Little plastic people and pumpkin headed deer

Hola, peeps. his is my most recent travelogue. Come, enjoy the ride with me.

Here I am, on my way to a far off destination. I have taken vacation from my $10 an hour job at AOL and am headed to Vancouver or Vietnam or Venezuela. "Man, oh man", I think to myself as I go through security, "I'm sure a lucky dude to discover that TravHell-ocity was having a clearance sale on flights to destinations starting with V. All I got to do is clear this security checkpoint with it's shiny, plastic people and cute bowl haircuts and I'm gone. Out of here. In the doggone wind, amigos."

And all seemed to be going well. I had my red suitcase to match my painted on red polyester slacks, my favorite yellow jacket and my soft, blue scarf. I felt I looked the part of a seasoned traveller for sure, though the phrase "gay cabellero" had been directed my way thrice.

Dum dee dum dee dum. I 'll just stand here politely as Officer Judy and her freakishly large gun wand me. Heh heh heh...I said "wand". Oh!, don't laugh or smirk. They'll make me tell them the joke and it may bomb. Crap! I said bomb. Pull it together Ed. Don't say "bomb". You know these low wage goons have a short fuse. Aaarrrgghhh!! Don't say "fuse"!! What?--am I trying to get me killed? I need to act like I've been in public before. Dang all this nervous sweating.

Aw nuts! Here we go. I told me not to sweat so much and argue with myself. But do I listen to me? No-o-o-o. I'm so much smarter than me so I don't have to listen. Well, look where it got me. Just look at those fake smiles. They're going to take me behind that unmarked door, I know they are. Nothing good can come of that, I'm sure. Officer Judy there, she's the mean one. She knows what they do to pretty little boy toys like me in the airport concourse slammer. Attica! ATTICA!!

Well. This is just humiliating. I should have taken the domestic flight to Vidalia, Georgia and took pictures of me with the world's largest jar of homemade pickled onion relish. Then I could have flown JetBlue instead of this Goons-R-Us outfit. Or Ted. Yeah, I like flying Ted. Ted would never put me face down, munching carpet and scared to the point of peeing on the refrigerator magnets in my pocket.

Join me next month when we travel the Ys. Or YMCAs. I guess we'll know when we get there.

TRUE NEWS -

FYI:
The Pennsylvania Game Commission asks anyone who has seen a deer with a pumpkin head to call 1-814-643-1831. (There's a real story behind this, but I kinda like it stand alone.)


The growth in fatwas - some of them contradictory - has led to a debate over who can legitimately issue them and has alarmed governments in the Middle East, since the decrees sometimes challenge state-sanctioned interpretations of Islam.

Yet criticizing fatwas about divisive issues like the propriety of killing civilians and Shiites can be dangerous for officials. So the Saudi government is trying a different tactic, zeroing in on what it considers frivolous fatwas in order to rally support for tougher measures on who can and who cannot issue opinions. Recently, Al Watan, a semiofficial Saudi daily newspaper, reported that a young athlete had joined the jihad in Iraq under the influence of a fatwa forbidding playing soccer by regular rules. The newspaper also republished the fatwa, said to have originally appeared on an Islamic Web site.

Yesterday I took yet another job as I try to ease into a semi-comfortable retirement. This one pays what I call High School wages, but I guess you do what you gotta do. And somehow, at least to my way of thinking about it, $21,000 a year is better than the NOTHING that I am earning sitting here at home on my butt, unemployed.

So the new, unimproved plan B is this. Take a job, any job, and make something in salary. Continue to apply for government service and other, higher quality jobs and continue to schedule interviews. When the plan comes together, and eventually it will, bail on the crappy job. I am doing my "phone interview" with Eli this afternoon on my way to being the voice on the other end of the AOL help-line. Boo-yah, life just gets better and better, don't it?

There is more, so much more in the way of stories to tell, but I tire. And, you know, that paper isn't going to read itself either. While eating Lucky Charms with banana slices. So with that, folks, I'm in the wind.

Magically delicious, out
Ramblin' Ed