the “Japanese Nightingale Facial,” supposedly used for centuries by Japanese geisha for skin rejuvenation. Nightingale droppings are dried and sanitized, then spiced with oils and used as a face scrubber.

Not Very Funny At All, Actually One of the world’s longest-running TV comedy shows (according to an April Reuters dispatch from South Korea) is the weekly North Korean production “It’s So Funny,” with its undynamic format of a man and a woman in military uniforms talking to each other (though they sometimes sing and dance). The latest episode “extolled the virtue of beans,” wrote the Reuters stringer, “while avoiding any flatulence humor.” “If we soldiers see beans, we become happy,” said the man, leading both hosts to laugh. According to Reuters, “The two talk about how bean-fed North Korean soldiers were able to fight off U.S. imperialist troops during the Korean War.”

Whither Bill Cosby? Delmer Doss, 19, and his girlfriend, Amber Burgess, 19, were arrested in Stanley, NC, in February on child abuse charges after police found a video made by the couple of their 11-month-old son. The toddler was blindfolded, and the parents were shown laughing at him, over and over, as he bumped into walls and fell down. And in March in Dallas, Krystal Gardner, 28, confronting a repo man driving off with her SUV, tossed her 1-year-old baby through an open window to stop the moving vehicle. (At that point, the repo man stopped and got out, but moments later, a teenager emerged from Gardner’s house and began firing a 12-gauge shotgun.

Knob Gathering In October 2003, West Point, KY, hosted 12,000 visitors for the weekend Knob Creek Gun Range Machine Gun Shoot, billed as the nation’s largest, with a separate competition for flame-throwers. Especially coveted is “The Line,” where 60 people (the waiting list is 10 years long to be admitted) get to fire their machine guns into a field of cars and boats, and during which a shooter might run through $10,000 in ammunition. Among the champions: Samantha Sawyer, 16, the top women’s submachine gunner for the previous four years. One man interviewed by the Louisville Courier-Journal said he met his future wife at a previous Shoot, impressed that “she could accept flame-throwing as a hobby.” Said another: “This is one of those times when you know (America) is the greatest place on Earth.”

Oi Romeo!

Yer the kitten’s knickers, Romeo, you bargy dago bastard! Never in all me natural have I had such a turkish as when I first read your larf-aloud palaver. Me and the lads was in Port Canaveral two fluffs back on shore leave on the tiddleydum and split our bloody sides gargling at the pair who fell off the horse’s in the middle of a starry shag. As it happens, this bird back in cherry’s got one of the blokes, Tommy, in a right gherkin. He’s arse over tit for this bit of honeysuckle, but while we were kipped up in Gilbraltar a few moons ago, Tommy had a right fine creakle with one of the local roscoes — and luverly she was too, Carmen, with two beauty pippins on her that’d make a cob tumble his cheshires. Now Tommy’s feeling as coddled as a boffin in a skinful of humberdunce twits, so he is. Well, I says to him, keep your pudding ‘ole shut and no one will know dickie bird; twist yourself up by your wellies and stop piping like a mustard duff with two split brambles in the hams… and so on. After supper, Tommy’s Eliza’s an unholy chav, but Tommy’s as cozy as a gorsebilly in a bloody thimble and doesn’t know a dobbin in a strawrick from old Joe Doyle. So here’s the gush of it, Romeo, right down to the thruppence mojimbo: What should Tommy do, faraday down the malmsey or scupper through the wicket like a natter in a jamsack full of Trinidad peppers? We all wait for your sound advice with tarquin jagoes, as Jack winked to Jennifer. And up the nollytods, Romeo, if you get my meaning!

Cheers,

Midshipman Colin Jenkins
HMS Cadbury

Colon, it’s been said that England and America are two countries separated by a common language, and after your mystifying letter many readers may be inclined to agree. That said, your friend Tommy should definitely scupper through the wicket — double-time. Some readers may be surprised to know that I became well versed in British argot and Cockney rhyming slang while an exchange student in London during the early ’90s. I became very enamored of the city and her people, and count the tube system as one of my favorite London features. Especially the Fallopians! Tally-ho!

Dear Romeo,

I recently went skinny dipping with a male co-worker after a particularly rowdy office party on the beach. We’re both married and never touched each other during the swim but were wondering if you’d count it as cheating. “Rob” thinks so; I strongly disagree. What do you think?

“Heidi”
Cape Canaveral

Glenda, if no touching was involved, then I wouldn’t count that as cheating. But if your friend feels guilty it’s probably for a good reason. Regardless of your opinion, skinny dipping isn’t the kind of behavior two happily married people should engage in. And, um… that goes for people who are married to two different other respective people. As I am unmarried, however, I am always free to swim in the buff with you! I am a highly skilled and well-regarded skinny dipper. Once, while skinny dipping in the waters off Ipanema, I was mistaken for a snorkeler!

Help, Romeo!

I just turned 40 and decided to pursue my childhood dream of becoming a concert pianist. I’ve been taking classes with “Claire,” a ravishing blonde who happens to be married to a locally renowned cellist who practices in the room next door to ours. It only took two classes for me to feel myself falling in love with her. I’m happily single, but am afraid to take the risk of professing my feelings for Claire out of fear of angering both of them (her husband’s a big guy) and turning myself off playing the piano for good. Please help me. What should I do?

Ben F.
Satellite Beach

She sounds like a challenging piece. If anything, Chuck, telling her you love her will only improve your playing, regardless of the outcome. Don’t be afraid! Love waits for no man — and one cannot play passionately unless one knows passion. Go ahead, tickle her ivories! Con molto fuoco! When you’re finished with her, send me her number so I can put her on my Liszt!

Romeo,

I just graduated from college and am now looking for gainful employment. I have some experience as a sex advice columnist for the college paper and was hoping you were accepting interns. I’m a diligent, highly organized worker and very creative. I’d love to work for you. Give me a shot and you won’t be disappointed.

Mary N.
Melbourne

And I’d love to have you working under me, Fiona! I am always accepting applications for interns and am also always in need of assistance. There is all manner of work to be done around the Pomodoro compound, some of which might not directly relate to the writing of this column at first. For instance, I may have you polish my front knob (I have many people touching it when they come over for appointments), fold my linen, or hop down to the Port to retrieve my daily crate of fresh seafood. Just don’t bring me crabs! Ahoy!

CANCER: In the world of automobiles you’re most like an Alfa Romeo — sleek, classy, and prestigious. Other drivers often covet you as you speed down the road like a sexy, scarlet bullet. Right now though, you’re in the back lot behind the repair shop accruing storage fees until you can come up with the $2,000 it will take to replace your two rear tires.

LEO: No use crying over spilled milk, as they say, but your open-sluiced sobbing over the divorce you’re about to experience will be more than justified. In fact, it may even win you an Oscar in an alternate universe. Be sure to thank Beelzebub in your acceptance speech.

VIRGO: Look up at the stars. What do you see? A distant spattering of sparkling dust that shines down solely on you, or a vast, mind-boggling universe that dwarfs you into insignificance? I were you, I’d go with the latter over the former. Then I’d go and look up the difference between “latter” and “former” in some kind of book. Like the dictionary. Call me if you need any help after that.

LIBRA: Two of the most useful items in any well-stocked hardware store are the hammer and the screwdriver. They come in especially handy as I try hammering in the fact that you’re screwed, you tool.

SCORPIO: In Greek mythology, Zeus is the father of the gods — omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. But if you think I’m going to compare you to him you’re sorely mistaken. These days you remind me of Todd, the frequently absent father of the lesser gods of Palm Bay — dumb as a box of rocks and impotent.

SAGITTARIUS: Has anyone told you lately that you’re loved and that you matter? Highly doubtful. Try picking up the phone every now and then. Your mother’s wondering where you are.

CAPRICORN: You have no problem throwing yourself into your work and putting your nose to the grindstone, but throwing yourself in front of a moving vehicle would probably make everyone much happier. The less said about your nose, the better.

AQUARIUS: In an ideal world, fans of classic comic strips would categorize you as Superman or Captain America. As it is, they’re more likely to point out your resemblance to Ziggy.

PISCES: Every now and then life gives you a gentle slap in the face to bring you back to reality. This month, expect a three-minute pummeling from a brass-knuckled fist when you suddenly realize that Sarah Palin has absolutely no idea what the hell she’s talking about.

ARIES: I’d be remiss in my capacity as a respected prognosticator if I failed to tell you to brace yourself for a big disappointment this month. But I also wouldn’t not be telling the truth if I didn’t also neglect to inform you that you haven’t been not unwarned of a big thing that you may or may not be not unhappy to hear as well. It’s still unclear what it is, but it’s not not unpositive, but neither is it particularly negative. I hope I haven’t made myself unclear.

TAURUS: Once upon a time and place people like you were put on pedestals and given medals for their impressive achievements. Distressingly, the time was 1940; the place, Nazi Germany. Try being a tad nicer, won’t you? We’d hate to see you hung for war crimes.

Excerpts from the Diary of a Three-Year-Old Gourmet
• Dan Reiter •

April 21: The morning’s menu was uninspired: cold banana yogurt followed up by a single, overripe banana, sliced into 3/4″ medallions. Pancakes with sweet syrup would have added much-needed texture to the menu. Perhaps the addition of an amuse-bouche, a chocolate caramel truffle, or even a graham cracker would have loosened the palate before the banana course. My suggestion to this effect was snubbed by the chef. A plastic yellow spoon was thrust before me, and I was instructed to eat the yogurt quickly, as it was apparently time for school.

It is ridiculous to eat banana yogurt with a yellow spoon, of course. I refused it categorically, and informed the chef that there was a perfectly good green one in the drawer. She stiffened up, but retrieved it. I had the notion, then, that purple flatware might be better suited for the occasion, and told her as much. She seemed displeased, but brought out the purple spoon nonetheless. I thought better of it, traded it out for the green one, and the meal commenced.

The top skin of the yogurt was curdled, so I scooped it out and spread it carefully along the underside of the table. The banana medallions were too soft, so I left them. The overall presentation of the meal was shoddy, even shameful.

April 24: For my mid-morning snack, a bowl of Chilean blueberries — firm, cold, plump as grapes. To best appreciate the heady flavor of this delicacy, pack a number of fruit into the cheek and let sit for at least two minutes before breaking into the skin. This technique, known as the steep and squash, may slow the pace of conversation, but it is well worth the wait, as it never fails to produce the liveliest of spirits once the juice begins to flow down your shirt!

April 24: Tonight we dined at Café Margaux. Dinner commenced with baked Brie encrusted with macadamia and cashew nuts, and drizzled with an orange merlot sauce. I have a special affinity for cheese, but this was not cheese. It was a failed art project. My companions, perplexed at my disapproval, wondered how I could judge the dish without taking so much as a single bite. Such gentle people, who are not connoisseurs, are regularly mystified by my methods. As it was no time to try and illuminate the ignorant, I moved onto the bread without further explanation.

Like most French restaurants, Café Margaux does its bread right — warm, soft and white in the middle, with a workable, flaky crust. Unfortunately, I was served an inadequate portion. When I climbed atop the table to help myself to more, the basket was rudely pulled away from me and returned to the kitchen. (Note: the three essential elements to a good meal are: food, ambiance, and company. I am beginning to understand why so many gastronomes take their fine dining alone. Imagine… casting out the bread, when by all rights it should have been the Brie!)

The salad course I did not touch, as the chef committed the grave error of adding egg yolk to the mix. The fouled legumes were followed up by a plate of oak-smoked Norwegian salmon rosettes with caviar and traditional garnitures. The crackers were edible, but the rest was a colossal failure, completely unpalatable.

By now, I was sensing a lack of motivation on the part of the kitchen. My younger brother, who is sensitive to such things, had begun to toss various items to the floor — silverware, napkins, small plastic toys. Presently, he began to shriek. It seemed to me an overly dramatic response to the disastrous third course, but justified, so I joined in. I was promptly served a Lunchable — peanut butter and jelly — which I graciously accepted. I took special pleasure in smearing the excess jelly along the underskirt of the tablecloth.

The main course was a pear, Brie and walnut stuffed pork loin in a Bartlett and Poire William sauce. The sauce was tart, dark, sweet, and suitable for dipping caviar crackers into, but the meat was clearly an absolute tragedy, and did not require tasting.

The dessert, a crème brûlée, had all the proper elements, and bordered on perfection. Café Margaux falls into that particular category of restaurant that can botch the entrée, soup, and main dish, but somehow manage to elevate itself to two-star Michelin status when it comes time for dessert.

May 2: The newest fashion in certain foodie circles is the “art vegetable” plate. Here, raw carrots are peeled into strips, fanned across the plate, and sprinkled with raisins and honey. Broccoli is spread in a paste atop crostinis, served end to end with ranch dressing. Black beans are sculpted into the form of dogs, horses, flowers, etc. It seems to me the art vegetable movement is yet another attempt to revive an outmoded, failed idea with inventive presentation.

Last night I informed the chef that while the undiscriminating palate might be fooled by such base gimmicks, they were blatantly transparent and vulgar to me. I left the table without further word.

The next morning, the kitchen had the gall to bring out the same dish as the night before and serve it to me for breakfast, to catastrophic effect.

May 3: It seems the art vegetable movement has taken hold. Luckily, I have procured from a certain cabinet a bag of cheddar cheese Goldfish, which I relocated to a shoebox under my bed. I am inclined to suffer this current phase — which aims to threaten the very fabric of haute cuisine — in a protest of silence.

No Stinking Excuse
• Judy Forney •

I was out riding my bike the other day and came up on one of those flashing signs warning of imminent roadwork. I didn’t know if the City or County or whomever was going to tear up roads, lay new sewer pipe, or pave a cycling lane (Now hey… There’s a good idea!) because the blinking lights didn’t spell out any reasons for the work. Besides, the “why” wasn’t what got my attention. It was the “when.”

“Work begins June 1. Expect periodic lane closures.”

“Wow,” I thought to myself. “They sure are giving the citizenry plenty of notice. I mean, June? Hell, that’s eons from now!”

I pedaled past the sign. And that’s when it dawned on me.

“Like sands through the hourglass, so go the days of our lives…”

Dawned? No, wrong word. That’s when it crushed me like a 273-ton cement mixer.

“… sands through the hourglass…”

June is not an eon away. All the love bugs, bees, and even the giant spider in my sink (who was crawling up and then skating down the porcelain sides like an eight-legged Tony Hawk) should have clued me in that June was here. Again.

“…days of our lives…”

I braked. Hard.

“Stop. Stop. Stop already!” I said to no one in particular. “Somebody better flip the freaking ancient timekeeping mechanism back over!”

I gulped water, drops dribbling down my chin. “I’m not crazy,” I said, and smiled at some guy who had just come out of a shop and was strolling down the sidewalk. “Lots of people talk to themselves,” I added to his back as he crossed the road… well away from me.

Pushing off again, I couldn’t figure out how it had happened. Where in the world had the days, weeks, and months gone? Forget about granular time sifting slowly and gracefully through an hourglass. This past year had howled out from under my feet with some sort of Steinbeckian wind straight out of “Grapes of Wrath.” I mean seriously. Can you believe it’s nearly summertime again? Wasn’t it just June, like, a month ago? I gotta cry foul. My birthday is the 25, and I refuse to turn 51 till I’ve worn out the warranty on 50. And I’m not even close to having done that. Am I? But then again how do I know if I don’t know? Hmmm… A conundrum…

O.K. No panic. What I needed was my own little “lane closure.” A few minutes detour off the road to think. This had happened to me once before. I had an entire year go by without having a clue as to where it had disappeared.

But back then I had a solid excuse. It was the year the twins were born. Show me anyone who’s not hazy over the first year after giving birth to multiples and I’ll show you someone who is… I don’t know, a celebrity millionaire with three au pairs and a shrink on speed dial. Also, my husband and I have photographic proof from way back then of a year well… spent. Snapshots of newborn babies. Diapered little crawlers. Birthday cake-smeared smiles and curls. So I guess you could say that even though I’d entered a fuzzy year, I’d come out again focused and toting two of my three favorite Forney Boys. But what about this current 12-month span of time? What’s my explanation for being so unprepared for June 2010?

I turned and rode my bike back toward home. The road sign still blinked its bright message. On; off; on; off.

“Expect delays… “

And that’s when I realized the truth. I don’t need no stinking excuse! There’s an old joke… something about life throwing lemons and making lemonade. Well you know what? Sometimes hurled citrus is hurled citrus and a girl gets an eyeful of stinging pulp. All she can do is stumble out of range, rinse her peepers out, and try to find a little sugar to mix in with the tang. That’s what this has been from my last birthday to this upcoming one: the year of living sweet and sour.

I gained closeness with my younger sister, but lost my mom. I finished writing a novel, but new blank pages are terrifying me. I found the perfect neighborhood bar, but now have to sing karaoke with friends… badly. I got my empty nest back, but (don’t tell the earlier-hinted-at third of my three favorite Forney Boys), occasionally miss having company underfoot. And it seems to me that everything happened in one blurry blink of an eye. Seriously. No way does one blurry blink void the warranty on an entire year! … Right?

“Expect delays… “

Expect and accept them… then focus on moving along. Maybe that’s an important lesson to have learned this past year. But still, I refuse to claim 51.

How about “Happy 50-and-a-third Birthday” to me!

Lamp Lighter
• Judy Forney •

Grief is a wicked jester who, without bells jingling on his toes to warn of his approach, can creep up behind a girl to try and knock her flat.

I knew this May would bring the first Mother’s Day without my Mom — much like November brought Thanksgiving and December brought Christmas. But I can make plans to deal with holidays.

The first weeks of May bring both a flight out to see my sister in Denver and a visit with my BFF from Washington State, (who is coming out to repeat some of the nonsense we got into last year… Watch out, beachside!). We’ll probably shed a few tears together, but we’ll also find things to laugh about. Just like we did in November when my Dad, cooking for the first time, had to scribble down a “business plan” on one of his endless supply of yellow legal pads to make sure the meal timed out right. Or in December when my brother… baked pies?! See, it’s hard to stay tearful when you’re forking up “Mom’s” pecan pie and picturing your older, flour-dusted brother wielding a rolling pin.

No, it’s not the significant dates that do me in. It’s almost as if there are road signs for that. You know: “Visibility Reduced When Tears Are Present,” or “Memory Lane. No Easy Throughway.” But it’s not the jokester’s way to mark the trail. Like I said, the dude is evil. He’s sneaky. He delights in smacking me down when I least expect it. Like the other day when I was out and about and a pair of sandals in a store window caught my eye. Suddenly I was whisked years backwards to a Saturday shopping trip with Mom. Every store we walked into had shoes on clearance. We had to make, like, three trips back to the car to drop off packages before we finally gave in and went for donuts and sodas instead of deciding between any additional clogs or lace-ups. It was a ridiculous outing we often laughed about over the years. As a matter of fact, from that day I on, I’ve had an obsession with shoes (my hubby likes to pretend some of the boxes in our closet are empty. I guess a guy’s got to have dreams…).

The same creepy jester also adores reminding me, especially when I have news of the Forney Boys to share, that I can’t just pick up the phone and give Mom a call. But I’ve got something the little badass isn’t aware of: I’ve still got a connection with my mother. A signal. A light. And that’s what I hang on to.

Seriously. I understand that this is going to sound weird (yeah, I know. What else is new?), and I don’t know if it happens due to the grace of God or faulty FPL wiring, but when I’m blue, or lacking confidence, or worried about family, Mom switches a lamp on for me. Of course, I’m joking about the good folks at Florida Power. I’m sure Mom’s not communicating through them, (although I bet she’d get a kick outta driving one of those big ol’ crane trucks), but I’m not actually sure she’s hitting me up from heaven either. As you might guess from that, I wasn’t raised in a traditionally religious home. We read Bible stories from time to time, but we also listened to tales about Harry Houdini. Occasionally, we kids would spend a Sunday morning at church with my grandmother, but we also loved to play the “Clairvoyance Game” with our Mom. That’s why, as I wrote in an earlier column, we had both prayers and — because Mom loved a good monster story as much as the next person — talk of zombies at her funeral.

O.K., well maybe “non-traditional” barely covers it, and maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Wow. Poor Judy. She’s completely nuts!”, but I’m really thankful for my upbringing because I know the flash of the lamp is from Mom. When I need a swift kick, she’s kicking. A cheer squad? She’s leading. A soothing? It’s her voice I’m reminded of. I believe now, more than I ever have before, that in the end there will be light and welcome. I still don’t know if I’ll find my self inside pearly gates, walking the streets of an alternate universe, or battling zombies. But wherever I find myself, it sure will be fun to hook up with Mom again… especially if we can go shoe shopping.

Happy day, all.

Now go hug your mothers!

Curd Your Enthusiasm It’s a simple recipe, said A-List New York City chef Daniel Angerer: a cheese derived from the breast milk of his wife, who is nursing the couple’s 3-month-old daughter. As a chef, he said, “you look out for something new and what you can do with it,” and what Angerer could do is make about two quarts of “flavor(ful)” cheese out of two gallons of mother’s milk. “(T)astes just like really sweet cow’s milk.” He posted the recipe, “My Spouse’s Mommy Milk Cheese,” on his blog and invited readers’ participation: “Our baby has plenty (of) back-up mother’s milk in the freezer, so whoever wants to try it is welcome to try it as long as supply lasts (please consider cheese aging time).”

High On The Hog Among the items that celebrity farmer Cathy Gieseker bought with proceeds from the $12 million Ponzi scheme she was sentenced in February for perpetrating (prosecutors called her the “Midwest Madoff”) was a $900 tanning bed for her “show” pigs. In other porcine news, Farmer Chang Chung-tou, of Yunlin County, Taiwan, drew praise from environmentalists in December for having “toilet”-trained almost all of his 20,000 pigs to use his 600 specially rigged plots that collect and separate urine and feces. Chang’s farm conserves water and facilitates recycling.

Smelly Urine? You’re In! The entertainment manager at Thorpe Park in Surrey, England, announced in February a contest seeking foul-smelling urine. The park has introduced a live action horror maze based on scenes from the “Saw” movie series and decided that it was missing a “signature stench” to “really push the boundaries” of disgustingness. Manager Laura Sinclair suggested that submissions’ pungency would be enhanced after consumption of such foods as garlic and asparagus and offered a prize of the equivalent of about $750 for the winning urine.

BNDOVR! Papua New Guinea retains many of its historical tribal conflicts, and one flared up in January, according to a dispatch by an Australian Broadcasting Corp. reporter. Two people were killed in skirmishes that were provoked in a quite contemporary way — when a member of one tribe sent a member of another a pornographic text message.

Molluscan Mucus Florida’s Agriculture Department, acting on a tip, confiscated Giant African snails believed to have been smuggled into the country by Charles Stewart of Hialeah, FL, for use in the religion Ifa Orisha, which encourages followers to drink the snails’ mucus for its supposed healing powers. Actually, said the department (joined in the investigation by two federal agencies), bacteria in the mucus causes frequent violent vomiting, among other symptoms. At press time, Stewart had not been charged with a crime.

Railroaded In January, Aretha Brown, 66, who has lived in the same house in Callahan, FL, (pop. 962) for 30 years, suddenly became unable to leave her yard unless she crawled between CSX railroad cars blocking her access to the road. Tracks had always been in place, but the railway only began storing train cars on them this year. CSX told The Florida Times-Union that it would soon build Brown an access road to the street.

Shang High A growing drug problem facing Shanghai, China, is stepped-up use of methamphetamine, cocaine and other drugs at all-night parties, but not the “rave” parties favored by young fast-lane types in the U.S. These Shanghai druggies, according to a February dispatch in London’s Guardian, are often middle-aged and retired people, who use the drugs to give them strength for all-night games of mahjong played at out-of-the-way parlors around the city.

Singular Events In February, a one-armed man swiped a single cufflink from the CJ Vinten shop in Leigh-on-Sea, England, and in March, a one-legged man swiped a single Nike trainer shoe from a store in Barnsley, England. The one-armed man is still loose, but the one-legged man was arrested.

Click. Clack. Click. Clickclack… Travis Neeley, 19, was arrested in Lake City, FL, in March for burglarizing a car, caught red-handed by the owner, who used the remote control to lock Neeley inside. Neeley tried several times to unlock a door and exit, but each time, the owner relocked it before Neeley could get out, and he finally gave up and waited for police.

Keystone Cops In March, on duty on opening day of the jail at the new Adair County judicial center in Columbia, KY, sheriff’s deputy Charles Wright accidentally locked himself in a cell and was fired after he tried to shoot open the lock. And a Collier County, FL sheriff’s deputy suffered a broken ankle when he and a colleague accidentally locked wheels while patrolling in Naples on their Segways.

TAURUS: Things are looking up. That is to say people around you are looking up. See that up there? Doesn’t look like much now, but it is in fact an anvil plummeting toward you at an astonishing speed. Get out of the… Never mind.

GEMINI: When the chips are down, you’re sprawled on the floor drunkenly picking up greasy nacho shards at party no one invited you to.

CANCER: Your true nature will be revealed later this month when you foolishly reveal your true nature to a giggling gaggle of spring-breaking coeds after three too many boilermakers. Next time stick with your usual bran muffin and glass of grapefruit juice for breakfast.

LEO: It’s typical, isn’t it? You’re watching your favorite film with your date and just when it starts getting good, the power goes out. But instead of lighting some candles to make the best of the situation, here you are pacing around the room on your cell phone trying to get through to FPL to complain. Relax. “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” isn’t really worth it.

VIRGO: The Devil likes idle hands, but he likes busier ones even more. Please stop touching yourself in public.

LIBRA: The way things have been going lately, exotic travel might seem like an impossibility. But the laws of extradition work in mysterious ways, my good fellow. Think twice before buying a fake visa with a fake Visa. Bon voyage!

SCORPIO: With your future teetering on the edge of disaster, it would be in your best interests to immerse yourself in one of those giant bins of plastic, colored balls and stay there until December.

SAGITTARIUS: According to several studies, the aging process consists of several phases: denial, acceptance, frustration, annoyance, enraged refusal, pumping your boobs full of silicone, and then a brief spell of contentment followed by a prolonged period of tearful regret. After that, the denial kicks in again and you’ve come full circle. Try cuddling your old moth-eaten Cabbage Patch doll for comfort.

CAPRICORN: How do your closest friends describe you? Trust me, you don’t want to know. But I’ll give you a hint in the form of a spoonerism: “stack babbing.” That’ll teach you to go around describing all of your closest friends as “corthless wunts.”

AQUARIUS: On the 3-point scale of jerks, you fall somewhere between total bastard and annoying prick. And that’s number 2: totally annoying bastard prick.

PISCES: You’re an earth sign. You like to give the peace sign. As life passes you by, you never read between the lines. Don’t ever sign on the bottom line and get your shoes shined. It’s about time.

ARIES: Interestingly, despite my prior prophecy to the contrary, you’ve made good on many of the resolutions you gave yourself back in January. But in accordance with the implied tone of my prediction, all your valiant efforts will come to naught by month’s end when you read this, second guess yourself, and fall back into your miserable habits. Never underestimate the power of the stars. Or my power, for that matter.

I have a big crush on the girl who works at my local café. I stop there every morning on my way to work to get a cup of coffee and a muffin and to see “Daisy’s” sunshiney smile. Last week, she punched the last hole in my frequent friendly customer card, gave me my free mocha, looked up at me, and gave me what I took to be an unusually bright, toothy grin. I noted a certain gleam in her eye and couldn’t help myself from complimenting her on her loveliness at that moment and asked her why she seemed so particularly cheery that morning. Apparently, her boyfriend of two weeks had proposed to her the night before and she was over the moon. I was heartbroken at first, but promised myself that I wouldn’t let it get in the way of my pursuing her. I mean, come on! Two weeks? I’ve known Daisy for like six months! Plus, I’ve met her boyfriend (he’s some beach bum who just started coming in) and he’s an insensitive jerk. And he doesn’t even drink coffee! I know in my heart that Daisy would be much happier with me. But what do you think? Am I just being delusional? Should I give up or move forward? Time is running out.

Dave R.
Indian Harbour Beach

If I were you, Kevin, I’d give up. I’ve met her boyfriend too, and if you continue on this path, you may end up getting more than your hole punched. Zow! Like that!

Dear Romeo,

My husband and I enjoy… let’s say, “athletic” sexual relations. Among some of our amorous achievements are copulating suspended from our bedroom ceiling in a kind of sling “Ron” fashioned (he’s an engineer) and fornicating wildly in a speeding airboat (Ron was steering). But last month, our love of naughty hijinks took a turn for the worse when I tumbled off our roof in the middle of the night while we were engaged in lovemaking. Not only was it highly embarrassing — my neighbors seeing me lying motionless in the grass in my Catwoman suit and my husband up above in a Batman costume yelling for help because he was unable to untether himself from the chimney harness he made (Ron’s not a very good engineer) — but I broke my right arm in the fall. I hate the thought of giving this hobby up — we simply hate traditional bedroom sex — but we are getting older obviously and aren’t sure how much longer we can continue on. Do you have any creative solutions?

“Mary”
Cocoa Beach

Well Adela, I have many creative solutions as it happens, all of which are outlined in my latest lovemaking manual, “The Tantric Tarantula: and 1,001 Other Sexual Positions That Will Help You Rediscover the Pleasures of Intimate Contact, Tap Into Your Youth, Prevent Aging, and Win Successful Friends, and a Few Cooking Recipes My Mother Passed Down to Me Before She Died of Breast Cancer, Including Some Conversations with Angels and Some Reflections on the Decline of the Ottoman Empire (1830-1908) with Extensive Footnotes” sadly shortened by my unimaginative, market-obsessed publishers to simply: “Blow Me on a Bungee.” But you broke your arm, you say? That’s rather humerus. Ouch!

Romeo,

Does size really matter? Please settle this once and for all.

Jake W.
Satellite Beach

This is a question I’ve long been hoping to answer, Tyler, and I’m happy you asked it. But does it really need to be inquired of? Let’s put it this way, I have had many nicknames in my days of sexual activity, far too many to include with completion. But here are a few, just to give you an idea: “Romeo Vesuvio,” “Longfellow,” “The Erector Set,” “Dow Jones” (during the mid-’90s economic boom), “Romeo My Boat,” “Turgid God of Heavenly Love,” and once, during a dark patch following a bicycling injury, “Limpy.” However, I think that my current sobriquet will provide you with the answer you seek: “Too Big To Fail.” You will hear it if you listen closely on the lips of many beachside females. It’s a mouthful (so to speak), but far better than my poor cousin Alfredo Alfresco’s current nickname: “Ponzi.”
Dear Romeo Pomodoro,

My husband and I are having our neighbors over next week because we suspect that they might be closet swingers. “Martha’s” husband “Greg” is a real beefcake I sometimes admire over the fence separating our yards, and my husband also recently admitted that he had an erotic dream about Martha. We’ve been swingers for a long time, but fell out off the lifestyle recently when we relocated here from Michigan. My question is that we’ve been so long out of the loop that we can’t figure out a good game to loosen everyone up and initiate activity. We have a hot tub and several boxes of chilled chardonnay in the outside fridge, but we think that maybe if we suggest playing strip poker we might come across as kind of creepy and outdated. Do you have any ideas about how to get things rolling?

“Dominique”
Melbourne

Fascinating inquiry, Charlene. You’re very right in thinking that strip poker is an antiquated chapeau. No swingers I know of — and I know many — have pulled that one out (ahem) since 1979. The games industry has supplied the swinging community with loads of wonderfully fun facilitators over the years, “Yahtzee In My Partner’s Pants” being one of the more successful and popular. But the overall tactics of swingers have swung (ahem) back to the classics: “Twist Her,” “Parcheese Me,” “Monopoly Polygamy,” “Uncle Wiggly,” “Shoots and Lad ‘Er,” “Duck, Duck, Goose Me,” and “Trivial Hump-a-Thon.” I’ve also heard tell of some swingers playing something called “Lights Out Cribbage.” Just make sure everyone puts their pegs in the right holes. Milton Bradley!

Please Wash Your Hands A Toronto restaurant, Mildred’s Temple Kitchen, announced that its Valentine’s Day promotion this year would not just be a romantic dinner but would also include an invitation for couples to have sex in the restrooms. Toronto Public Health officials appeared unconcerned, as long as there was no sex in food-preparation areas and as long as the restrooms were clean. “Bodily fluids” were not a concern, said one unruffled health official, because after all, that’s what restrooms are for.

The Power Of Words When Donald Williams was publicly sworn in as a judge in Ulster County, NY, on January 2, offices were closed, and no one could find a Bible. Since holy books are not legally required, Williams took the oath with his hand on a dictionary. Also, Merriam Webster’s 10th edition dictionary is so influential that the Menifee Union School District in Southern California removed all copies from its elementary schools’ shelves in January in response to a parent’s complaint that the book contains a reference to “oral sex.”

Ruff Justice In December, British Columbia’s District of Sechelt Council approved a bylaw making it illegal for licensed dogs to chase squirrels, seagulls and other wild animals. The councillors added a defense of “provocation” but left it undefined, which might be especially problematic in instances in which the dog is the only witness to the alleged provocation.

Below The Bible Belt Pastor John Renken’s Xtreme Ministries of Memphis, TN, is one of a supposedly growing number of churches that use “mixed martial arts” events to recruit wayward young men to the Christian gospel. Typically, after leading his flock in solemn prayer to a loving God, Pastor Renken adjourns the session to the back room, where a New York Times reporter found him in February shouting encouragement to his violent parishioners: “Hard punches!” Renken yelled. “Finish the fight! To the head! To the head!” One participant told the Times that fight nights bring a greater masculinity to religion, which he said had, in recent years, gone soft.

Better Late Than Never Ten days after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab nearly brought down the Christmas Day airliner over Detroit, the State Department officially revoked his visa. And eight days after the Christmas Eve demolition of Minneapolis’ historic Fjelde House (as a fire hazard), the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission awarded the site “interim protection” for its historic value.

Crappy Valentine’s Day! First, farmer Dick Kleis of Zwingle in eastern Iowa, composing a birthday note to his wife, arranged more than 60 tons of manure in a pasture to spell out “Happy Birthday, Love You” in shorthand. Then, for Valentine’s Day, farmer Bruce Andersland created a half-mile-wide, arrow-pierced heart from plowed manure at his farm near the town of Albert Lea, MN. “Now I’ve got my valentine!” shouted wife Beth, when she first viewed the aerial image.

They Don’t Make Cops Like They Used To Sheriff’s deputy John Franklin of San Luis Obispo, CA, filed a lawsuit in December against the Catholic Church and former priest Geronimo Cuevas for the “emotional trauma” he suffered by being propositioned for sex while working undercover in 2007. Deputy Franklin was patrolling a public park near Avila Beach when Father Cuevas reached out and touched Franklin’s clothed genital area. Cuevas was arrested and convicted, but Deputy Franklin said he is not yet over the feelings of “anger, rage, disgust and embarrassment.”

Names Of Note Arrested in January in Memphis, TN, and charged with having carnal knowledge of an underage girl: Mr. Knowledge Clark, 29. Arrested in January in Hellertown, PA, and charged with cashing a stolen check: Richard Fluck, 47, and Bryan Flok, 47. Arrested in Denver in February and charged with using another person’s driver’s license as identification: Mr. Robin J. Hood, 34. Arrested in Kingston, PA, in January and charged with cocaine trafficking: Carlos Laurel, 30, and Andre Hardy, 39. Arrested in February in DeFuniak Springs, FL, and charged with possession of crystal meth: Crystal Beth Williams, 21.

Short Back and Sides In August 1994, Sanford, FL judge Newman Brock picked up hair clippers and went to the local Seminole County Jail for his regular biweekly haircut from his longtime hairstylist, Rick Thrower, who was serving 45 days for DUI violations. Said Thrower, “(The judge is) a very loyal customer.”

The Bread Of Heaven Just after Christmas, the Anglican Church of St. Peter in Great Limber, England, unveiled artist Adam Sheldon’s 6-foot-high representation of the crucifixion consisting of 153 pieces of toast. Sheldon browned the bread himself, then painstakingly either scraped (to lighten) or torched (to darken) each piece to fashion the tableau.

Let me just say that I can’t believe I’m writing to you with this problem. I don’t usually do this kind of thing, and I don’t really care for the publication that employs you. But I’m going out on a limb because I really have nowhere else to turn. Let’s cut to the chase: I’m a very conservative professional male who’s in love with a liberal woman I work with. At first, I think we both kind of got off on the political tension between us, but as the months have gone on her wacky views are getting in the way of our courtship. I love Angela dearly, but I also happen to love Rush Limbaugh. Please try to put aside your foreign, liberal bias to give me some honest direction. Can Angela and I put aside our political differences for the sake of marital bliss?

“Dittohead in Love with a Feminazi”
Satellite Beach

Well, first of all, you ignorant conservative half-wit, it’s important that you take a cold hard look in your costly gold Republican mirror and face the facts. As I often tire of repeating, love knows no political boundaries. The first thing you must do is to come around to Angela’s way of thinking, which will lead you down rose petal-strewn lanes of marital bliss and contentment. The problem, it appears, is that there are three people in this relationship, not two. You say you are in love, but with whom? With Angela or Rush Limbaugh? Your love of Limbaugh is duly noted, but please don’t mistake agreement with his views for sexual compatibility. Limbaugh seems to fill a hole for you and you appear to enjoy it. Who would you rather spend time with, Limbaugh or the lovely Angela? Yes, there is an obvious hole in your life. Don’t allow Rush Limbaugh to fill it.

Dear Romeo,

Just after the pressure I felt after Valentine’s Day, I’m beginning to feel even more pressure for my upcoming 10th anniversary. I pulled out all the stops for February 14th and now I’m faced with trying to outdo it all this April 20th. Should I go more subdued, or should I shoot even higher this time?

Andy F.
Melbourne

Always, always shoot higher, Steve. I’m sure you can do it. Feeling the pressure is always a good thing, especially when you feel it your nether regions! Heyho!

Romeo,

I made a big mistake. I mean a BIG mistake. In desperation one drunken night, I hooked up with a “plus size” girl, and unfortunately got her pregnant. I have nothing against large girls — and I’ve always wanted to have kids, but not this way. Hers aren’t the genes I want. What do I do?

“Russell”
Cocoa Beach

Well, Phillip, you should have thought about all those genes before you pulled them off her, you rascal. If you don’t like larger girls, you should in future give them a wide berth, or you may find yourself once again witnessing an even wider birth. Hold on!

Dear Romeo,

As a fellow Italian you might be able to understand my problem. I love to “talk” with my hands, and when I get excited I go crazy, gesticulating wildly no matter where I am. Last week I was out on a date with a guy I was sure I’d marry by the end of the year, and in the heat of the conversation we were having in this posh restaurant, I knocked a bottle of expensive cabernet all over his even more expensive white linen suit. He hasn’t spoken to me since. Help!

“Maria”
Merritt Island

Cara Sophia, I am sorry for your heartbreak. Please remember that gesticulating should always be done in private behind closed doors.

Dear Romeo,

Here we are not even halfway into 2010 and we’re seeing yet another celebrity sex scandal. I have no idea who this Jesse James is, but it’s obvious that he’s just another of your typical male chauvinist pigs and serial cheaters who can’t keep it in his pants. But what about all these tramps he hooked up with? First we had Tiger Woods consorting with the lowest common denominator of the female gender and now this guy James with a predilection for hooker-types. What do men see in these bimbos? We all know what James’s problem is, but what in the heck is the problem with these women?

Fiona H.
Indian Harbour Beach

Well, Brittany, I’m not a doctor, but it would seem that their common problem might stem from their chronically swollen glands! Safety goggles, please — stat!

TAURUS: You may be asking yourself questions like, “What is my purpose here?” and “Why do good things happen to bad people?” Well, you have no purpose here and bad people usually pay good money to have good things happen to them. There. Now quit cryin’ about it.

GEMINI: You tend to put yourself on a pedestal this time of year, thereby revealing your snobbish disdain for everyone else. My advice to you would be to set up your pedestal somewhere in the Persian Gulf.

CANCER: When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When life gives you a fruit basket, you share with family and friends. How is it that when life gives you a good plate of pasta, you drink too much wine, undo your belt at the table, and flatulate yourself to sleep?

LEO: Feeling down? Moody and indifferent? Are you experiencing bouts of self loathing? Feeling unmotivated and unconfident? Is it hard to get out of bed and face the day? Do you visualize strangling people who talk incessantly about things that don’t matter and never will? Me too. I think it’s going around.

VIRGO: This feeling of insecurity that’s been hanging over your head stems from the the fact that you’ve never really satisfied a woman, you drive like an old lady, you were never any good at sports, and even though you’re in your mid-30s, your little sister could still take you in a fist fight. Wait, don’t cry. I didn’t mean it. I was just joking! You’re the man! Seriously.

LIBRA: You’re in a state of constant confusion and bewilderment as to what to do next, so you finally just say “Screw it!” and jump on a plane headed somewhere far away. But once you get there you realize you left the one thing that ever really made you happy: drinking at your favorite beach bar.

SCORPIO: Treat yourself to something nice this month. You don’t have to go overboard, just something small that will make you happy. Something small and useful. Like a dwarf with a great set of tools.

SAGITTARIUS: Nothing really changes for you this month. It’s going to be the same as last month. Except maybe throw in a little food poisoning and a case of the shingles. And your car might get repossessed. But that’s probably it. Everything else? The same.

CAPRICORN: A trip to the zoo with your husband will prove not only to be educational and enjoyable, but a priceless lesson for all those animals who realized that they don’t really have it that bad after all.

AQUARIUS: Bad decisions will play a key role in this month’s unfolding of loneliness and gloom. Keep this in mind when you opt to spend your time with the no-talent oaf you met at the bar instead of the handsome, athletic hunk who lives next door. You may want to lay off the piña coladas. They seem to be affecting your otherwise good judgment.

PISCES: You receive a little fame but no fortune when you’re entered in the history books as the worst beer pong player in the world.

Is It Just Me?
By Rick LaClaire

“Some folks never smile
Some folks do, some folks do
Others laugh through guile
That’s what some folks do”
– “Some Folks” by Stephen Foster (1826-1864)

It’s been said that I am opinionated. In my opinion, I am not.

But if I am, what’s wrong with that? I just like a good argument. There’s nothing as heady as a constant counterpoint embellished with a few unsubstantiated statistics. It sure keeps the conversation going (and if you add alcohol, it can get downright lively). Don’t we all, in our heart of hearts, just love to hear ourselves talk? Or is it just me?

Picture yourself married to a beautiful woman — your soulmate, the mother of your children — and you wish to show your appreciation by taking her to a four-star restaurant on your anniversary. Valet parking, cocktails on the terrace, a couple of bucks in the piano player’s snifter, and soon you are being seated. Others are being seated too, and at the table next to you is a young couple. She’s cute and young, and he — he — is wearing a ball cap. Indoors. At the table. Backwards. The hat, that is… Is it just me, or is that wrong? And would it be wrong if I asked him to remove it (“Out of respect for the ladies, sir”)? Ah, the quandaries of being opinionated. But of course, in my opinion, I am not opinionated. I’m just concerned for the young man. By wearing his hat backwards he is not taking advantage of its UV protection. And man, that candlelight… Just loaded with deadly UV rays…

Now everybody’s seen this: it’s election time. The roads are littered with “Vote For Me” signs (they’ve been out since August). It’s down to the wire now, and as you pull onto the causeway, heading back beachside after a hard day’s labor on the mainland, there he is. You recognize the face immediately — it’s at every street corner in the county. And he’s not alone. His wife, six kids (right down to the baby), and even the family dog are there to greet you, waving and smiling like you’re an old friend. It’s ninety degrees out, all you want to do is get home and fall into a cold bourbon, and this nitwit thinks he can grab your vote at the last minute just by being there. Waving. With a phony smile. For some reason he’s not even breaking a sweat. My reaction to this is always the same: I’m not voting for anyone who puts his family at risk during rush hour on a buzzing causeway. Does this tactic work? I’d like to see the statistics.

Is it just me, or do talking blobs of mucus make you want to put a pitchfork through your flat screen? You know what I’m talking about. See, it isn’t just me. I will never buy that particular brand of cough syrup because of those commercials.

Same with the gecko people. First it was the lizard, then cavemen, then stacks of money with eyes, and now a panoramic view of Charlie Daniels’ dentures as he savages a violin. Over and over and over… I don’t care how much they can save me on my car insurance, I hate those commercials so much I’m stickin’ with the rat bastard company that cancelled my homeowner’s policy just out of spite. I wonder if my health insurance covers reattaching my nose?

Is it just me, or was the world a better place before “The Colon Lady”? Yup, you guessed it, another product I shall never sample. My bowels could be jammed with half a metric ton of quick-set concrete and I would not grace that company with a single cent of my hard-earned pay. You think the Colon Lady has any friends? “Hey honey, let’s call up the Colon Lady and get bloated and constipated tonight!” Not likely… And what about her professional life? Think she might be typecast? I’ve got a feeling… once the Colon Lady, always the Colon Lady.

Now, I can hear you saying, “LaClaire, you watch way too much TV.” You know, actually, I don’t. I don’t need to. Commercial television is so ad-saturated these days that it only takes a half-hour to get the whole plan. I’ve counted over twelve commercials in a row sometimes. I don’t remember strings like that in years past. Is it just me? And what about those little pop-ups that keep appearing while you’re watching your show? It’s as if twelve commercials in a row every five minutes just isn’t enough. No, we have to ad-saturate you even during the program. Too bad if you’re closed-captioned or reading subtitles. I wonder who came up with that idea. I want to meet that person and engage him in conversation. And every time he opens his mouth, I’d like to loudly interrupt with “‘Mad Men’ on at ten!”

There. I did it. I went on for four paragraphs complaining about television. You know, things must be pretty good if you’ve got time to sit around and whine about something you can just turn off. Is it just me, or are we way too overloaded with information technology?

Remember pay phones? Try and find one now. I still use them, when I can. Why? Because I am The Last Person On the Planet Without A Cellphone. It probably won’t last long, because formerly, I was The Last Person On the Planet Without A Computer. And previously, I was The Last Person On the Planet To Buy A Leisure Suit.

So, there is a pattern. I guess I catch on late. Ask my wife and daughter, I was never a slave to fashion.

Remember fax machines? I was late with that, too. I paid a lot for that plain-paper dinosaur, and I thought I was the king of the information age. Imagine, being able to fax quotes instead of delivering them, right from your office! Receiving drawings and contracts the same day! The same hour! Yep, I was the king. That was 1994. Then came 1995. Suddenly every customer’s desk was decorated with a new purveyor of information: the PC. Took me three more years to catch up with that. I remember Al Gore — the guy who invented the computer — saying that one day every household in America would have a computer. I laughed at that, then. Then I laughed again as I bought one. Then another. Then one for the kid. Then another for the kid…

So I have a fax, several TVs, several radios, a computer, and two separate land lines. Is it just me, or isn’t that enough? Civilization can reach me in any corner of my personal space. So why do I need to be bothered further while I’m driving, fishing, boating, gardening, or mowing the lawn? My kids are addicted to their cellphones. And now they’re not content to even talk to one another. They have to “text.” It’s constant with them. In the car, at the bus stop, in the Mall, on the beach… Enough! Too much information! Is it just me?

Beach renourishment is ugly, wasteful and deadly to the beach biome. Is it just me? Is it just me, or does living in a neighborhood where all the houses have to be the same color defeat the purpose of home ownership altogether? Are low-rider pants the funniest trend since the forementioned leisure suit, or is it just me?

Opinionated? Me? Not in my opinion. It’s just me.

ANTS IN MY… PANTIES
By Judy Forney

As some of you out there know, I’m a sci-fi movie nut, especially if the story was filmed in black and white in the 1950s.

My husband and I have been collecting old retro flicks for years. The only thing that would make our showcase collection of DVDs, (yes, DVDs) more awesome would be if the films could be yanked from their plastic cases and rewound on old 8-mm reels. Then we could enjoy the action on screen in the way the filmmakers intended. Add Wavy Lays and a glass of Chardonnay to the entertainment and I’d be over the moons of Altair 4.

It’s one of the reasons I like living where we do in Florida. Satellite Beach is a strange and wondrous place. I mean, duh, it’s part of the Space Coast. Shuttles launch. Rockets blast off. Plus, around here we’ve got all kinds of weird creatures, like three-foot tall birds stalking fishermen on the beach and giant turtles swimming just off shore. Coming from eastern Washington State, it’s all rather otherworldly, and I love it.

Anyway, one of my all-time favorite science fiction titles is, “THEM.” It’s about a small New Mexico town that’s infested with huge, irradiated, man-noshing ants and the small police force that finds itself in an epic fight against the hideous creatures. And just like those poor desperate desert folks, I too recently had to battle back an attacking army of antennaed renegades.

It started in the far and barely civilized reaches of my bedroom on the dry, hot and barren landscape of my iron. A few days before the invasion, I’d almost used the object soon to spew forth doom, but then promptly thought of 352 million better ways to pass the time than pressing shirts. Seriously, who chooses ironing? And the board? Now really. Everyone realizes those things are best utilized as storage planks! I mean I don’t even know why the contraptions have springs that allow a person to fold them flat for storage. But back to the point of my story, this is a cautionary tale. If only I’d known then that in three days time…

It was mid-morning on the fateful day and I couldn’t put chores off any longer. I’d just plugged in my Rowenta when I spotted the invading ant scouts. They scurried across the temperature control, and down the front of the heating plate. Looking closer, I saw that the water reservoir was crawling with critters and that two lines of wiggling troops had already begun their creep, creep, creep across my counter. Oh my gosh! The first battalion had reached their objective: my Flintstones vitamins!

I grabbed the bottle, swiped members of the family Formicidae to the floor, and then peeked inside. The contents wriggled and crawled with little black bodies but, thank heaven, they hadn’t turned into super bugs yet. I’d caught the marauders in time. I mean, they could have morphed into — as the blurb on the back of the DVD box says — “A horde so horrifying no word could describe: THEM.”

I know, I know. In the old movie the mutants munched their way through a vat of underground uranium or some such radioactive agent that caused their metamorphosis, but my vitamins are Flintstones Complete — pediatricians’ number-one choice and packed with nutrients. There’s also a picture of Fred on the front. Who knows? Maybe the ants figured that after crawling inside they’d be able to answer that age-old debate: “Who’s hotter, Wilma or Betty?” Not quite the argument it’d be over Ginger vs. Mary Ann, but I don’t think any of the castaways ever lent their images to supplements.

And speaking of hot… or the better word might be warm, or maybe temperate.. so, speaking of temperate, the second offensive repelled from the counter’s cliff and then, on solid footing again, marched towards my not-everyday-underwear drawer. My “fancy pants,” you might say. I’ve also got… umm… “bath” oils in there. I was horrified. Really, a girl can launder satin and silk, but she certainly doesn’t want pests in her Kama Sutra products… well, beside the one she’s married to.

“Man, you little monsters better not be running ’round in my good things!” I hollered, yanking the drawer from its slide.

Shouting seemed to startle the bugs. Troops disassembled and began to wander aimlessly. Luckily I’d been in time to avert disaster! Relieved, I sat the drawer down out of reach of the army and surveyed the battlefield. I swear I could hear insects crooning up at me, as if in apology, in little Cyndi Lauper-like voices, “Ants just want to have f-u u-n.” The crafty devils were trying to trick me into some kind of truce! I ran for my vacuum.

Like I said before, this is a strange place, and I love the Space Coast. Antennae and all. But in choosing to live the Florida lifestyle there’s one thing everyone should remember: forget about watching the sky. Keep an eye on your small appliances instead.

Trust me. You don’t want an ant invasion. Especially in your panty drawer.

It is January as I write this. Presently, Florida is suffering the longest cold snap ever. Usually, a cold snap is just that: a quick chill. Not so, this winter of 2010. I have counted six mornings now with readings in the 20s and 30s, with more on the way. We’re actually having a winter in central Florida, something most of us came here to escape.

I’m not equipped for this. My old mackinaw has long ago been given to the moths. I used my winter gloves to hold live blue crabs while I halved them — they were no good after that. My wool watch cap sat on the dashboard of my truck for a week last winter and the sun disintegrated it. And long pants? I have one pair, not counting dress slacks, and they’re presently stained from a certain hunting experience I shall soon relate. Let’s face it, my wardrobe is Florida, not Maine.

Not so in my snowbound youth. Deep snow, freezing temperatures, and school and business closures were part of life in Upstate New York. We planned on it. But occasionally we received more than we planned. Occasionally, even for the most seasoned, you needed a little help. That was when we relied on the kindness of others; the loyalty of good friends and neighbors.

Like that winter in ’62 when it snowed so deep the plows couldn’t get out. The milkman too, apparently. Three neighbors with a toboggan took grocery orders and trudged miles through deep snow, “so the babies could get their milk.” My mother says it’s just what neighbors did back then. I call it “The splendor of action.”

I’ve been helped by a lot of people over the years, many times by strangers. But after all the fear we’ve had pumped into us over the last ten years, it’s easy to become mistrustful. We figure everyone is working some kind of “angle” to steal our money, our job, our seat on a plane, or even our identity. Every once in a while we have to be reminded that there are a lot of good-hearted people out there. And so it happened to us…

We heard shots in the distance. Other hunters were up this road. We’d seen tire tracks on the way in. My truck was mired so completely that nothing could drive around us. We were blocking them. I left a sign on the windshield.

No shovel, no crowbar, not even a rope — but, lo and behold, I had a Sharpie, and a map on which to write. The Sharpie was a mite fine, so I doubled the lettering:

STUCK went for help

I pinned it beneath a windshield wiper. Thinking back, I suppose the note was a bit tautological.

Other than ammo, the only items of any value in the truck were the rifles, so we decided to carry them. It was a few miles to the ranger station and we had no idea how long it would take. I remembered seeing blasted-out cars and trucks in the forests and fields of my youth and wondered if that wasn’t how they got there: some pissed-off hunter. My heart was in my bowels when we took those first steps out. If and when we returned, would my vehicle be intact?

Any notion that this would be easy was dashed at the first bend in the road. This was a previous bog, one we’d had problems negotiating on the way in.

“Well, it looks like we broke in our boots,” I said as the black water lapped at our knees. “I’m no longer afraid to get these guys wet.” My son agreed.

Conditions worsened as we continued. How did we get back here? How stupid of me… We soon approached a pool that appeared too deep to wade. I remembered water on the hood. A wide circumvention of the hole was undertaken. This was through tussock-type vegetation in a foot or so of standing water. Beneath were rotten logs, unseen and slippery under the black sheen. This was the perfect environment in which to break an ankle. At one point my son said he saw something slither away. I told him it was his imagination and to keep going, but my eyes were all for cottonmouths after that. Eventually, we were back on the track and new pools appeared; forgotten pools I had laughed and splashed my way through previously. They were fun no more. What had I been thinking?

“At least it’s a nice day,” I said aloud. It was true. It was mid-afternoon. The sun was shining. No breeze and about 60 degrees — a great day to go hunting. But instead, we were slip-sliding on submerged timber with numb feet, sweating the fate of my abandoned vehicle.

After a half-hour of slogging we looked back. “I can still see the truck,” the boy said. Yes, there it was, a disappointing white speck in the mud. Even though our pace was brisk, we were literally treading water.

By the time the guns were becoming heavy, the terrain dried out. Soon we spotted swirling buzzards. Ordinarily that’s an ominous sign. We knew what it meant.

“There’s the gut pile,” I commented. We were getting close. Rutted sand gave way to a hard washboard road and finally, after a little more than an hour’s trudge, we approached the ranger’s station. We were thirsty, beat, and our feet were cold and wet.

The ranger took one look at us and said: “Looks like you got stuck.” He said it so nonchalantly that the next line didn’t sink in right away: “I can’t help you.” I suppose I expected to hear that, then he went on: “But somebody will. Give it a few minutes.”

We needed a few minutes. We sat on the edge of the porch and I opened a water bottle I brought. My son took off his boots. I guess I thought the ranger would make a phone call or something. Maybe he knew of some secret towing service out here. We sure couldn’t find one. A few minutes went by. Still no action on his part. He was shooting the breeze with some campers. I stood and milled a bit, hoping to get his attention. No response. Maybe I needed to say something.

Then, through the gate appeared a hulking red SUV. Dogs barked from within. The driver greeted the ranger like a old friend. The ranger nodded to me, then asked the driver: “Think you can help these boys out?” It was just that simple.

Their names were Tom and Tom, a father and son, and they were out for an afternoon of wingshooting with their dogs. As we four glided effortlessly over the sodden roads, I apologized profusely for intruding on their hunt. I offered money for their trouble and I think that slightly offended them. “This won’t take long,” the elder Tom said. Tom the younger added, “We’ve all been there.”

Then, far ahead, there it was, a little white speck in the mud. “That your truck?”

“Yes,” I replied. We were slipping and splashing; the road was worsening. “How’d you ever get that thing in here?” young Tom asked. I wanted to say something like “Good sense is finite; idiocy has unlimited mileage,” but only managed “I don’t know.”

The tow strap was applied three times that day. Once in the initial mire, twice more in pockets we had roiled up with our traffic. Their vehicle was made for this element, ours wasn’t. The dogs were silent and patient, as was my son. We emerged on the main loop road covered in mud. My thanks were profuse. It had only taken a half hour. I asked Tom and Tom their last name and they declined — perhaps they sensed I wanted to send them a gift of some kind. They wanted neither publicity nor remuneration. “Pay it forward,” was the elder’s wage, and when I see the chance, I shall.

Hunters are not fishermen. Yes, you can be both, but they are different mindsets. In fishing, you can release your catch and then knock back a beer. Hunting is serious; there’s no such thing as kill and release, and alcohol is strictly verboten. Fishermen gab and joke while they cast. Hunters observe strict silence and pride themselves on their lack of presence. Fishermen brag and lie. Hunters don’t bother; theirs is a sad satisfaction, the knowledge that death begets life, and that “This ain’t no party/This ain’t no disco/This ain’t no foolin’ around.”

The ranger summed it up on our mud-streaked way out: “Hunters do things like this for people. They’re always willing to help.” So do many fishermen, I might add, but then there’s the guy that sees you catch a fish and plows right up next to you. Or the guy who leaves his catfish to die on the beach (ouch!). Or the fish hog who catches twice as many blues as he wants or needs and leaves them to rot in the public garbage can at the end of your street. To this day, I have never met an inconsiderate hunter.

So I thank you, Tom and Tom, for proliferating my faith in good people. And thanks to another Tom, my son, for being so mature and uncomplaining, for helping with all his strength and sharing his technology.

Three Toms, demonstrating the splendor of action.

(To read Part One – click here: http://thebeachsideresident.com/2010/02/this-happened-to-us-part-i/)

Duff Puddings The recent Christmas bonus season was rough at the RF Brookes pizza-ingredient factory in Wigston, England. Workers received only gift containers of pudding (“plum duffs”) with a use-by date of March 2009, but accompanied by a letter from management assuring them that food technicians had certified the product as safe to eat in January 2010. (After numerous employee complaints, the company apologized and offered fresh plum duffs.)

We Prefer Mimes The French performance artist Orlan made News of the Weird in 1993 when she underwent surgery in a New York City art gallery as part of a multiple-surgery transformation of her face according to five icons of Renaissance and post-Renaissance beauty (at that time, implanting small horns to simulate the bumpy forehead of Mona Lisa). During a Chicago show in December 1998, Orlan raised money for further operations by selling posters and videos of her surgeries and digitally enhanced portraits of her face incorporating features that ancient Mayans had found attractive but which are ugly in this society (huge noses, crossed-eyes). She also sold souvenir tubes of her liposuctioned fat.

The Sparrows And The Bees A team of researchers led by a University of Connecticut professor, writing recently in the ornithology journal The Auk, declared the local saltmarsh sparrow to be America’s most promiscuous bird, in that 95 percent of the females hook up with more than one male during a mating season. The likelihood that any two chicks in a nest had the same father was only 23 percent, and in one-third of the nests, all chicks had different fathers. The researchers hypothesized that the frequent flooding of Connecticut’s marshes destroys so many nests that non-choosy females have gained evolutionary advantage. (A wren in Australia and a parrot in Madagascar are said to be comparably promiscuous.)

Pandaphants In Thailand, the endangered status of crocodiles and elephants is largely ignored by the public, who are instead enthralled with the giant pandas and their cub on loan from China. (There is even a 24-hour cable TV “panda channel.”) At several of the country’s zoos, officials now regularly paint their crocodiles and elephants in panda colors (with harmlessly washable paint) to call attention to their plight. Even though the paint must be reapplied daily, “It’s impossible not to do it now,” said one croc handler for a December Wall Street Journal dispatch. “People expect it.”

The Old Bearded Dragon Lizard Barter Ploy In Morehead, KY, in December, two men, ages 44 and 18, were charged with theft for allegedly swiping an 18-inch-long bearded dragon lizard from the Eagles Landing Pet Hospital and trying, in two beverage stores, to exchange it for liquor. In other dumb criminal news, Daniel Gable, 61, was arrested for breaking and entering a neighbor’s apartment in Fargo, ND, in December. He had triggered the resident’s “burglar alarm,” which consisted of the stack of empty beer cans the resident places just inside his front door every night. Lastly, lawyer Christopher Carroll was charged with misdemeanor battery in December for forcefully belly-bumping lawyer Jonathan Carbary during a courthouse hallway argument in St. Charles Township, IL. Carroll said it was an accident: “We’re both obese, middle-aged men.”

White People In Turmoil April Gaede, who four years ago guided her teenage daughters, Lynx and Lamb (performing as “Prussian Blue”), to a brief music career singing neo-Nazi songs, announced a new project recently on the white nationalist Web site Stormfront.org. She offers a no-fee matchmaking service to fertile Aryans, hoping to encourage marriage and baby-making — to help white people keep up with rapidly procreating minorities. Also, Don “Moose” Lewis announced plans in January for a 12-city pro basketball league composed only of white players (natural-born U.S. citizens, whose parents are both Caucasian). Lewis denied any “racism,” explaining to the Augusta Chronicle that whites simply like “fundamental” basketball and not “street ball” (“flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch”).

Port Of Gall Only four days after the January earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, two Royal Caribbean cruise ships made a port call at a private enclave about 60 miles up Haiti’s coastline from ground zero, turning loose hundreds of frolickers for “jet ski rides, parasailing and rum cocktails delivered to their hammocks,” according to a report in London’s The Guardian. Haitian guards employed by the cruise line manned the resort’s 12-foot-high fences, but about a third of the passengers still declined to leave the ships, too upset by the unfolding disaster nearby to enjoy themselves. Royal Caribbean said it had made a large donation to the rescue effort and promised, also, to send proceeds from the port’s thriving craft stores.

Like many of your correspondents in the past, I’d like to use your column as a forum for a problem I feel has gone unaddressed for far too long in this area: mixed race relationships. My girlfriend, who I’ll call “Julie,” is a fantastically attractive and highly successful African- American woman and I’m a young, professional white male. I’ll admit that Julie is something exceptional — I do love her after all — but all that doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, because it doesn’t protect us from getting the evil eye every time we go out in public together. Unlike much of the rest of the country, where seeing a white man and a black woman (or vice versa) together is generally accepted and even praised, here in Brevard the story is quite different. In many ways, the Space Coast seems to be 40 years or more behind the times. Each time Julie and I go out around town, we either get bad vibes or strange stares. We’re often made to wait longer for tables at restaurants; sometimes we’re completely ignored. There have been more vocal examples of the public’s disapproval, too — shouts from passing vehicles and snide, barely whispered comments from fellow diners for instance. Can you please tell your readers to grow up and get with the 21st century program? We never have the same problems when we travel to other more “traditional” Southern outposts like Atlanta or Tallahassee. It seems that Jim Crow is alive and well right here in Brevard County.

“Color Blind”
Cape Canaveral

Thank you for addressing a very important issue, sir. I think all of our readers would do well to recognize the idiocy of criticizing loving, biracial relationships, regardless of the color or race of the persons involved in them. It’s important to remember that Love — in all its glory — makes no such petty distinction between color, ethnicity, race, religious beliefs, or political associations. It is not biracial relationships that are aberrant, but the attitude with which they’re often met. Love is Love, no matter what, and I for one support anyone who has the courage and strength to weather these unfortunate, ignorant storms. If it’s one thing Romeo hates, it is ignorance of all varieties. In light of that, I do take exception to your statement that Jim Crow is alive and well in Brevard County, and furthermore, I fail to see what would possess you to make such an outrageous claim in the context of your missive. I can understand disputing the deaths of icons like Elvis and Jim Morrison, but it is a well known, proven fact that Jim Crow perished in a crash in 1973. However, hits like “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” “Operator,” and “I Got A Name” will always live on in our memories.

Dear Mr. Pomodoro,

I have a big problem with my husband of 30 years, Ralph. Now when Ralph and I married we had an understanding that as devout, decent, practicing Catholics, all sexual activity would be for procreative purposes only and not for temporal, sinful pleasure. That understanding never seemed to bother Ralph before; we do have 11 children after all, so he should be reasonably happy. But now that the last of our chickens has flown the coop, Ralph has started getting more and more randy and perverted with me once the lights go out. Why, last week he even threw out the nightstand that separated our beds for these many years and has pushed our beds together for the sole purpose of tickling and touching me inappropriately it seems. I’ve almost never been angry with Ralph throughout our long and happy marriage, but lately I’ve been getting really down on him — and it’s getting us both down. What should I do?

“Maggie”
Indian Harbour Beach

Molly, with all due respect to your faith (I am a Catholic too, but not a CATHOLIC Catholic), I’m not surprised at your husband’s behavior. Sex is a part of human nature because it is pleasurable, not merely because it fulfills some abstract desire to further the species. Does everything God created have to have some practical purpose? Now that your children have left home, what better time to rediscover why the two of you fell in love in the first place. Was it only to have children? Surely you found each other attractive at some point. God will not smite you for having sex more than the 11 times you have or engaging in the practice merely for erogenous giggles. Especially at your time of life, I suggest throwing caution and your religious beliefs to the wind and getting busy. You may even find that it will enhance your religious experience and overall quality of life. You chide yourself for being down on your husband of late. I’d argue that you should be down on him more often! Boing!

Dear Romeo,

I’m a single, professional woman, 30-years-old, with a great, sexy body and a take-no-prisoners attitude. My high-profile job brings me into contact with hundreds of handsome, eligible men (some single, some married). I’m happy to use them for weekend getaways or month-long flings, but other than that, they really don’t interest me. Also, I suppose I have something about me that makes them want to marry me. I know I’m great in bed and have all kinds of great things going for me, but I still think that I’m too young to be getting married any time soon. Anyhow, this has been happening to me more and more lately. Am I giving off some kind of crazy pheromones or something? Here I am having an okay time with some guy and then all of a sudden he gets down on one knee and starts proposing to me! I know! Like, what? It’s really embarrassing to have to turn them down and I guess I kind of feel bad, but I have my whole life ahead of me. I mean, isn’t it the woman who’s supposed to be hungry for marriage all the time? What’s going on? Problem: right now I have two guys — Gregg and Brick — vying for my attention. And you know what? I kind of like it this time. They are both successful and hot and I’m getting kind of a thrill stringing them along to see how far they’ll go. They both want to marry me and know I’m not interested, but they’ve both said they won’t give up until I say yes. I know what I’m doing is wrong, but I can’t help it. Any advice?

“Ginger”
Orlando

Amber, I have actually run into this problem many times before with similar female readers. Your situation is not as unique as it seems. I have come up with a handy metaphor for dealing with it too, and I have used it with great success. Imagine you are on a highway in your expensive Audi speeding along and yapping on the phone with the wind blowing through your luxuriant, highlighted tresses. There are two other cars ahead of you in the slow lane — let’s say they are Gregg and Brick — and as you pass them they notice a problem with your car that you are unable to see. They signal to you and even try to catch up with you, but you are going much too fast for them to reach you. They try mightily for several miles, but eventually give up. You see that you must slow down a little to enjoy life? Don’t be so afraid of commitment. You may find that Gregg or Brick are good catches. However, I can guess that your type will never slow down until it is too late. You will keep speeding along oblivious to love. But what is that in your rear view mirror? It is I, Romeo Pomodoro driving a sleek Lamborghini and gaining the advantage. Be careful I don’t overtake you from behind! Honk honk!

Many years ago I read the great biographical work “Murrow: His Life and Times,” by A. M. Sperber. Since that time I have owned six copies — each had to be replaced because I kept giving them to journalism majors. Most of these students were specifically hoping for careers in broadcast journalism, and it was my hope that learning more about one of the first, and still the finest, broadcast journalists ever, might inspire them to focus their careers on the pursuit of the Truth rather than the Buck. Then someone turns on FOX News, and I wonder if there are enough books in the world.

Farce News, FIX News, FOX Noise, Vexed Views, Uncle Rupert’s Babbling Menagerie… I don’t care what you call it, just so long as you don’t call it broadcast journalism. Journalists are supposed to report the news, not fabricate it, yet every day that is what they do on FAUX News. Over 30% of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks of 9/11. Why? It was never proven, in fact it has been fully disproven, but FOX News said it enough that they still believe it. Let’s just look at a few of their other greatest hits:

WMD’s in Iraq: Ran all the Bush White House photos long after they had been debunked. See, this is a satellite photo of a portable sarin gas lab. (No, that’s just a truck!) See, this aluminum tubing is for rockets to carry sarin gas or a dirty-bomb. (No, that’s for a chain link fence!) These papers show that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger. (No, the seals are wrong, the dates are wrong, and four of those people were dead or out of office at the time!)

Katrina: Without a doubt the worst failure of emergency infrastructure since Pompeii, yet they ran stories on how low it was for “the Liberal Media” to capitalize on pain and suffering by criticizing the Bush administration’s response. (Ted Williams has a faster response time, and he’s a frozen head in a jar!) They also ran stories on how the real blame lay with the Democrat Governor and the Democrat Mayor. (Granted, both idiots, but that doesn’t give Brownie’s FEMA a pass.)

Abu Ghraib: This one blew my mind. Do you know who the villain was there? The U.S. Soldier whose broke the story! Not only the villain, but called “traitorous” because her actions would inflame the enemy! I’ve got some non-FOX News for you: It inflamed ME! We used to be the good guys, or at least that’s what we told ourselves and our children. Now we’re one of those countries that tortures prisoners? Which brings us to…

Guantanamo: We hide prisoners away, many of them on the barest of evidence, and deny them any trial. Many of these are also Americans, locked up on suspicion alone, and denied their rights as citizens under the U.S. Constitution! And again we torture! FOX News gives us Jack Bauer stories and jokes about waterboarding. (We tried Japanese prison guards after WWII for waterboarding and shot them — for torture!)

Valerie Plame: An operative of the CIA is publicly outed during a time of war. FOX News trivializes the whole matter, calling her a “secretary.” Did it ever occur that every cover name she used, every fake office or company, every front of any sort associated with her travels were also now compromised, as were any other people also using those same fronts. That’s not just one agent, that’s dozens! Dozens of U.S. Intelligence operatives betrayed during a time of war as political payback? You don’t get a few years for that like Scooter Libby; you get a firing squad. (Mr. Cheney!)

Death Panels: I could go on for hours on the lies spouted on FOX during the Obama campaign, but my favorite is this one: The proposed Health Care Reform bill allows for end of life counseling, something proposed three years ago as a Medicare covered need by a Republican, which would include covering the costs of preparing living wills and durable power of attorney. A lobbyist for the healthcare industry calls it a “Death Panel.” Hell, even Sarah Palin can remember that! FOX News is still repeating — or I should say misreporting — that!

Sarah Palin: Since I just mentioned the Bumbling Bimbo from You Betcha, let’s wrap up with her. This is a woman everyone knew was unqualified for the office of Vice President. The woman thought Africa was a country! They had to explain to her that North Korea and South Korea were actually two separate countries rather than the top and bottom parts of one! How does an allegedly “fair and balanced” news channel handle the subject? They LOVE her! Anyone else who dared to suggest that Bimby wasn’t the sharpest spoon in the knife drawer… well, they’re just part of the Evil Left-Wing Media. The truly mind-numbing part of this one is that after her failed election bid, after recent books have only served to underscore the depths of her ignorance on all matters political, historical, and geographical, FOX News hires her! As (this would be funny, if it weren’t so sad) a POLITICAL COMMENTATOR!

There might be a young Murrow out there somewhere, but he’s damned sure not showing up on FOX News. Right down the line this company has spouted whatever distortions, half-truths, and outright lies the Bush administration fed them, and now they’re continuing the same effort for all Far Right-Wing Conservatives. They are the true American “Pravda,” and just as it was ironic that the name of the propaganda arm of the U.S.S.R. meant “Truth,” so it is now ironic that FOX News hails itself as “Fair and Balanced.”

They’ve never been fair, most of them are imbalanced, and that transparent party line tripe is NOT news. If their bi-polar buffoon Glans Beck wants something to cry about, how about this:

I miss my country. The one that didn’t TORTURE! And if their pet zealot, Pat Robertson, really wants to know who made a deal with the devil, maybe he should look closer to home. In numerology, there are three letters in the English alphabet that have a value of “6.” They would be the 6th letter, the 15th letter, and the 24th letter. That’s right, F-O-X equals 6-6-6!

Who’s made the deal with the devil now, Mr. Robertson?

ARIES: People flock around you for your sunny disposition, but flee in droves from your frequent rainy periods. Your incontinence has ruined far too many of their couches.

TAURUS: There was a time when being called “cocksure” was considered a compliment, especially in the boxing ring. These days though, it’s seen as more of a detriment. Keep your fists up and quit trying to hug your adversaries all the time. It’s weird.

GEMINI: It’s three months into the New Year and you still haven’t made good on any of your resolutions. Lesser folks would shrug this failing off as nothing more than a minor misstep. But folks like you happen to adore smoking, drinking, and eating to excess. Go for it, you emphysemic, drunken fatty.

CANCER: God loves the person who rises above obstacles to become a purer soul. He hates, however, a smug bastard. I hear there are plenty of openings in the Church of Scientology for the likes of you.

LEO: If there’s a proverbial light at the end of every tunnel then you’re always the first to see it, lion. That figures though, what with you being in charge of the colonoscopy machine.

VIRGO: This St. Patrick’s Day I recommend staying inside and minding your own business. When you think about it, that shouldn’t be too hard, seeing as how you’re doing a four-year stretch in the clink for your behavior during last year’s St. Patrick’s Day festivities.

LIBRA: Travel is in the stars for you this year. Just imagine — the gothic grandeur of medieval Europe, the splendor of India, the majesty of the African plains! You manage to enjoy them all this month by tuning into the National Geographic Channel. God knows you salary at Domino’s would barely fill up your tank for a day trip to Winter Haven.

SCORPIO: Remember the good old days? No, I’m forgetting. Of course you don’t. You haven’t had a moderately good day since the honorable mention ribbon you won for your “All About the Rectum” report in your fourth grade science fair.

SAGITTARIUS: When the weather’s been as cold as it has this winter, it’s no surprise that you’ve had to resort to more creative measures to keep warm and toasty. Wearing a fishnet bodysuit under your workout gear, though, was bound to be poorly received in the YMCA changing room.

CAPRICORN: No one faults you for having a passionate hobby, but they might blanch a bit at your choice of collectibles. Your local library offers a venue for eccentric archivists like yourself, but there’s probably no place for your favorite “Hustler” clippings in their display case.

AQUARIUS: If I had $20 to spare, I’d bet it all on you finally finding a way out of your current rut. But I’d be doing that just be out of pity. Now if I had $1 million, I’d put the lot on you backsliding into your miserable funk. Then I’d be sitting pretty, wouldn’t I?

At age eleven I was given a gift which lasted ten years, a subscription to Outdoor Life magazine. Within were a wealth of stellar outdoor writers:  Ray Bergman, Byron Dalrymple, Joe Brooks, Jack O’Conner, Stu Apte… I only wish I could be among their number. Their stories were more than entertainment, they were inspiration.

Wintertime was a house-bound time in Northern New York, but that monthly arrival of global bloodsport transported me to lands warm and unknown: Florida for tarpon on a fly, Africa for Cape Buffalo, and Mexico for bass. And in the heat of summer, just the opposite. Alaska for caribou… Grizzly in the high mountains…

Even the ads were enjoyable. In the back were page after page of hunting and fishing lodges, listed by state and province. Replete with photos of the bag, these little thumbnails of exotica were the stuff of outdoor dreams. Ah, but the coolest thing about Outdoor Life was a full-page comic strip called “This Happened To Me!”

I love comics. Always have, still do. I started with Popeye and Donald Duck. Then came serious DC stuff like Superman and Batman. It finally culminated with the Marvel brand; super-sophisticated art starring Captain America, Sergeant Fury (and his Howling Commandos), The Fantastic Four and Daredevil. Anything drawn, anything with word balloons and visual onomatopoeia like BAM and BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA and KA-BLOOEY — that stuff just drew me in. And so it was with “This Happened To Me!”

Trampled by hippos! Elephants amok! Snakebit! Quicksand! You name it, it happened to somebody, and there were the cartoons to prove it. Hey, if they made a comic about it, it must be true. They solicited entries and I tried many times. In my long and not-so-illustrious career as an outdoorsman I’ve certainly had a few scrapes. But somehow, squashing a toad barefoot or digging redworms out of day-old cow pies didn’t rate. Comparatively, my outdoor life was tamer than the outdoor lives of others. That was, until last week…

It is December as I write this; hunting season. As my readership (hi, Mom!) may recall, my teenage son and I began hunting together last year. On six glorious occasions we invaded select local Wildlife Management Areas, finally returning victorious. In other words, we shot one squirrel. Three times. And we ate it. And it was good.

We had a lot of rain this fall. Not like Tropical Storm Fay last year, but it came late and stayed long. The ranger at the gate put it aptly: “It’s wet back there. But you’ll find that out.” So we were warned, but figured the savvy we’d earned the previous season gave us license to ford any quagmire these boonies could pitch. Boy, were we wrong. We were not twenty minutes into this season’s first foray and found ourselves hopelessly ensnared in a veritable tar pit, deep in the boondocks, miles from any form of salvation.

How could this happen? I drive a truck and I know these backroads. We drove them weekly last season. Always got through. And what about all those years in Buffalo, Rochester, and Watertown when I drove in slush and slop and never got stuck — and that was in those dinosaur V-8 Lead Sleds with bald tires and three inches of clearance! I drive a truck fer chrissakes! Well, I soon learned my “truck” was little more than a glorified golf cart when “it’s wet back there.”

It was my fault. We’d had a couple of “wows” in some big puddles and I was feeling pretty invincible. A bit of a sideslip, some black water over the hood, mud on the mirror… We’re hunters, kid, nothing can keep us from the killing fields. Then, whump. We bottomed out. Hard.

Reverse, that’s what you do. It always worked in snow. Rock it out. Reverse, drive, reverse, drive… Rock it out.

Or dig it in.

I dug it in. Ba-a-a-ad…

We pushed for awhile, entirely in vain. I crammed sticks under the tires to gain traction. That didn’t work. My son, brave soul, even began to dig with his bare hands. No gain. The vehicle’s frame was resting on the mound between the tracks, wheels spinning. Well, one wheel anyway… It was then I realized “rear wheel drive” means “one wheel drive.” While the passenger side spun madly, the driver’s side was still. I also noticed water swirling around a stick I had planted. This water was moving; we were mired in a creek or spring of sorts. Meanwhile, the black goo was seeping into the cab and truck bed.

The boy produced his cell phone and attempted to reach the ranger station. Surely, ours was not a unique situation. Hunters must get stuck back here every season, right? The ranger would know whom to contact. After dialing the numbers on the map and on my license, enduring several long holds and line switches, it was not to be. Those numbers are unlisted.

“The Yellow Pages,” my boy said. “I’ve got the the Yellow Pages on my phone, I think.”

I’ve never been a fan of cellphones. I find them a nuisance. But standing in that cold black water, looking around and seeing no sign of humanity except for a sinking Ford Ranger, I was beginning to appreciate them. “Look up towing services,” I said.

He stabbed the device with his fingers a few times, tilted it, stabbed again, sighed and said “Not enough bars.”

“But you just made a call.”

“I can call,” he qualified, “but I can’t seem to get the Yellow Pages.”

My mind swirled. Why did Superman only exist in the comics? Boy, could we use him now. Even Batman would be a blessing, and he didn’t have any superpowers. Okay, no Superman, no Batman, no ranger, no Yellow Pages… Who ya gonna call?

“Hi, honey. Guess where we are?” I tried to sound cheerful.

“Guess where I am?” She replied.

“I asked you first… Okay, we’re stuck. We’re stuck way out in the boonies and we need some phone numbers from the Yellow Pages. I mean, like, we’re REALLY stuck. We need a tow.”

“Well I’m at the mall. There are no telephone books here.”

“Oh yes there are! There has to be a phone booth.”

“Phone booths went out with Superman,” she stated. Then I heard a phrase we would hear several times that day: “I can’t help you.”

I can’t help you. The four loneliest words in the English language.

The cab floor was now covered with mud and it was creeping farther into the bed. Ammo, cooler, jackets and guns were now at risk. I was worried about the guns most; mud is definitely a no-no with them. I opened the hatch and pulled them out. They were still in their cases, and I laid them on a patch of high ground. The ammo would be okay; it was in a waterproof box. The cooler, likewise. Our jackets, well, they would need laundering. As a last whim I also rescued a roll of toilet paper — you never knew when that might come in handy. I could feel something boiling within my guts already.

“Dad! I found the Yellow Pages!” Yes! Thank you, Alexander Graham Cell… “Dad! What city?”

I then remembered that many years ago I made a set of signs for a towing company. Why not them? “Hey, try Acme Towing.” Of course Acme Towing is not the real name, but you’ll soon realize no towing company needs the endorsement I’m about to give.

“Dad! Here they are. Talk to ‘em.” A sweet Southern voice greeted me. I felt relieved. “Do you guys work out in the boondocks?” I began.

“Lordy, I didn’t know there were any boondocks left! We work anywhere, sugar.”

“Well, uh, we need a tow. Bad. We’re out at the wildlife management area. Road Two. When you pull in, the ranger will give you a map.”

The upshot was $75 and mileage. I had a credit card, and as I watched my truck slowly sinking in the mire, money was no object. “Forty minutes,” she said at last. What a relief. It was all that easy.

“We’ve got forty minutes,” I told my son. “Let’s load up and see if we can find some squirrels.”

Guns and ammo were uncased. “Don’t go far. We don’t want to miss our tow.” Not to worry. Scarcely were we loaded when the cellphone rang. “It’s them, Dad.” I took the phone.

“Ah’m so sorry. I can’t help you. Our boys don’t go out there. We sold our four-wheeler years ago.”

“What? You said — ”

“And we tried Joe’s — he’s got one. But he don’t go out there neither, sugar. He just don’t want to. I can’t help you. Sorry…” Click. Suddenly that toilet paper was looking mighty important.

“We have to walk, Dad.”

My boy was right. But even if we did make it to the ranger station (which could take who knows how long) could he help us? Would we be taking a long, wet walk for nothing? Did I just lose my truck? Oh Superman, where are you?

Learn the answers to these and many other of life’s questions in “This Happened To Us!” Part II.

PISCES: I foresee a big party in your future. There will be many of your close friends and family in attendance. Everyone will laugh and have a great time and you will be spoken of very highly by all. I’m just letting you know because you won’t be able to hear anything from inside the casket.

ARIES: This would be a good time to warn you about the inevitable pains you’ll encounter this month, but I don’t want to be the one to ruin your Spring Break.

TAURUS: Travel seems to be the prominent focus of your immediate future. Pack lightly and bring some antibiotics and your insurance card.

GEMINI: When you get some good news this month it will be in the form of an unexpected government check. Unfortunately, the bad news will come in the form of a 6’3″ prostitute from Belize named “Hermilla” and a weeklong case of the runs.

CANCER: Things have taken a turn for the best at the workplace due to your ability to show the boss you have what it takes — big balls of brass and a glare that would make a Nazi cringe. I would only recommend not wearing too short of a skirt from now on.

LEO: When a lion is caged, it becomes angry and impatient because it desires the freedom to roam and hunt as it was born to do. But this month, when you’re caged for drunk and disorderly conduct, you cower in the corner and quietly weep, praying you don’t awaken your cellmate again. And that makes your new friend rather grumpy.

VIRGO: Too much fun in the sun can be a bad thing. Guzzling Jägermeister and playing volleyball takes a turn for the worse when you jump into the surf and promptly drown.

LIBRA: Put aside your cynicism and bad attitude and you’ll find you’re much happier being ignorant and spiteful.

SCORPIO: To err is human. It’s even more human to lie and try acting like it never happened. Unfortunately, your error will show up when you get your test results back from your local free clinic.

SAGITTARIUS: With your future teetering on the edge of disaster, it would be in your best interests to immerse yourself in one of those giant bins of plastic, colored balls and stay there until May.

CAPRICORN: This month you will have a clear picture of the world around you and a stiff breeze in your face. Enjoy it while it lasts, because it’s due to your parachute failing to open. But don’t worry, the fall will not kill you. It will be the sudden stop at the end.