Dec12

The Lunatic Is On The Grass

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“You in the mood?” “Nope. You?” “Not a chance.”

We are doomed as a species. Not as a civilization or a nation, but as a species. Our exit from the Earth is not assured by some comet bearing down on us nor will some accident in a biological lab unleash a super-virus to take us out. We have nothing to fear from Nibiru Planet X, nanotechnology, or grey goo. We are doomed to emulate the dodo for the same reason the giant panda dozes towards extinction — simply put, we have become too stupid to live.

Allow me to explain. The Giant Panda is easily one of the most recognizable animals in the world. It is a national symbol for the People’s Republic of China; it serves as the hidden logo of the World Wildlife Fund. It is a fuzzy, fluffy ball of black and white adorableness beloved the world over and it is rapidly moving towards extinction partially because of habitat loss, but mainly due to a huge decline in birthrates. The decline in birthrate is most troublesome because biologists can’t find a really good reason for it other than the fact that pandas don’t seem much interested in mating!

China has set aside a HUGE tract of land — larger than many countries — just for pandas to live in. Only government biologists are allowed to enter the preserve. Anyone else trying to get into the preserve gets SHOT by the unit of the CHINESE ARMY guarding the place. Several major zoos all over the world have dedicated breeding programs for giant pandas, but the pandas aren’t giving birth often enough to sustain the species. In case it’s gotten by anyone, Giant Pandas basically have two jobs in the world these days: eat bamboo and make baby pandas. That’s it. Unfortunately, it’s too much for them because the entire panda species has lost its collective groove.  Folks, I don’t know if anyone will agree with me, but once a species can’t manage enough libido to keep the population viable, it’s time to just let it go. That species has gotten too stupid to live anymore.

So have we.

I have proof.

“Dear lord! Run away, run away!

Last night, Budge and I were listening to the local radio station playing all Christmas music all the time when the John Tesh Show came on. John is apparently famous for something; don’t know what and don’t care, but it is enough to land him a radio gig weeknights from 7 – 10 during which he broadcasts little snippets called “Intelligence For Your Life.” One segment last night did it for me and any hope I have we are improving as organisms. He said researchers at some top university labs have warned people against handling cash register receipts for long at a time because it is detrimental to health. He said the receipt ink contains BPH which is the latest bogey-man chemical we have to keep out of our systems at all costs because some lab rats somewhere got cancer when they were exposed to high levels of BPH. Furthermore, NEVER use alcohol based hand sanitizer before handling a receipt because the alcohol causes the BPH-laced ink to dissolve and enter a person’s skin at an alarming rate.

Allow me to summarize. Some scientists in some lab somewhere have enough time AND RESOURCES tdetermine HANDLING CASH REGISTER RECEIPTS MAY KILL YOU! We don’t have a cure for cancer. We don’t have flying cars. We’ve abandoned space flight. Instead of any of the traditional noble pursuits of science, we are funding people to test the toxicity of CASH REGISTER RECEIPTS! You know, if it was just this one kooky story on a random radio program, I probably wouldn’t be ready to chuck our civilization onto the garbage heap of time, but deadly chemical laced register receipts are simply the final proof we have gotten too stupid to live.

Mothers enter a state of paralysis over which brand of “all natural, completely organic food” to feed their babies. It is now considered near child abuse to let a kid have half an hour of unstructured play time. You can go to jail if your baby’s car seat doesn’t meet the specifications for ejection from an F-22 Raptor cruising at Mach 2. Parents are calling COLLEGE PROFESSORS to try getting “little Joanie’s” grades changed. Our upcoming generations are so mollycoddled and pampered we will be lucky if the little hot house flowers survive to reproductive age and even if they do, their parents are probably going to have to help them with that too.

Men are no better. The average man has about as much chance of fixing a minor plumbing problem in his house as Bill Cosby does of ever being on television again. Working on a simple electrical circuit is as foreign to them as a Moroccan Kasbah. Car companies have made their cars impossible for any shade tree mechanic or dedicated DIYer to work on, not because it makes a better car but because of lawsuits. If the car is impossible to repair at home, no one is going to do something boneheaded, lose a finger, and SUE THE COMPANY!

If you don’t agree we’ve become too stupid to live, just read the warning labels on products. The last belt I bought for my 2003 Element had a warning on the back in huge bold type saying “DO NOT attempt to change belts with the engine running.” Every bottle of shampoo, stick of deodorant, and can of mousse in our bathroom has a warning stating “For EXTERNAL USE only.” Our iron has a tag on the power cord reminding us “DO NOT iron clothes while wearing them.” For any of these products to sport these labels two things have happened: 1) Some idiot somewhere tried to replace a fan belt with the car running or something similar and 2) said idiot successfully sued the product’s company for a huge sum of money because the company didn’t warn him against being an idiot. I hate to admit it because I am a certifiable gun nut myself, but I’m starting to seriously reconsider my stance on gun control just because we have entirely too many people with guns who have NO IDEA how to use a gun safely, if they can use it at all.

So here we are, hurtling towards oblivion trying to dodge poisonous cash register receipts and deadly water bottles. If anyone were to ask me today what movie I think best predicts our future here, I’d skip all the usual suspects like Armageddon, Deep Impact, Planet of the Apes, or 2012. Instead, I think the movie with our civilization’s name on it is a little watched flick called Idiocracy.

Watch it and shiver.

Love ya’ll, and keep those feet clean.

Dec3

Great War Wednesday: First Battle of Ypres — The Carnage Properly Begins

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https://i0.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Belgie_ieper_lakenhal_nacht.jpg

The beautifully rebuilt Cloth Hall in the Ieper city center.

The little Belgian town of Ieper, more famously known as Ypres, is no stranger to bloodletting. The Germanic tribal ancestors of the town fought Roman raids. The stubborn Flemish bled in a massacre by French troops in the fourteenth century Battle of the Golden Spurs. The War of Spanish Succession and the War of the First Coalition both raged outside the city’s walls.

All the bloodshed of the previous centuries paled however when compared with the series of battles fought here during the First World War. The first of these encounters, called aptly enough The First Battle of Ypres, began on 19 October 1914 and lasted over a month until 22 November 1914. The battle is most notable for being the first of the trench battles which came to symbolize the next three and a half years on the Western Front during the Great War.

Up until First Ypres, battles had been fluid. The German invasion through Belgium into France slowed somewhat at Mons and then halted altogether at The Miracle on the Marne early in September 1914. What followed is now called the “Race to the Sea” where each combatant tried desperately to outflank the other in what was quite literally a race northwest to get to the English Channel, turn the opponent’s flank, and secure a victory. Unfortunately, the race was a tie and the result was The First Battle of Ypres.

In many ways, Ypres became the training ground for the rest of the war and both sides paid in hogsheads of blood for the lessons. First, no one brought enough of anything. The Germans famously claimed the men would be home for Christmas and the French and British had similar overly optimistic assessments of the coming conflict. As a result, men ended up at the front without enough supplies. On the German side, captured Russian and Belgian small arms had to be pressed into service while on the Allied side, the artillery batteries were woefully under armed. Before this battle, doctrine of the day figured a few hundred shells would be expended in the course of a battle. By the time Ypres ended, the generals realized a few hundred shells wouldn’t last an hour. By the end of the war, individual guns were allotted a thousand shells EACH.

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The end of the line of trenches on the Western Front. The top barbed wire is German while the lower strands are Allied. The wire literally runs right into the sea.

As with most of the months long “battles” of the First World War, a detailed analysis is far beyond the scope of my little blog. Thousand page books litter libraries across the land devoted only to this one battle. I would like to note two major outcomes of the First Battle of Ypres, however. First, the battle introduced the trench system to the Western Front. After neither side managed to gain the other’s flank, no one could figure out what to do. Situations like this were somewhat unusual and given the flatness of the coastal terrain and the deadliness of the new machine guns and heavy artillery, both the German and the Allies figured nearly simultaneously the best thing to do would be “dig in.”

Now armies had dug in before. Trenches in warfare were nothing new, per se, but what was new was the scale of trenches developed up and down the front during and after this battle. By the beginning of 1915, an unbroken line of trenches and associated fortifications stretched all the way from the beaches of the English Channel roughly southeast to the border of neutral Switzerland. The saddest commentary of the Great War is probably the best known — those trenches would STAY more or less in a static position for three years during which time hundreds of thousands of men would hurl themselves across No Man’s Land under withering fire with the goal of taking the other side’s trenches. Massive carnage and miniscule territorial gains were the inevitable result each time.

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Cloth Hall circa 1918

The second development of the First Battle of Ypres is the area which became known as the Ypres Salient. This area directly around the ancient town was a “bulge” into the German lines. Vicissitudes of war in the early stages of the battle resulted in the Entente forces holding this one bulge several hundred yards into German territory. While that may seem like a good thing — being far out in the enemy’s lands — it was actually horrible. Because of the bulge of the Salient, the mostly British and Commonwealth troops stationed at the Salient came under fire from THREE sides simultaneously instead of just one. This Ypres Salient endured for the length of the war down to the final German “Hundred Days” offensive in 1918 and it ate men as a hungry cow eats grass.

During the six-week long battle, the British forces lost 58,155 men including the last of the professional army that arrived in August, the French lost 86,237 men and Germany suffered losing 134,315 men. The Belgian army — never large — ceased to exist altogether. Those seem like staggering numbers of dead and wounded and truthfully they are, but despite the ferocity of the First Battle of Ypres, the casualties were quite light when considered beside later battles such as the Somme and Verdun when it became de rigueur to have 50,000 men die in a DAY, not a six-week stretch. Still, it was a small taste of things to come.

That’s all for this episode of Great War Wednesday. Love y’all and keep those feet clean.

 

Nov27

Giving Thanks 2014

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https://i0.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/78/Freedom_from_Want.jpgToday is Thanksgiving Day here in America and while I want to go on record as being thankful for all the usual suspects like my precious wife, health, etc., I want to spend a little time talking about some of the things I’m thankful for that may seem a little unusual.

For instance, I’m thankful I live in a country where a police officer can do his job — even if that job means shooting and killing a suspect — and not end up going to jail for it. Killing someone is always difficult and he’ll have his own version of prison in his mind for the rest of his life and I can speak with some authority about prisons of the mind.

At the same time, I’m also thankful to live in a country where people who think a police officer SHOULD go to jail for doing his job when that job means shooting and killing a suspect can riot in the streets and burn public and private property while discharging firearms willy-nilly WITHOUT going to jail as well. Rioting, looting, and destruction of property has a long and venerated history in the United States. One of the seminal events in the founding of our nation was the destruction of an entire cargo of valuable tea by masked men called patriots.

Oh, as long as I’m talking about our founding patriots, I’m thankful to live in a country where racism is not only LEGAL, it was ensconced in our sacred Constitution of the United States for over 100 years. Thankfully, I can hate anyone I want to for their race or religion or, to quote the inimitable Oscar Wilde, “for the color of [their] hair” and they in return can hate ME for any or all of the same reasons and it’s just fine with the government.

https://i0.wp.com/images.art.com/images/products/regular/13212000/13212965.jpgAnyone who thinks I’m being facetious about this needs to realize I truly AM thankful to live in a country where the freedom to gather in mass and lose our collective s$%& over something we don’t agree with and not die is protected. For people who think this isn’t a real freedom, I have two words for you: TIANANMEN SQUARE. I’m not naive; our government kills people too, but at least it has the common decency to do so either quietly and privately or wait until they are in some other country.

Speaking of killing in other countries, I’m thankful I live in a country where I can believe in and worship God, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Ganesha, Odin, Zeus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster and be perfectly safe. People might make fun of me for being a Christian myself, but at least if I’m let’s say Presbyterian, the Southern Baptists won’t take up arms against me and my family, lay siege to my hometown, starve our congregation, and finally break into our Children’s Church and cut the precious babies’ little heads off in front of their parents before beheading the parents as well . . . on video, because — you know — Allahu Akbar!! No, those pesky Baptists might not believe like I do, and they might not speak to me in the liquor store, but at least they won’t kill me for my heretical views of Calvinism.https://i0.wp.com/www.rockwellplates.com/Site/images/SEP%20Collector%20Cards/freedom%20of%20worship.jpg

I’m thankful to live in a country where I get to start spending obscene amounts of money I don’t have to buy things I really don’t need ON SALE just as soon as I finish gorging myself on enough food to feed an entire West African village. Of course it sucks for the people working at the retail stores who have to wait on my L-tryptophan laden carcass when they would much rather be home eating their own village-worth of food with their families and other loved ones, but them’s the breaks. If you don’t want to work from 6 PM to 1 AM at the mall then get back by 5:00 AM (yeah, that’s 4 hours later) to deal with the screaming hordes, then you need to use the tons of opportunities the average wage slave has to rocket up the corporate ladder so you can be a CEO and order people away from their homes and families to work on a great holiday so you can get that awesome seven-figure bonus check! This IS America after all, you know? The LAND OF EQUAL OPPORTUNITY!

Oh, on the subject of opportunity, I’m also thankful to live in a country where a man can rape a woman at a party and blame her for it, shoplift a cartload of seafood, and screech profanities from atop a table in a crowded public place WITHOUT ANY CONSEQUENCE as long as he can throw a football for a top program. Of course, he may have as his idol some politician. After all, politicians can let their dates drown in a wrecked car in cold water and go on to become “American Icons” as long as they are from the right family.https://i0.wp.com/images.art.com/images/products/regular/13212000/13212659.jpg

Finally, I’m thankful to live in a great country where half the population has the RIGHT, nay the DUTY, to be royally pissed off at the OTHER half of the population almost constantly. In other countries, they’d call these camps “insurgencies” or “rebel factions” but here they’re just the members of whatever political party is out of power at the moment. Instead of blowing up bases or marching with torches and pitchforks in the streets, we just wage wars of words every two years in November and have REALLY big fights every four years just to get the opportunity to elect people who are going to do the EXACT SAME THING as the people already holding those positions . . . they’ll just call them by another name. Maybe.

So that’s it for this year’s thankfulness. Now it’s time to get ready for my feast and the following three games of American football where I can watch guys run up and down the field for millions of dollars playing a child’s game while sitting between my two favorite people who happen to be teachers and barely make a living wage to educate our next generation. Later on, we’re going SHOPPING to line the coffers of the CEOs. After all, we all have to do our parts or they won’t get that new yacht they’ve had their eye on this year!

Love y’all, Happy Thanksgiving, and Keep those feet clean.

Nov19

Great War Wednesday: Wolf Pups

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https://i0.wp.com/www.uboat.net/media/wwi/articles/wwi_pic1.jpgOn 5 September 1914, HMS Pathfinder exploded, broke in half, and sank in minutes. Of 258 souls on board, only eighteen survived. While the harbor rang with the mayhem accompanying such a terrible event, U-21 of the Imperial German Navy quietly slipped below the water and made her way out to sea having just become the first submarine to sink a ship with a torpedo fired from what we now think of as “conventional” torpedo tubes. (As a proud son of Dixie, I must note the CSS H.L. Hunley sank a warship half a century prior, but she used a “spar torpedo” and managed to sink herself in the process.)

The focus of Great War historians and historical dabblers usually centers on the miseries of the trenches or, perhaps, the chivalric glory of the burgeoning air corps. Most World War I scholars end up ignoring naval engagements in general — save the necessary treatment of Jutland — and submarines in particular, but in reality, while not as widespread or as advanced as the “Wolf Packs” Admiral Donitz sent into the Atlantic twenty years later, the submarines of World War I played a vital role in the conflict. The lowly submarine emerged as the technology that, in true double edged sword fashion, almost secured victory for the Kaiser but in the end ensured his downfall.

One reason submariners get such short shrift from military historians is the general negative light most people hold them in. To many in naval circles, the submarine is the sniper of the seas, hidden beneath the waves unseen and silently waiting for a perfect moment to kill an enemy. Indeed, more than one stuffy old-fashioned admiral felt submarines should be strictly relegated to a reconnaissance role because their ability to attack while hidden seemed somehow “unsporting” and “not quite fair.” As soon as submarines developed to the point they were seen as a viable weapon of war, countries enacted treaties and “rules of engagements” stating submarines had to “surface and warn” ships they were about to torpedo. Somehow, this was supposed to “even out” the sub’s advantage. Personally, I see “rules of engagement” and “laws of war” in much the same light as “jumbo shrimp” — oxymorons.

Don’t say we didn’t warn y’all.

Early on, German U-boat commanders actually sought to abide by such hamstringing rules and would surface, warn the merchant ship’s captain, and allow passengers to safely embark in lifeboats before either sinking the ship or seizing it as a prize of war. Of course, some enterprising merchant mariner came up with the idea of mounting GUNS on merchant ships which, by all earlier naval laws had been unarmed, and the submarines surfaced to warn a potential victim only to find the tables turned. At that point, some enterprising U-boat captains decided, “Zur Holle mit den Regeln,” and went back to sinking warships and merchant ships without warning.

This practice of “sink them all and let God sort them out” is what historians call a period of “unrestricted” submarine warfare. The idea was basically “y’all know we are at war with Britain so if y’all try to bring anything TO Britain, we’re going to sink you. Consider THIS your warning!” A little known fact surrounding the sinking of RMS Lusitania and the deaths of so many Americans in the Spring of 1915 is the German Embassy took out a full page ad in the New York Times right next to the ad for the ship’s voyage. This ad read:

Notice!
Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on the ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.
Imperial German Embassy
Washington, D.C. 22 April 1915

Hard to claim it was a complete “sneak attack” when you warn everyone in the largest paper in the nation.

Unrestricted submarine warfare had a tremendous effect on Great Britain. As an island nation, she counted on being supplied by sea and at the height of the U-boat activity, Great Britain began running short on important war materiel and food supplies. The situation was not quite as dire as the blockade days of 1940 when the island was supposedly down to less than a week’s worth of food, but matters were still bleak.

Part of the reason the U-boats didn’t strangle Great Britain completely was the fallout from the Lusitania. President Woodrow Wilson gave several impassioned speeches warning Germany of the dangers of plucking the feathers from the American Eagle’s tail and Germany reluctantly ceased unrestricted submarine warfare around the British Isles.

Unfortunately for Germany, the stagnation along the Western Front and Great Britain’s own surface based standoff blockade of German ports combined to place the Kaiser in a position from which he couldn’t win. With matters increasingly dire and desperate, in January 1917, the German High Command again gave the order to return to unrestricted submarine warfare and sink any and all ships coming in the Zone of Exclusion around Great Britain and Europe. It was this action which led directly to Germany’s defeat in the Great War.

Once President Wilson heard of Germany’s resolve in resuming the indiscriminate sinking of any ships it came across, he ordered all German diplomats out of the country. It wouldn’t be much longer and he would ask the US Congress for a declaration of war against Germany and once Congress granted that declaration, the entire industrial and manpower might of the United States came to bear on an already weary Central Power alliance. Germany’s days were numbers when the “Yanks started coming over there!”

Still, the role of the submarine in Germany’s prosecution of the war shouldn’t be overlooked. At the War’s beginning, the Kaisermarine only had twenty operational U-boats and the entire sub fleet would never grow particularly large. For such a small force. the damage they inflicted was vastly disproportional to their numbers. In four years, a relative handful of U-boats sank almost 5,000 ships totaling nearly 13 million tons while losing less than 200 of their own number. I think most commanders in history would like to have a 25:1 kill ratio.

Well, that’s it for this week. Love y’all and keep your feet clean!

Nov5

Great War Wednesday: Britain’s Battle Rifle

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enfield

The Lee-Enfield MK1 SMLE

At dawn on 23 August 1914, the head of the German sledgehammer carving its bloody path through Belgium ran into the British Expeditionary Force — “The Old Contemptibles” — near the Belgian border town of Mons. The Germans outnumbered the British three to one and obviously felt secure in the knowledge they could steamroll any opposition since they made no attempt to seek cover initially nor to break marching formation. That false notion proved the death of scores of the Kaiser’s soldiers. The British opened up with rifle fire at around 1,000 yards and as the Germans came on they withered like orchids in a drought. After the battle, many German soldiers believed they had blundered into a line of British light machine guns. In fact, they had not; they had encountered instead their first combat against British riflemen and their Lee-Enfield SMLE rifles.

No discussion of British martial endeavors during the first six decades of the last century could be complete without mention of the Lee-Enfield Rifle. First introduced in 1895, the Lee-Enfield served as Britain’s standard issue infantry battle rifle until the FN FAL took its place in 1957. Even after giving way to the new semi-automatic, the Lee-Enfield continued in front line service in several capacities, including dedicated sniper rifle, into the 1990s. By contrast, in the same time period, the US army fielded the Krag-Jorgenson, the Springfield A3, the M1 Garand and carbine, the M-14, and the M-16 as standard GI equipment, six totally different rifles to old mum’s one.

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This is a Lee-Enfield stripper clip aka “charger” with five rounds at the ready.

The Lee-Enfield, or LE, or “The 303” was one of the first infantry rifles to use the bolt-action. German brothers Karl and Peter-Paul Mauser perfected the bolt-action some years before and armies all over the world quickly grasped how much more effective a bolt-action rifle could be when compared to the other rifles of the day. With a bolt-action, a soldier could easily sight his target and fire in all four standards shooting positions: prone (lying flat on the ground), sitting, kneeling, or offhand (standing with no support). What’s more, the introduction of box magazines meant rifles could generate much greater firepower in a fraction of the time as those Germans at the Battle of Mons discovered to their dismay.

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This image shows the charger in place and ready for the soldier to push the rounds into the box magazine.

The advantage the L-E had over other contemporary rifles lay in its magazine capacity. All other battle rifles of major powers like the German K98 Mauser or the Russian Mosin-Nagant 91/30 had five round magazines. The SMLE could hold TEN rounds, which translates into five more shots without reloading. It’s important to note here these early rifles did not have detachable magazines like our modern weapons such as the M-16, AK-47, or Uzi. A soldier didn’t carry a bandolier of loaded magazines ready to swap out nearly instantaneously like a World War 1 version of Rambo. Instead, all of these bolt-action rifles had to be loaded one of two ways: the soldier could laboriously press one round at a time through the action and into the magazine or he could use “clips” which are also called “charger clips” or “stripper clips.” These little tabs of metal held five rounds perfectly aligned and secured so the solder could fit the bottom of the clip into a notch on the rifle and with a firm push of the thumb, seat five rounds into the magazine in a single fluid motion. Two such clips and the SMLE was loaded to the gills with ten .303 rounds. Since the British magazines held ten rounds instead of five, soldiers had to reload half as often as their enemies and on a battlefield where a second could cost a man his life, those five extra rounds could mean the difference between a muddy bed in the trench dugout or a muddy grave.

This is a 9mm detachable pistol magazine for comparison purposes.

The Germans at Mons who thought they were up against light Maxim type guns were actually facing British soldiers with state of the art rifles AND a training and firing doctrine that enabled the “Old Contemptibles” to blunt the German attack even with the staggering disadvantage in numbers. The Germans didn’t know it, but the Brits they were marching into like so many ducklings behind their mother were training to the British firing standard of “The Mad Minute.” At the dawn of the Great War, every British soldier had to complete the Annual Personal Weapons Test or APWT. This test consisted of scoring no less than 15 direct hits on a 12 inch diameter target firing offhand at 300 yards in 60 seconds. Ponder that a minute, please.

To qualify as a British infantryman, you had to be able to stand on your feet with a rifle which weighed at least ten pounds loaded, shoot at a dinner plate on a stand three FOOTBALL FIELDS AWAY, and HIT IT AT LEAST 15 TIMES! Holy bolt blisters, Batman! Remember, the rifle only held ten rounds so to complete the Mad Minute, the soldier HAD to reload at least once. Frighteningly for the Germans, 15 hits was the bare minimum. Most British soldiers could average at least 20-25 hits in the same time frame. To this day, the record for the Mad Minute is 38 hits (from three football fields away, remember that) in 60 seconds by Sergeant Alfred Snoxall. That means he had to reload AT LEAST THREE TIMES. Amazing.

With lead like that coming downrange, its little wonder the Huns thought they were facing Maxims, but no, they were just ordinary Tommies doing what they’d been trained to do by a generation of snarling sergeant instructors. As for the Battle of Mons, the Germans eventually forced the British to retreat because of overwhelming numbers, but the retreat was in good order and allowed the French to secure their flanks all because the British knew how to work a bolt-action rifle.

Love y’all and keep those feet clean.

Now you know the difference and can scream at the guy in the war movie with an M-16 “You need a magazine! Stop asking for a clip!!”

 

 

Oct30

He’s A Keeper

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Budweiser Long Neck

The Swiss Army Knife of beverage containers.

While we were fishing when we were both much younger, Daddy advised me whenever I go to a bar, ALWAYS order a Budweiser Long Neck; when I pointed out to him that I despise the taste of beer of any kind he just said, “Then have them bring it unopened, but always have one.” It’s little gems of wisdom like this one that have convinced me over the years I was sired by a genius.

Anyway, a good friend of Budge and me is getting married Saturday. Budge is arranging her flowers and I did the rehearsal dinner slide show as our wedding presents. Sometimes talent is better than money and a lot more useful. Both of us treasure this little lady a great deal. Budge tells me her beau is just as good a person as “Sylvia” is though I’ve never met him. I think I’m going to like him though. For my purposes, let’s call him “Mickey.”

Tuesday night, Mickey had Sylvia get dressed up and took her to their favorite little sushi spot for a romantic final date before marriage. Now, just as an aside from this 20 year man, NEVER stop dating even once you’re married, but I digress. So the two of them ventured out to a cute little sushi place in downtown Greenville for the $2.00 Tuesday Sushi Special. As another aside, I don’t know that I would eat any raw fish, much less DISCOUNT raw fish, but again, I digress.

The two of them had settled into their comfy corner booth and begun the process of peering lovingly into each others’ eyes as only two people destined for each other can do when the quiet romantic magic of the evening shattered with the arrival at a nearby table of another couple. For my purposes, let’s call them “Thug-boy” and “Debbie” (as in “Debbie Does .  .  .  ., well, you know). Debbie wore a stunningly short skirt complemented by a scoop-neck blouse which amply advertised some local plastic surgeon’s skill with a scalpel. Thug-boy chose a tastefully put together ensemble of wifebeater, sateen basketball shorts worn fashionably low slung to show off his Underoos, and ridiculously expensive athletic shoes in a dazzling color scheme. He also chose to accessorize his outfit with the ubiquitous bane of our civilization — a large cell phone, into which he was talking . . . non-stop . . . and obnoxiously loudly.

Rude table neighbors are de rigueur these days so just the talking probably wouldn’t have triggered any response from anyone just because it’s so expected. Unfortunately, Thug-boy did not possess the gift of a large and varied vocabulary and the bulk of his stentorian conversation with persons unknown primarily consisted of repeated violations of the Third Commandment and crass colloquial commentary on coital habits of someone and a female parent. Now this is still the South and even though some things have changed a great deal, loudly cussing — especially using those two particularly vulgar epithets — in public and in front of ladies is still generally frowned upon and poor Debbie noticed most of her fellow patrons were frowning.

Once Debbie realized her beloved’s behavior wasn’t just embarrassing her to the point of wanting to slide under the table, but was also causing tremendous discomfort throughout the establishment, she made the chivalrous but ultimately doomed decision to attempt to curb her “boo’thang’s” conversation. In the meek way common to women who accompany boys like Thug-boy, she asked him if he could please tone down the outbursts. Apparently, the young man took umbrage with his hollaback girl and proceeded to announce to her and everyone else in a ten-mile radius his intention to talk and cuss as loudly as he wished because, “I got twice as much money as these **f-bomb deleted** people do.”

At that point, Mickey, who has a sharp wit replied in a normal tone, “But apparently not nearly enough to buy class.” Debbie apparently overheard Mickey’s remark because she turned to Sylvia and tearfully apologized for Thug-boy’s unconscionable behavior. Sylvia graciously replied, as only a real Southern girl can, “Honey, don’t feel sorry for me. I feel sorry for you. You have to put up with him.” It seems this remark managed to penetrate Thug-boy’s egocentric haze because he took his phone down from his ear, stood up abruptly, turned to Mickey and in a tone and diction straight out of some misogynistic gangsta rap song said, “Dude, you best check dat fat, moufy’, ugly, **expletive comparison to female dog deleted ** ‘fore somepin’ bad happen!”

Folks, Sylvia is precious, that’s the only word I can use to describe her that does her justice and every Southern soul out there knows just what I mean. In all honesty she has fought the Battle of the Bulge most of her life and while, to quote Meghan Trainor, “it’s pretty clear [she] ain’t no size two” she has been victorious, is quite shapely, very fit and healthy, and, to further draw from Miss Meghan Sylvia can “still shake it, shake it like [she’s] supposed to do.” Well, Thug-boy’s words obviously hurt and that’s where the night turned from awkward to surreal.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mickey is not a violent man. He’s not a particularly large man either. He watches football; he plays a little golf on the weekends. What he IS, however, is a MAN and more specifically, a SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN and folks, ain’t NO self-respecting son of the south gonna let so heinous an insult towards his soon-to-be bride pass unchallenged. Faster than thought, faster than he later admitted he thought possible, Mickey levitated from his seat and shoved Thug-boy’s table into the jerk’s stomach. At that point, Debbie tearfully vanished out the door and from our story.

Say it again! I DARE you! I double DARE you!!

Say it again! I DARE you! I double DARE you!!

Now let’s pause just a moment. You remember Daddy’s advice to me about the long neck Bud bottle? Well, apparently, Mickey’s daddy gave him the SAME advice, and here’s why — the neck of a long neck beer bottle fits very comfortably into one’s hand and gives a really good grip on the bottle which enables one to swing said bottle with a great deal of velocity and force into the face of or, alternately, upside the head of various jerks, boors, and, in this case, assholes. Also, REAL beer bottles — as opposed to the ones in movies — don’t shatter easily and when they do it’s simply time to switch from blunt force trauma to slicing and dicing.

Getting back to the action, Mickey stood up shoving the table with his left hand while his right hand brought up the bottle level with Thug-boy’s nose (which Mickey later recalled made his arm slant upward more than he’d liked) and announced in a voice and tirade worthy of Jules Winnefield, “Say another word! Say one more thing to my girl, **noun version of f-bomb deleted**, and I WILL COMPLETELY **verb form of f-bomb once again deleted** YOU UP!!!” As I said, Mickey is a gentle, caring man, but Thug-boy ignored Rule of the Jungle #2: “NEVER come between a male and his mate!” (FYI, Rule of the Jungle #1, for those who don’t know, is, of course, NEVER get between a momma and her babies.”

In the end, Thug-boy backed down and slunk away, apparently noting the fire in Mickey’s eyes and Mickey’s absolute commitment to use that bottle for the second purpose for which God Almighty intended (the first being to hold Budweiser, of course), proving that, just like ALL bullies, Thug-boy couldn’t take being stood up to! “Sylvia” obviously has her a keeper and I’m looking forward to shaking his hand at the dinner!

Love y’all, and keep those feet clean!

Oct10

Way Down A Hole

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Anybody seen a white rabbit? Neo? Morpheus? Courtney Love? Anybody?

Anybody seen a white rabbit? Neo? Morpheus? Courtney Love? Anybody?

The worst thing about being perpetually hunted by the Black Dog is one never knows exactly what will excite him enough to come lunging at one’s throat. The day can be rotten to the core and dreary and yet you can somehow make it through unscathed if just a little blue or it can bright and sunny and you may not be thinking a thing in the world could possibly be wrong and the Black Dog jumps you seemingly out of nowhere, seizes you by the throat, shakes you like a Polaroid picture, drags you around, then drops you down a deep, cold, dark well.

Doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to depression attacks. Lots of times I’ll carefully go back over my steps and see if I can find a trigger. Sometimes it shows quickly. For example, certain songs will draw the Black Dog faster than huge anonymous donations draw politicians. I know most of those songs and avoid them like a collection agency. At times though, I’ve been known to seek them out. You know how it feels when you have a stomach bug, stomach flu, or alcohol overconsumpionits and your stomach announces its intentions to relieve itself of its contents forcefully, quickly, and in the near future? Some people fight the queasiness. They lay perfectly still or put cold rags on their heads trying to hold off the worship of the porcelain goddess. Others just embrace the puke. They’ll stick their finger down their throat and get it over with because it’ll be out of the way then and they can work on feeling better.

When it comes to songs, I’ve gone both ways. If I’m generally fit emotionally, I’ll run away from a song like “Simple Man” or “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)” faster than Paris Hilton chasing a paparazzo. Other times, however, when I’m already about half an inch from the fetal position, I’ll just say “screw it” and crank up “Tuesday’s Gone” or “Comfortably Numb” or, if I’m feeling seriously masochistic, “Love Bites.” Then the descent into the abyss can begin apace and I can plumb the depths of the funk. It’s sort of like whistling for the Black Dog to come to papa, but the idea behind it is sound. I figure if I can fall into a blackness hard enough and get moving downward fast enough, I’ll bounce when I hit the bottom of the well and get a higher purchase to start clawing my way back up.

In my experience, the worst kind of depression is the one that comes on gradually. It’s like being the victim in a horror show so intent on looking behind her she fails to see the Black Dog lying strategically in front of the well of sorrow and trips over him to fall slowly to the bottom. Then Chien Noir hops on into the well with you and makes sure you’re going to be there for a nice long time.

So tonight, I’m falling. It happens. It was worse when I was a teenager then in college because I didn’t fully grasp what was going on. I thought I was supposed to pet the Black Dog; I thought he was my boon companion. Amazing what drugs and therapy can do. I will say this though, back in the day when I wasn’t taking meds and self-medicated and played my own therapist, I could write a whole lot more and a whole lot better than I can now. I suppose that’s part of the reason all the greatest authors and comedians seem to have some kind of abuse in or around them. It’s a great muse, but she’s a needy, demanding little bitch too.

This doesn’t feel like it’s going to last a long time. I’ve actually been expecting the Black Dog to rise up at some point sooner or later because it’s October and in my life, most of the tragedy, pain, and outright craziness for some reason or other has managed to occur during October. I’ve said to people before that if Mama had died in October, I’d go to bed September 30th and get up on All Saints’ Day. Pretty much the only good thing I know of happening in October happened back in 1978 on October 27th when Deuce came screaming into the world. Other than that though, not so hot.

That’s the way it is here tonight. I’m typing with a Black Dog gnawing my leg. I’ve been here before. It didn’t help that I could hear the Woodmont High School football game through the trees in the front yard. Brought back too many memories too fast. Songs figured into it as well, as did some other stuff. Right now, things could go either way. If the Sun stays out tomorrow and I get out and soak up some vitamin D, I’ll probably kick ol’ Blackie in the chest and pull out of the mire. If it rains all day . . . well, we’ll see.

Anyway, it is what it is.

Love y’all and keep those feet clean!

Oct8

Great War Wednesday: Some Men Cast a Long Shadow

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Sykes Picot signatures

This document has slain tens of thousands in a century.

Anyone who has made even a cursory study of World War 1 knows the names Joffre, Von Moltke, Kitchner, Ludendorff, Hindenberg, and Pershing. These great generals . . . well, debatable, I know . . . managed to kill most of a generation of Europe’s finest young men. Their contribution to history is a long list of names of those killed and wounded engraved on monument after monument throughout Europe. Some enlisted men carved out their places in history during the Great War as well. These were infantrymen like Sgt. York of America, famous aerial warriors like Manfred “The Red Baron” von Richthofen of Germany, and poet extraordinaire Lt. Wilfred Owen of Great Britain. It is two men most people probably have never heard of, however, who cast the longest shadow of the First World War. While they may be relatively unknown to all but the most dedicated historians, Englishman Mark Sykes and Frenchman Francois Georges-Picot, by their actions following the Armistice of 1918, gave birth to men like Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, and the shadowy leadership of ISIS / ISUL.

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Map of Late Ottoman Empire

For 624 years, the Ottoman Empire was a major power in Eurasia. At its height, it ruled all of Asia Minor, Africa from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Horn of Africa, and Europe from the Balkans nearly to the gates of Vienna — an area which dwarfed the vaunted Roman Empire and compared favorably in size to even the mighty Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan. In the early centuries of its existence, the empire and its millions of available soldiers were the bogie-men of European children. The evil of  “The Turk” was a tale told to keep little ones safely inside at night. From his palace in Istanbul, nee’ Constantinople, the Ottoman Sultan ruled a cosmopolitan kingdom of great riches, enormous resources, and surprising tolerance for non-Muslims. Unfortunately, those glory days were far faded by the outbreak of World War One. The Ottomon Empire had been “The Sick Man of Europe” for nearly a century before Sultan Mehmed VI signed a treaty with Germany and Austro-Hungary as much out of desperation as any grand design.

https://i0.wp.com/www.christophermantei.com/uploads/1/5/5/6/15562118/9647792_orig.gifThe Ottoman Theater of World War I is fascinating in its scope and grandeur. Filled with places like Gallipoli and inhabited by men like T.E. “Lawrence of Arabia” Lawrence, the Middle Eastern theater deserves more scholarship than it has received, but it is not what happened as the Turks fought which has cause so much horror in the 21st Century as what happened once they were defeated. Throughout its history, the Ottoman Empire was home to hundreds of tribes and nations. Mostly Muslim, the Empire was generally tolerant of Christians and Jews living within its borders, several famous pogroms nonwithstanding. What is most important, however, is the government in Istanbul maintained a strict SECULAR stance on governing the Empire. Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot shot that all to Hell when they signed the eponymous Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916 even as millions were still dying. That agreement dictated how the Ottomon Empire would be carved up by the victorious Allies (confident pair, I must say) and, indeed, it was used to create the map we recognize today as the modern Middle East where everyone pretty much hates everyone else.

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Francois Georges-Picot

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Sir Mark Sykes

Sykes and Picot were colonialism men through and through, steeped in the propaganda of Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” and they brought that Eurocentric, nationalistic, colonial attitude with them to hammer out the post-War map of the Middle East. Being intellectual, educated men, they both shared a love of lines. Where Frost felt “good fences make good neighbors,” Sykes and Picot felt nice straight lines made good borders and since the area they were divvying up was just sand populated by mostly nomadic tribesmen anyway, why not stick with lines and angles?  These men were Christians — supposedly — and not given to Islamic scholarship. They had no idea what a Sunni, Shi’a, or Wahhabi was and, moreover, they didn’t particularly care.

When Sykes and Picot finished their work, the foundations of five countries existed where NONE had existed before: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Palestine. These “areas” were not proper countries for several years following the agreement, but their roots are in the secret agreement. They were “mandates” which is a century old P-C term for “colony.” France held a “mandate” over Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Britain controlled Iraq and Palestine. To see just how violently the peace of World War I is affecting us TODAY, let’s take a look at just one of these countries: the current playground of ISIS — Iraq.

Iraq was never a country. It became a British mandate, The Mandate of Mesopotamia, in 1920 after the League of Nations ratified several treaties ending the War and dividing the spoils. Then, in 1932, Great Britain quite magnanimously granted “The Kingdom of Iraq” its independence. Then the problem with Sykes, Picot, and their damned straight line borders came to light. Saudi Arabia is another kingdom in the area. Ruled by the House of Saud, it has a long turbulent history, but a history nonetheless. Saudi Arabia is overwhelmingly Sunni, specifically Wahhabist Sunni. The other ancient country in the region is Iran, formerly Persia. Most of its inhabitants are Shiite. Both those countries are somewhat oppressive by Western standards, but they are pretty stable places. Iraq is home to three VERY distinct groups — Sunni, Shiites, and the very eclectic Kurds who have representatives of at least six religions in their midst. NONE of these people groups like each other and since 1932, they’ve been told not to consider themselves Shi’a, Sunni, or Kurd but IRAQI.

Turn on the news tonight and see how well that has turned out. Britain practically guaranteed Iraq would fail. They did this by placing a Sunni King over the country. Of the three groups, the Sunni are the minority. So for over eighty years, Sunnis held real power over Shiites and Kurds, both of whom absolutely HATED the government. The only reason the country didn’t fall completely apart was a string of strong-arm dictators culminating in Saddam Hussein who ruled from 1979 to 2003 when he discovered America giveth and America taketh away. He held the country together by killing anyone who got out of line. As soon as “Coalition’ **cough ‘Merican cough** forces unseated him, the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds went back to killing each other, a practice which has continued right up til today and shows no real sign of stopping.

So, when you see ISIS beheading American journalists on the nightly news, remember exactly who you have to thank for it — Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot — two mid level bureaucrats who lived out every bureaucrat’s dream of not just filing policy, but actually writing it. One hundred years later, the blood continues to drip from their hands. The leader of ISIS has even declared, “The Islamic State will not stop its blessed advance until the stain of Sykes-Picot is driven from this land!”

We have Sykes and Picot to thank for THIS.

Great job, guys.

Love y’all and keep those feet clean.

 

Sep28

So Long, Mr Jeter, and Thank You

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A baby-faced Derek Jeter looks out from his 1993 Topps Stadium Club rookie card.

I hate the New York Yankees with a passion usually reserved for Crusades. Three times in the glory days that were the 1990s, the hated Bronx Bombers dashed the World Series hopes of my beloved Atlanta Braves. I suppose I inherited my hatred of all things pinstriped from Papa Wham. I’m not sure Papa “hated” anything, but he did express a stern dislike for the Yanks.

Having said all of that, I do admire the game of baseball to a fault and when a player is worthy of making baseball history, I like to acknowledge a life well lived and a career worth remembering. With that in mind, I bid a nostalgic farewell to New York Yankee shortstop and Captain, Derek Jeter.

Jeter took his last at-bat today at Fenway Park in Boston and hit a single, fitting for a player who is at the top of the Yankee’s all time hits list and sits at number six on the same list for MLB with 3,465 putting him just below the legendary Tris “Grey Eagle” Speaker and a shade above the equally-if-not-more legendary Honus “The Flying Dutchman” Wagner (a fellow shortstop, btw). Definitely not shabby company by any metric.

What makes Jeter even more special — at least in my mind — is in an era of massive payrolls, egos, and free agent deals, Number 2 spent his entire two decade career with one team. Of course, when that team IS the New York Yankees, it’s understandable, but still, very few players — and almost none of Jeter’s performance level — stay in one place anymore but prefer to chase the next big contract with some other team, be they perennial contender or celler-dweller. Jeter made New York City his home — at least during the baseball season — for twenty years and never seriously looked to go anywhere else.

Perhaps it was this loyalty which prompted irascible Yankee’s owner, the late George Steinbrenner, to name Jeter as the 14th Captain in the long and storied history of the Wearers of the Pinstripes. When you consider some of the names on THAT list — Don Mattingly, Thurmond Munson, Craig Nettles, oh, and a couple of guys named Gerhig and Ruth — it puts Jeter’s place in Yankee history in some perspective. He may not be “The Greatest Yankee Ever” and I’m not sure any group of baseball writers, players, or managers could ever pin that title on any one of the greats who played in the Bronx, but he would certainly be in the dugout in reserve and probably on the field at shortstop with the first team.

Just as much as his performance speaks volumes about his career, the words which DON’T come up in conversations about him are equally important. Despite playing near the high water mark of what is now known as “The Steroids Era,” Jeter’s name has no taint of PEDs to cling to it. No one has ever seriously accused The Captain of juicing and his time on injured reserve as well as his stints in physical therapy point to a guy who didn’t cut corners to play the game he loved. Derek Jeter, who I like to think of as “The Anti-A-Rod,” is one of a handful of players like Cal Ripken, Jr. Ken Griffey, Jr. and my own beloved Dale Murphy who played the game right — no shortcuts, no special favors, just hard work.

Fond farewells, Captain. Hope you have a great retirement.

Of all the qualities that make Jeter a memorable player, though, the greatest is probably his conduct OFF the field. For twenty years, Derek Jeter spent a majority of his time in the hottest spotlight and under the most powerful microscope in the United States. I’m talking about the shark tank that is New York City with its ability to eat celebrities of all shapes and walks of life and turn their lives into a paparazzi fueled Hell. A lot of players and celebs with half Jeter’s talents managed to upset the wrong journalist and ended up in tears amidst one scandal after another. Not Jeter. Despite being one of the biggest in a constellation of stars roaming the Big Apple, Jeter maintained his privacy and his dashing public persona as well.

Oh, to be sure, Jeter is a real life Bruce Wayne in many ways. Mild mannered billionaire playboy by day, hero — on the diamond, not in the alleys — by night. He even has his own extravagant “Batter’s Cave” in a penthouse apartment high atop Trump Tower in Manhattan! The string of lovely ladies who have graced Derek Jeter’s arm at one time or another is long and luxurious, but not very lascivious. So far, no woman from pop singing star Mariah Carey to eye-candy actresses like Jessica Biel and Minka Kelly have managed to wrestle The Captain down the aisle to the altar, but neither have they be splattered across the front page of tabloid after tabloid in one unsavory scandal or another.

So, the numbers don’t lie. Jeter has played a Cooperstown caliber career for twenty years in New York. He’s done it as the consummate professional all the while thriving in the media flashes and enduring the stormy moods of Mr. Steinbrenner. That makes him special all by itself. Goodbye, Captain, and thanks for the great memories, even if you were a Yankee.

And as for all of you . . . Love y’all, and keep those feet clean!

Sep22

Adventures in Lawn Care

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Argiope aurantia, Yellow Garden Spider aka: Daughter of Rodan

Lately, I have been remiss in my duty to the grass. This lackadaisical approach along with some recent showers resulted in a stunning greensward behind our home.  Mama, God rest her precious soul, would have called it “snaky” for fear of encountering Mr. No Shoulders. I realized something had to be done before the situation got completely out of hand, so — having finished the ritual Monday “Home Blessing Hour” — I went to cut grass.

First, I reanimated “Frankie,” short for “The Bride of Frankenstein,” my ancient and trustworthy riding mower. She looks a sight. No cowling; no seat cover, and no wires because I cut every wire I could after I got fed up restarting the engine every time I tripped a kill switch. Frankie now cuts forward, backward, and upside down whether I’m on the seat or not. I know because I’ve rolled her twice and both times, the engine kept on trucking until the gravity feed carburetor ran dry.

With Frankie rolling, I started cutting the back yard. Something nagged at the back of my mind, but try as I might, it just wouldn’t come to the surface so I could remember it. I only knew it was important. Then, I rounded the pool — aka, “The Bane of My Existence” — and the day got interesting.

I don’t know how many of you have ever seen a Yellow Garden Spider. Here, folks call them “Writing Spiders” because they often have crazy designs in their extremely elaborate webs which might be seen as writing. The tale goes if you see your name in a Writing Spider’s web, you’re going to die soon. I’ve never given that particular lore much credence since EVERY wives tale in the South ends with “that means you’ll die soon!”

I’d seen this gal last time I cut grass but, I started cutting the other way round that day and saw her large web with a great deal of warning. I gave her the wide berth she deserved that time. Yellow Garden Spiders are large arachnids, typically about the size of a saucer. She was bigger, about the size of Granny Wham’s turkey platter. Well today, Frankie’s front bumper twanged Daughter of Rodan’s web and things headed downhill.

The contact with the bumper caused her web to oscillate, near to me then far from me. Faster than I could see, she scuttled to the center of her web where the amplitude of the web-wave was greatest. I didn’t know spiders understood physics, so I guessed her devious spider mind a split second too late. Just as the web reached its apogee, she hurled herself towards me. Time stopped; she hung suspended in midflight. For a moment, we were eyeball to eyeball to eyeball to eyeball to eyeball to eyeball to eyeball to eyeball to eyeball. Time restarted. She did NOT land on my face, neck, or chest. Otherwise, why the fat man on the lawnmower had a massive coronary would be a mystery.

She landed on Frankie’s steering wheel and looked right at me.

Now, beloved, I am a gentle man. I don’t kill anything but roaches, mosquitoes and fire ants and only if they bother me. If I see a spider in the house, I trap it and set it outside. If I had to butcher my own meat, I would die of starvation. I’m not a treehugger or anything. I’ve just lived long enough to recognize all God’s creatures are just trying to get by as best they can like the rest of us.

Brethren, in addition to being a gentle man, I am also a generous man.  I would happily give a stranger the shirt off my back. If Budge didn’t watch over me, I’d have given the house away by now. When I stand before the Judgement Seat of Christ, I will have a plethora of thingsto answer for, but neither greed nor lack of charity will be among them. Since charity is in my heart and I possess a giving spirit, I could tell in an instant that spider needed Frankie’s services more than I did. So, I left her with it.

Folks will tell you a 350 lbs 5’10” man can’t possibly do a backflip off a riding lawnmower from a seated position. Folks are wrong; I even stuck the landing. Then, Frankie started backing up towards me. Right then, cutting the kill switch wires seemed a bit premature. Of course, this eight legged refugee from a B-movie probably weighed enough to keep the switch closed. I thought, “She’s coming to finish the job!” Now how’s that for gratitude? Let the spider have the lawnmower and she tries to run me down.

Folks will tell you a 350 lbs 5’10” man can’t possibly vault a six-foot tall chain link fence from a flat-footed position. Folks are wrong. With enough motivation, it is not only possible, it is quite easy and a spider the size of a dinner platter riding backwards on a lawnmower happens to be enough motivation. Unfortunately, I didn’t stick that landing. I landed flat of my back, knocking all the breath out of me. When I recovered — with some helpful face licks from Bozo, the neighbor’s beagle —  I looked between my feet to see Frankie straining to push through the fence I had just jumped. Daughter of Rodan was gone.

Replaying the events later, I realized I’d probably knocked the mower into reverse in my haste to give over operation to the Daughter of Rodan. I say “probably” because I saw her eyes. She might have decided to take me out and spend the rest of her days bragging about catching “the big one” down at the Spider Club while playing eight handed bridge and munching on candied flies as my stuffed head looked on.

We’ll never know.

Love y’all, and keep those feet clean!