French Fries, Vodka, and the occasional Potato Barge

At least going to Belarus, you don't have to transfer planes out in the boonies. No, you are already going TO the boonies, no transfer needed. After flying all night you just get off the plane, look around, feel that little tingle in the hairs on the back of your neck (the ones I call "danger hairs"), hold your backpack a little tighter and move your wallet to your front pocket. "C'est la vie", as the French would say, "let's get this show on the road." Well, the show on the road part comes from Ol' Ray. But Ol' Ray eats a lot of French Fries, even when the squawking heads were all asunder and calling for their renaming to Freedom Fries. Ol' Ray gets none too concerned with the day to day workings of the world.

I had gone for the diving. The discounted discount travel dude told me that this was the best time for Belarus diving, and we'd be leaving by van from Minsk, and can I have payment in full now...in cash? Tip me off? It should have. But it didn't.

So, after having had to fight a rather surly badger for my snorkle and swim fins because she, for some reason, had adopted them as some sort of weird, plastic badger child of her own (I'm not even going to try to Dr. Phil that one), I get to Minsk and realize, "This is a freakin' land locked country!"

And another thing. Exactly how does one get a wild, surly badger in their garage in Florida? Must have stowed on one of them dang RVs with Wisconsin plates, as near as I can figure.

So I mull my options. The rivers are large but not particularly clean. And they are rife with commercial traffic. Commercial traffic, of course, meaning big boats loaded with scrap metal and building materials and potatos. Do I want to be run over by a potato barge, marginally piloted by a drunken, beligerant bear of a man? Do I? Well, no. That's really not too hard to answer.

There are 11,ooo lakes there. But many are too small fo diving. Fishing? Yeah, buddy, just point me to the jon boat. But not for diving. And the few lakes that are large enough are more or less contaminated with fallout from 1986 nuclear reactor accident at Chornobyl, which has left them with a somewhat gelatinous consistency that makes trying to swim feel like some kind of Roger Corman B grade Sci-Fi flick, but without the busty gal that runs around naked and screaming a lot only to eventually meet her demise in a fangoriously bloody beach scene. None too pleasant (the gelatinous lake,not the bloody beach scene) and not at all suited for diving, let me assure you.

Now I used to be a linebacker in Pee Wee football. I credit it quite a lot with making me the man that I am today. And I, of course, mean my patience and demeanor and not my lack of mastery of world geography. We do need to be clear on that. So are we? Good.

When faced with any dilema, be it crazy badger moms , landlocked diving destinations, or just an everyday problem such as whether to pick up the kids at school or let them figure out that they're gonna need to start walking if they want to be home for dinner, I just stop and ask myself, "What would Linebacker Eddie do?" (Ed note- WWLED bracelets will soon be available)

In this case, the answer offered me nothing that I saw as viable. I just could not see how doing a face plant in cold, hard turf, in front of dozens of jeering suburban football moms, wearing a helmet 3 sizes too large for my peanut shaped head was going to help me here, far away across the Atlantic, in a strange and sullen land.

And that, my friends, is where we stop for today. Tune in tommorrow to learn how this ends. What you will actually learn is that I have no intentions of ever completeing this, but tune in anyway. There will be something.

And thank you all. This completes my attempt at Improv Blogging. It is fun. It seems to make for an entertaining read. But omigosh, it is quite the laborious process. I don't think I could do it every day. However, it has gone a long way towards proving what I have told you for years. Ramblin' Ed cares about YOU.

Putting angle in the dangle, out
Ramblin' Ed

The last B might have been BUZZ

"We can't tell you how to dance Balboa, but we can tell you when you are not dancing Balboa." - from dancers around Balboa's start.




So there I was. Standing on the pier with a grin as big as the bell bottoms of my freshly washed, crisply creased crackerjack blues. I had heard a lot of good things about France. None of it lately. But I knew about the killer B's. Booze. Babes. And, um, that other one, too. I think it was Bimbos, but that would seem to be covered by babes, unless I'm missing some cultural subtlty in the connotations. Or maybe I just forgot exactly what it was. Most likely due to my indulgence in the first two. Whatever. It doesn't matter. I was grinning real big.

There ain't nothing like a liberty port after two months at sea on a tin can. You like your friends, but still, living with 32 roommates, 32 incredibly uncouth and gaseous roommates, wears thin after a while. Nothing gets your day off to a shakier start than flinging open your rack curtians to get up and finding yourself face to face with a big, hairy, naked butt. Talk about your "Good morning, sunshine". About all you can do is lay back down and await your turn to get up and dress.

Ah, but in France, even the gritty, worn, industrial sections of Nice where our adventures always began, you escaped the daily routine. We were young. We were clean shaven. We had both a sense of wonder and a sense of adventure. And, with four paychecks in our pockets and two months of sea time behind us, no matter our appearance, local girls normally found us damn good looking enough. Laizze Le Bon Temps Rouler, y'all! (At least til the paychecks are spent.)

She was a beautiful girl. Malite. Or Malik. Or Mah Feet, as in, "Mah feet hurt." I'm not sure. She had sapphire eyes and spoke perfect, lilting French. I was polite, didn't make your eyes bleed to look at and had (still do) the smoothest drawl you'd ever want to hear. So, mostly, we sat and smiled at each other, sipped wine, and held hands. And danced. Oh my, how that woman could dance. Light and soft as a marshmallow in an ocean blue dress and sensible heels. Her hair swirled as she spun, seemingly caught up in a tune of it's own. And though it seemed impossible, her smile would get even bigger as she twirled and danced.They say some nights are magical. This was one.

You could say that romance hung in the air. But that would not be entirely correct. For it more wafted than hung, light and breezy, there but not quite, like the light scent of orange blossoms on the breeze that passes all around you but cannot be captured or held. It just was. And it was to be enjoyed in the moment because the moment, soon enough, would be gone. Ships sail and the moments fade to memories fade to nothing.

Like is often the case with love, this story takes a turn towards the tragic. I got the girl. We were married in a simple ceremony with her parents and younger brother in attendance. She wore white and I wore a goofy grin. We had a second ceremony in my parent's church, again a small affair with just family and a few close friends in the pews.

First there was the child. And then the second... and oh my gosh, a third one! Our new house, to fit our family, did not fit our budget. Not by a long stretch. I had a steady paycheck, as in the paycheck stayed steady as the prices kept rising. Malina, (Yes, I finally learned her name), poor thing, wound up with a large rear end and what once were some wicked sexy curves kind evened out. Don't think I am throwing stones. Oh no, my butt is even bigger than hers and I carry the knicks and cuts and stained hands of a man with years of manual labor behind him and just more of the same before him.

The reality never fulfills the promise. But one night, in smart, pressed crackerjack blues, with a beautiful girl on my arm, the promise was all that mattered.




OK, Janie. Best I could do with that. And I'll say it for you, crappy ending. I get going and don't know how to turn towards the finish line. That, in my neck of the woods, is called rambling on and on. Hence, Ramblin' Ed.

Tomorrows installment: An over night flight to Belarus, a badger, a snorkle, and the words fangoriously, gelatinous, and linebacker.


Fangoriously gelatinous, out
Ramblin' Ed

Toto,watch out for those winged....Eewwww! Too late.

"What do you mean Toto's dead?", Kilgallen screamed. But it was true. Done in by monkeys. Winged monkeys. Winged, shameless monkeys, plying their evil trade over and around the Journal-American building wearing little yellow organ grinder hats and nothing else. "Then I shall go to meet him." And she was to, too. But much sooner than she had imagined. Let me explain.

Before meeting JFK for the first time Dot (I shall now call her Dot for brevity of typing, my skills not being particularly advanced. In fact I have eleveated the hunt and peck method of typing to the hunt, hunt more, cuss, and peck method. But it seems I digress.) was more or less happily married, more less than more maybe, to Bernard, a sad sack of a boardwalk taffy puller with a criminal bent. There is a lot of crime to be had in this old world. Big crime. Profitable crime. And by any way in which you choose to slice it, all of these crimes could be sampled and pursued on the boardwalk in Miami Beach. But this was not Miami Beach. Unfortunately, Bernie's taffy pulling kiosk was located near Atlantic City , New Jersey's famed ocean boardwalk. Near, of course, meaning it required a bus ride with two or less transfers.

Bernie eventually met up with the mob. It was inevitable. He did, after all, reside in New Jersey, where all new residents recieve, in their welcome package from the chamber of commerce, a listing of useful numbers which includes, among the sandwich shops and manicure salon listings, a section on useful mob numbers. It is, naturally, under the heading of LOCAL GOVERNMENT, but those who know, well, they know. Bernie knew.

Soon his kiosk was making large deposits weekly at his financial institution. Large cash deposits, with the depoist slip reading: From Bernies Olde Fashioned Salt Water Taffy and Coin Wash. The coin wash was added to the business letter head because the mob, consisting primarily of sly, crafty, grumpy old men, knew that no bank official of sound mind would believe Bernie's kiosk, near the Jersey shore in December, was pulling in that kind of dough. Bernie didn't know that, but then, Bernie was the patsy. Yes, that's right kiddies. Bernie was now laundering money.

Now Bernie was crafty. Crafty in the way that a box of rocks floats. In other words, Bernie was dumber than a sack of fence pole holes. He was made and arrested upon making only his second deposit for the mob. Fingered by a nineteen year old teller...and not in the good way.

So there he was, languishing in Sing Sing Prison, which despite it's rather lyrical name is a dreary, dreary place, doing 19 to 19.375 for money laundering. And as he sat there, a whipped man, nearly out of hope, choking down his dinner of prison bread and prison ham and prison peas and prison sweet tea, in other words, prison food, he had but one thought. "Man, this food is really bad and yet... somehow...unexplainably... I am pretty doggone horny. Wonder what ol' Dot is up to tonight? I do have this GOOD FOR ONE CONJUGAL VISIT coupon I won at Sing Sing Fear Factor last month." And with little or no further thought, other than how, at twenty five cents an hour working in the prison library, IF Dot was free and IF the warden didn't renege on the coupon and IF he could get Lester, his cellmate to go to a movie or something, tonights condom* was still gonna cost him the fruits of five hours labor. He thought about buying two before concluding that no broad, not even Dot, was worth that much work.

Now I could go on and on about this for a long time. There are many details and much minutae left to convey. But, since my one good typing finger is beginning to go numb, I'll jump right into summarizing this for you. The three main summation points are:

1. JFK ate a bullet. The nation mourned. Dallas has carried the black mark ever since.
2. Dot was found dead. While her death is officially classified as A DANG MYSTERY, it is generally assumed that she was taken by winged monkeys, reportedly wearing nothing but organ grinder's yellow hats and sneers, to be with Toto.
3. Bernie was left, alone in prison, to continue as a taffy puller.

Yes, it is a sad, sad tale, but the Gunner wanted to know.

* Why? Well then YOU try to raise a kid on twenty five cents an hour.

Fly..fly my pretties, out
Ramblin' Ed

Whoa, Nellie! The elephant wants WHAT??

OK, I'll get to work on those improvs. Murf... you know I like to keep this clean. My mom reads my blog and she only lives two doors away. While I do believe she is mistaken, I do not want to test whether or not I am or am not too big to still be put over her knee. The elephant and his "condition" may or may not make the cut. Gunner, first off I'll have to figure out who the heck that Dorothy girl is. Hopefully the one with the dog, Toto. Then I'll knock something out. And Janie, I'm on it.

Those aren't real easy ones at first blush. Stay tuned.

Ramblin' Ed

You know, in the windows defense, he WAS framed

I got a bunch of gourmet coffee for Christmas. I'm pretty wired right now. See?

Had a friend over last night and us and the wives watched that Will Smith & Gene Hackman flick ENEMY OF THE STATE. It's still a great movie. We turned it up loud. Then, about halfway through, I paused the movie for an intermission just like in the old days. I offered popcorn at first, but we ended up with ice cream and Dreamsicles. As an aside, there is an amazing dearth of photos of a Dreamsicle on google, so hopefully you already know what one is. If not, just imagine heaven as orange sherbert and then imagine it on a stick.

Still waiting for some comments for the improv post I mentioned yesterday. If I don't get any, I will be forced to log on anonymously and, as they say, tickle myself. While I have a few instances of tickling myself in my past, and I suppose it is not an altogether unpleasant experience, being interactive and improvosational really requires outside stimulus to work correctly. So if you don't want "A ferret, a far sighted Frenchman, and Grandma's wig" on your conscience, you'll get cracking. Don't test me... I will pull the trigger on the ferret story.

I am changing the date stamp on my Christmas post to appear immediately following this post. I never quite got it where I wanted it. The verses, while snapping and popping perfectly when I wrote them, don't have the world's best meter and flow upon subsequent re-readings. That verily sucks, but it happens. However, say halleluja brother, because the two part chorus I came up with really has it going on. As has happened in the past, I may jettison all of the verses, write a new story incorporating the meter and rhyme scheme of the chorus, and make them into the new verses and end up with a song with verses but no chorus. And, in effect, a new story. Yeah, I know. No one really needs this much of the mechanics of writing lyrics.

I will try to get my truck back on the road today and tomorrow. They say it's easier to take something apart than it is to get it back together. Gosh, I hope that ain't right. It was a real mother bear to get this thing removed. I'd hate to imagine it will be worse putting it back. Luckily I go in armed with little patience, questionable motor skills, and no idea of what I am doing. More like Moron Garage than Monster Garage. Cross your fingers or something. This could get ugly.

I have come to the conclusion that my dream job, Babe Magnet, is not going to ever happen. It's a shame. I think I would have rather enjoyed that.

Speaking of babe magnetism, you will find this to be a different subject altogether. I was feeding the fish for the folks while they were in West Palm visiting sis and her brood. Got a little confused about the vegetable wafers for the bottom feeder, as the container was placed in a "utilize this, too" position and yet had no handwritten note with detailed usage instructions. In effect, they cancelled each other out, and for some reason I found it most perplexing. I used to wonder about things like if I had the clutter reduced enough and the sensitivity dialed in high enough to capture a North Korean missile launch in time to attempt an interception. Now I wonder about if I'm supposed to feed that ugly little sucker of a bottom feeding scavenger fish or not. My, my. How things do change.

That's it. I'm wandering mightily this morning. I'll put an end to your suffering, bec.... Hey. What do you mean you quit reading during the fourth paragraph? Well, I never!

30% post consumer electrons, out
Rmblin' Ed

Twist It Up and Paint It

Twist It Up and Paint It 25 Dec, 2005

You ain’t just walking by
You don’t do nothing ain’t got some reason why
You think you’re so tough
But you’re just another lost little girl
Out in the world

You take my breath away
Always perfect like a Saturday
You just might be cool
But it's cool that keeps fanning the flames
Hard to explain

(Chorus)

Tell me,
Take off what don’t feel right
Baby, barefoot
We’ll just toss it aside
Headlong
We can crash up what we find
Hidden there in the night

And if it ain’t what we wanted
If it ain’t worth the time
A full throttle kiss
That falls just short of the line
If we twist it up and paint it
With the shades of our hearts
If it’s still a motionless emotion
Together we’ll come apart

Come over here close to me
I love to smell you in the soft, summer breeze
You know I love how the sun
It strikes and then it glints off your hair
I wanna be there

Started before but turned into your past
Wrapped in the randomness know as romance
Held out the promise
Of this and it just might be that
This might be that

Tell me,
Take off what don’t feel right
Baby, barefoot
We’ll just toss it aside
Headlong
We can trash out what we find
Hidden there in the night

And if it ain’t what we wanted
If it ain’t worth the time
A full throttle kiss
That falls just short of the line
If we twist it up and paint it
With the shades of our hearts
If it’s still a motionless emotion
Together we’ll come apart

Ed
Cigar Tree

Got it going on like Donkey Kong, out
Ramblin' Ed

Draw, Drawn, Drew

You have seen WHO'S LINE IS IT, ANYWAY? haven't you? The one with Drew Cary? I like where they get like a color, shouted out from the audience, and then an occupation, and then an embarrassing situation and the improv guys have to work a skit up or sell a compilation album. Those are great.

So here. Give me something, a situation, an article of clothing, whatever. I'll play with them and post them. A favorite color, a favorite pet, a favorite colored pet. C'mon... put me to work.

My only request for you is that you make every attempt to avoid any and all uses of the word "rectum" in your submission. Otherwise, My mission is to make you smile, so, your submission is my sub-mission.

Gravelly voiced lounge singer, out
Ramblin' Ed

Dead...counter dead

Looks like the ol' Robo counter is dead. I kept thinking it'd return to full glory, but as far as I can tell it ain't gonna. I plan to just leave it there for a while. Like a front yard junk car for the blog.

The computer is fully functional, brandly newly armor-plated against ne'er-do-wells. At least for now. I have like 8 different malware finders, preventers and killers. I don't even have one office product, unless you count notepad. I also have added a lot of the gizmos I like at my fingertips. Of course, as anybody who wipes and re-installs operating systems regularly knows, I'll be tweaking and fine tuning for a couple of more weeks. Good thing I'm such a geek, I suppose.

I didn't think to save anything in Thunderbird before I slicked it. That's the downside to only spending 20 or 30 seconds deciding whether or not to reinstall. Tend to not give real in depth consideration to things in the nooks and crannies. So anyway, any addresses or correspondence going to or coming from the Ramblin' Ed at Earthlink account is in e-mail heaven now. Say a few words and we'll move on.

I planted a mango tree today. If you like mangos, stop on by. I have a mango tree. I have a juicer. I have an idea. I have a question. Can you juice mangos? I've had mango juice, but it might have been formed in a blender. I'm forty five years old (for another twenty something days, anyway), why don't I know these things already??

Have a job interview (actually a phone interview) in 10 minutes. I'll leave it at that as we've all been on my job hunting roller coaster before. I also got accepted to AIU today. I am 43 credits into my Associates and am enrolling in a program to get a Masters in Business management. Either Health Care, because of the obvious reasons of we got tons and tons of rich senior citizens here, or in Project Management because I already have 20+ years experience in that area. Of course, it all hinges pretty much on if I can pay for it. Should know that in a few days.

Later Daze, out
Ramblin' Ed

Pardon my dust

Sunday I did not post. Actually, there was a post Sunday morning for about ten minutes, but I yanked it.

Monday I took a hit to the hard drive. I've replaced it already and am in the process of bringing everything out of backup. While in the process of doing that, I am also taking the opportunity to strengthen security and put a bit more logic to the layout. Will be back on line this afternoon, or no later than Wednesday morning.

At least it's not like you're missing something profound.

Ramblin' Ed

Me, as a fairy princess

OK, well maybe not princess. And definately not fairy, although not, to borrow from Jerry Seinfeld, that there's nothing wrong with it.

I was wondering what magical powers I'd like to have. For the most part, super hero powers do not interest me. They come with too many moral obligations to be fun. Useful, yes, but maybe not so fun. Now magic on the other hand. Yeah, magic, that's the ticket.

5. I read this in a story once. When a guy went to buy something, he just put his hand in his pocket and he pulled back out the exact amount needed. That would be nice.

4. I would like to be able to see what people were thinking. I'd mostly use it for two fairly benign reasons. I do believe this could be great. On the other hand, it remains to be seen if my fragile ego could handle what people really are thinking about me. On the other, other hand, I'd know how many other people use the term "goober" in their thoughts.

3. I would like to be able to go back in time. I think this would be especially useful in a poker tournament.

2. I would like to be able to grant wishes to people. I think that would be a nice way to show people a little kindness. Example:
Joe: Dang, I wish this beer was colder
Ed: Shazzaam... There you go, buddy
Joe: Wow, thanks! It's so icy.

1. I wish I could make ill advised things I've said disappear. You know, basically a REWIND & DELETE function for the mouth. If it worked out, I could probably also go for an ill advised things I've done button, too. Although I'm not sure. Ill advised things I've said have generally had negative consequences. But a lot of the ill advised things I've done, while they sucked in the moment, later turned into some pretty good stories and songs. So I might wanna give it some thought.

Also making an appearance on my Weird-O-Meter this morning was my dream from last night. I was driving home from somewhere with my wife and brother. I was driving and talking and somehow mistook a mud path up the side of a mountian for the interstate highway. Getting to the top of this path I realized that I could neither continue on nor could I go back. The path was too small and narrow ahead and too steep and muddy behind. I was stuck, so I schlepped back to my truck, which was somehow parked in a garage in a neighborhood of the town at the bottom of the hill that we had just been passing through as travellers, to get a rope from behind the seat. When I get there I slap my forhead in dismay as I realize that I did not bring my truck with me. For some reason I had driven my Brink's Armored Car today.

I mean... what the heck kind of dream is that !?!

Merry Christmas, out
Ramblin' Ed

Steve...POW!!

Don't let anyone tell you there's nothing to do in Indiana.
Imagine an ordinary baseball...Now imagine that same baseball with over 19,100 coats of paint on it. Getting the picture? Good, because that's exactly what this guy and his wife, Glenda, have done for the past 28 1/2 years. Now that ordinary baseball that once weighed less than one pound now weighs in around 1,700 pounds!

I hope I can tell this sea story without running too long. I was helping Bro paint his house yesterday when I remembered this. He was kinda trapped and had to listen to me tell it. You think my written stories are long and rambling, you should hear me tell them...

My ship was in a maintenance availability period. We were hung all over with scaffolding, tarps and plastic. We had a lot of grinding and chipping going on.

I owned a LOT of the topside structure, as it took a lot of structure to hold my four massive radar arrays. By own it, I of course am using the navy terminology that translates as "is responsible for painting". And I knew my responsibility for getting it painted, and had submitted, and gotten back approved, my plan of action & milestones. As usual, my act was together. We had planned our work and were working our plan.

Then the Division Officer walks up one morning and tells me we need to paint the deckhouse today. "No, sir", I reply, "that's scheduled for next Monday. That's when we get the cherry picker and spray gun." Long story short, the Commodore might visit the ship across the pier tomorrow, so he might look at our ship as he walks, and, despite the fact that we are obviously in an availability (which he knows already since he's paying for it), if he does glance at us we WILL be freshly painted.

So, ever the good squid, I suck it up and go tell the troops. It was, after all, an argument I was not going to win: Painting something -vs- overhauling something.

The troops did not take kindly to dropping "real" work to paint, nor to doing it by using rollers while hanging from a rope chair over the side when there were sprayers and a cherry picker on the way. They hated the idea of doing something half-assed when it didn't have to be. But I politely used my "because I said you would" argument and we commenced work.

The ship across the pier was considered to be "special", and not in the good way. Our officers were always tweaking them, asking them things like "Do you guys need the stock number for haze gray paint? No? Sorry, it looked like you might have lost it." Because we were such buttholes to them, I am sure they took great delight in pointing the following out to us.

The next morning I was awakened by a frantic Command Duty Officer, complete with sputtering and flailing. It was about 4:50 AM and he was freaking. All I could make out was something about "Forget this (which is more or less what he said, although not verbatim)" ... "port deckhouse" ... "Commodore coming". None of which was really making sense to me.

I dressed and followed him and what I found was this. In four foot high letters, formed by NOT painting an area, was the stated opinion FORGET THIS! In the afternoon sunlight the old gray and the fresh gray looked more or less the same and the deckhouse looked nice. But in the morning light, where the sunlight was striking at an angle, there was a noticeable difference in the new and old paint, allowing a simple message, in four foot high letters, to be observed.

I calmly told the officer I'd take care of it and went and woke up a few of my guys to start rigging up the rope chair for a little early morning touch up painting. And we did take care of it. And order was more or less restored to the universe.

While I was standing there supervising the repainting, one foot up on a bitt and a cup of joe in my gnarly, seagoing hand, the CT chief came up to talk to me. This guy had the best name. Steve Pow. I loved it. Hey, look, it's Steve POW! But I digress.

So Stevie says to me, "So, your boys think the side of the ship is their own personal bulletin board, do they?"

"Well, Steve, party line: I'm appalled. Just appalled. But really, I'm pretty proud of the little boneheads."

"Yeah, my CTs would be too scared to do something like that."

After the repainting, I went to find the guy I knew had done it. I knew he had because he was my best man. Very focused and very driven to perfection. I knew that dropping a job that he was in the middle of, a very important job, to paint something badly instead of waiting and doing it properly, pissed him off to no end.

"Hoffy, I know you and Pauly did that."

"You're wrong, Chief. Pauly had nothing to do with it."

"OK. Hoffy, it was funny. Good job. You know it can never happen again, right?"

"Yep."

Swabbing and swapping sea stories, out

Ramblin' Ed

Politicians...Can't kill 'em, can't even beat 'em up

The longer I live, the less I trust anybody elected. I still pretty much trust the Supreme Court, but here lately, even that has come into question a little. Politicians. They're crooked. They're all crooked. But having no government would be even worse as we've already proved in New Orleans. So my plan from here on out is simple. Unless they have done an exceptionally enlightened job, unless they have not strayed one inch from doing the job they were elected for (We have quite a few County Commissioners here that believe they were elected to some kind of Lifestyle Police position. All the while allowing every wetland to be paved and every grove to be leveled without any thought to the infrstructure requirements needed to support such explosive growth which is the job, I believe, they were actually elected to do.), I'm voting against them. Yep, if you're incumbent I'm likely gonna vote against you. Keep them moving through too fast to line their pockets, too fast to become a lobbyist lapdog, and too fast to get used to too many perks.

I decided this after two things. The first, which I have mentioned here before, was some local politicians voting to relax the ethics laws because the stricter ethics laws, which were not particularly strict on a national scale, were keeping them from accepting some of the nicer bribes, I mean gifts, that were being offered them.

The second thing, which occurred this week, was a bunch of state politicians accepting travel trips to Scotland to play golf at St. Andrews. When asked about the propriety of accepting such trips, they both answered with, "It's not illegal." When a politician says "it's not illegal", it means he knows it's improper but, well to put it plainly, he doesn't care. So I intend to try to keep all my politicians too junior to be worth bribing. And if we aren't able to get a new bridge that we don't need, well so be it.

News I did like actually comes from Joe Lieberman. I never thought he and I would see eye to eye on anything. But I did like him chastising the Democratic party by warning them, "It is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be commander in chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril."

News that pisses me off is, again, attaching an unpopular bill to a bill that cannot be not passed. We must fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We must do it. We need to continue to aid the hurricane victims on the Gulf Coast. That, too, is imperative. So for lawmakers to attach the bill to allow drilling in ANWR, a bill that divides public opinion, to funding bills for the wars and humanitarian aid and then saying take it all or leave it all is, in my mind, unconscionable. It is cowardly. Openly debate it and, if your side loses, then the people were against it, your argument was flawed, or both. Just be a man about it. Dang.

Last item politically irritating, before we move on. The Senate set a firm date, Feb 17, 2009, for all broadcast TV to be digital. OK. Not sure why Senate feels they must be a part of overarching business decisions since usually market forces will cause beneficial changes to occur, and usually at a more competitive price. But still, they have. Now, since this decision of theirs will negatively affect folks with older sets, Congress has authorized $1.5 billion, BILLION, for a converter box program. They couldn't find time to work on the Patriot Act and other important legislation in any kind of timely fashion, but these folks lept into action for Terry Schivo and Digital TV. Repeat after me, vote incumbents out.

OK, the next post, which I am starting now, will be back to Ramblin' Ed standards. Whimsical and without any real point. Yeah, that'll be better.

Vote early and vote often, out
Ramblin' Ed

Let the games began already

In the mornings, to get my brain going, I drink coffee. And I play games. In fact, I don't read the paper until at least lunch, sometimes supper, and occasionaly not at all. For this tidbit of information I charge you nothing because, well, because you're getting what you paid for it. Nothing.

But it does allow a nice segue into the game playing part of my morning confession. I usually play at least two games of Scrabble. I set one computer opponent to semi-genius and one computer opponent to doofus. Scrabble really works your head, especially when you have six vowels and one consonant or vice versa with six consonants and only one vowel.

I figure a little competition in the mornings will get the ol' neurons firing. Does it work? I guess. Is it fail proof? No. But what is? I think it is fail resistant, though. To paraphrase a famous line from, um, somebody famous, "I think, therefore I am...awake."

I also play a game or two (or three) each of a couple of other games. For instance this morning I also played 3 games of Canasta and two of Cribbage. Sometimes it'll be Pinochle, Yahtzee, Battleship, Backgammon, Spades, Hearts, Tarot or Euchre. I really like Euchre.

I like Tarot, too, but few people realize it is actually a card game. Witches and mediums have kinda shanghaied the common perception of Tarot, much like the hate mongers stole the battle flag of my ancestors. Anyway, Tarot has a trump suit and it's a bidding game where you attempt to earn points. I find it exceedingly difficult, but by the same token, why play a game if there is no challenge? I know. Exactly.

I found a place in a flea market down in Sarasota that had a large selection of Tarot cards. I thought to buy some so I could play against live people instead of always the computer.

However, I could not get the High Priestess Voodoo Flea Market Queen to understand me. I wanted to see a deck to make sure all of the cards I needed to play were actually in the deck. I didn't know because I'd never bought any before.

She kept showing me a flip chart of what the various pictures on the cards were. Although I told her repeatedly that the drawings were only of a passing concern to me, but the number of cards, DANGIT WOMAN...THE NUMBER OF CARDS, is what I needed to know. She was really pissing me off as she assumed that affected tone of someone talking down to an unenlightened one.

I keep thinking to myself, "Behind the black lipstick, incense, and spooky "music", you're still just a trailer park cracker of limited life experience. Don't you talk down to me. At least I know enough to know the cards were designed for playing a game. In fact, wench, I even know how to play it." Instead, I just looked at her like she needed to get a clue, turned around and left her shop, allowing her to return to gliding around her store infatuating all the teenage boys who seemed to be her main customer/fan base.

Well, that's it.

Or is it?

Yeah, it is. Unless you want to hear how some days I love having cats and some days I really don't. Nah, I didn't think so.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?, out
Ramblin' Ed

I am a mite offended

A mite offended means I'm a little offended. I can see that a case could (I almost said might) be made to read it as if I am one of any of various small or minute arachnids of the order Acarinathat that are often parasitic on animals and plants and I have taken offense. But that is not what I meant.

Nope. I'm more or less peeved at how ignorant TV advertisers think that I am. Let's take Dell, for example. They're a big company. And yet they resort to wordplay and trickery. And I am talking, folks, about a real commercial running nationally. So you can check my accuracy here yourself.

They want to sell me a $549 desktop computer. That does sound like a good price. And it is. But listen closely to what the guy says. "After mail in rebate when you order online". If I have to order online to get the rebate, how come I then have to snail mail a rebate form? If I can order it online and pay for it online, why can't I request my rebate online? But wait, like all things rinky dink, there's more.

Then they shout at you in big letters FREE SHIPPING while offering up in whispered small print plus $24 Handling. So, let me see if I've got this right, where most companies can ship and handle their products for around $5.95 to $7.95, the big ol' Dell company needs three times that just to handle it?

Heck, what does that mean, anyway? To put it in the box? To put a shipping lable on it? To take it to the post office? Do they perhaps actually mean fondling, which may indeed be worth the $24? I don't know. But what I do know is that those things are part of the act of selling me something. Why do I need to pay extra to get you to do it? Me thinks me smells a ripoff.

Deon Sanders is still playing football. What a surprise. And for a crappy team, no less.

Lastly, and this is mainly of interest to me and me alone, there are five ACC teams in the Top 25. Six, if you count Boston College, which I guess we gotta do now even though it just don't seem natural. Anyway, the news is this. When the crawler where I'm getting this info went by on ESPN last night, it listed NC State as #18 and UNC as #19*. Take that, Tarheel pukes. Back the Pack!

* The paper this morning stated that #18 Indiana defeated unranked Charlotte last night. So something don't add up too good. But as long as NCSU is ranked higher than UNC, all is right in the world.

And a side of grits, please, out
Ramblin' Ed

It is a link, but it will die

This is a link to a story in today's St Petersburg Times. I know there are some of you out there who would find it uplifting. A Congressman's wife with an independent streak, a soft spot for marines, and the salty vocabulary of a drill seargant. I hope you are as warmed by it as I was. I don't know how long one of these newspaper links stays active.

Beverly Young story link

Ramblin' Ed

No, not Charlie Sheen

I have a sheen on my coffee. Have had one for at least the past four days. May have always had it and am just now noticing it. Or it may be new. Can't say, don't care. I drink it without hesitation.

Because.......

On the mighty warship Lynde McCormick, a fine ship that was born the year after me, JP5, which is to a ship what regular unleaded is to your Suburu, leaked into the potable water feeding the mess decks coffee machines. We could see it and we could smell it. It presented us with a dilema.

Do you go, "Eeewwww", and refuse to drink it, turning up your nose like an offended schoolgirl or do you draw a big ol' cup of it anyway because a midwatch or morning without coffee is simply not doable?

Ya drink it. It was never even really a question. Men on ships drink coffee and a little fuel ain't gonna change that. It did, however, present two benefits that we had not considered.

The first benefit is easy to guess. A little JP5 in your coffee is quite effective at keeping you regular. Nothing, and I mean nothing, gets hung up in you when you're all lubed inside like that. The second benefit was even slicker than that. And more unexpected. And cooler.

The navy doesn't buy any squeezably soft toilet paper. We get some pretty industrial grade stuff when you get right down to it. But for the whole time we was drinking the petroleum, that paper glided across our butts like butter on hot teflon. And we were stoked.

Fact-O Meter reading for preceding story: True, mostly.

New story//Begin//Here

The wife went to bed Saurday night at 3:30 AM. Sunday at 9 AM she came walking into the living room where I was, her eyes only half opened and her hair tousseled up. She picked up the phone and dialed.

"Hello, Brother Dave. Call your Mom today. It's her birthday." Then she hung up the phone, looked at me through those half mast eyes and announced, "I'm going back to bed." I thought that was pretty cool.

Last poem for a while. Probably. Maybe. This one came to be in Jacksonville, FL, or as we call it, Jax.

Daisychain

Hair as black as the hangman's heart
Eyes of fire like breaking dawn
If given anything I want
I'd like a place to keep me warm

'Cause I'm feeling like the echoed cries
That drift away into the night
I wanna call in all my chips
Ain't got no chips to call
But I've got
Lies I think I might have told you
Might have told you, they're so far away

Mirror, mirror on the wall
Why you hanging out at all?
Mock me, show me nothing
Except stumble, fumble, fall

Now right across the borderline
Whispers and the hint of danger
Women pressed their lips to mine
I danced beneath their favors

Me, I'm feeling like a fallen angel
Crashed out bare across the table
Just had to race along the edge
But look how far I fell
I fell for
Lies I think I might have told you
Might have told you, they're so far away

Scrawled my name in 10 foot letters
Turned my back and walked away
And if you ain't the perfect stranger
Nothing else that I can say

Maybe you could stop my heart
Easy now, BANG-BANG you're dead
Bullets fly. Blink of an eye
Might find a place to keep me warm

I'm feeling like the color's washed out
Silver screen has faded black
Some would call it destiny
But they would not be right
More likely
Lies I think I might have told you
Might have told you, might have... I can't say

Ed
Jax

Enjoy a cheesy side dish, out
Ramblin' Ed

The "Where I'd Live" test results

Red Queen had a little quiz on her site. It seemed to work correctly as she tested most likely to live in tree bark and eat insects. So I took the test, too. I answered honestly and I saved the results to post here. My results were not at all what I had expected, but they're nothing that I'll refute. I will, however put out this caveat right off the bat: No, I will not make chicken soup for you when you are feeling poorly. The results:

Streetcar Suburb
You scored 19 out of 40 on urban-rural and 14 out of 40 land intensity.
People know you as: Grandmama
Quote: "Maybe the neighbor can lend us some sugar."
Your score indicates that you prefer a large metropolitan area to the wilderness and that you like your personal space. But you also enjoy interacting with other people occasionally and maybe, just maybe, on a rare occasion you even enjoy walking somewhere besides across the parking lot to your car. You should live in a pre-World War II suburb. The kind populated by bungalow houses and charming little corner grocery stores. Just like grandma.
Examples of places you should live: Bethesda, MD; Evanston, IL

My test tracked 2 variables.
How you compared to other people your age and gender:
You scored higher than 37% on urban-rural
You scored higher than 13% on land intensity

I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV

My blog buddies all got style. Or at least a style. Red Queen has the pretty poems and travel stories. Gun Trash has the odd and strange sites and quirky games. Jn has the frenetic pace of a college student. And AI has bears. And great photographs. And groupies. Me? Well, what I lack in substance (and what I lack in substance is substantial) I make up for in volume. Volume, as in quantity. As they say, we all have our niche.

How do I feel about this? Heck, I don't care. It's a lot easier to talk a lot than to have something to say. Use enough grown up words and string them together with a lot of commas and it kinda looks like you've got something to say anyway. I'm easy as they come.

Well, that is not what I started out to say, although truth be told, I didn't start out with anything to say. I kinda sat around all day and night watching football and basketball.

Funny, but moving back to the states caused me to get Christas cards this year. A lot of them. A lot more than I sent out, because I usually only get two, maybe three cards per year. I was caught off guard. Boy, do I have egg(nog) on my face.

I think I'll rent the Dukes of Hazzard. Daisy Duke's cutoff shorts looked interesting and... well, actually there ain't no and to it. I wanna see Jessica in them shorts even though I know I'm going to walk away from it having had my intelligence insulted. Ha! Hollywood knows just what I like. I am just so easy.

It's Sunday, I'm sleepy and this must be exceedingly boring. To the majority of you, good bye, so long, it's been a trip. Stop in again tomorrow for some new twisty tales.

For the two of you that actually read the poems, there's another one below. I wrote it for my first wife when I got sent overseas for two years and left her back in the states. In retrospect, it was not a brilliant move, leaving her behind for so long. But hey, if it wasn't for non-brilliance, we might never have regrets.

Denim Girl

I fall asleep without your touch
I might have never said as much
But what we are is what we are together
I let so much go slipping by
Like what we had was endless time
Now we're apart. I understand forever

Did you awaken from your sleep
Late last night from quiet dreams
I spoke your name aloud and did you hear it?
A whisper carries in the night
I closed my eyes with all my might
And there you were, my denim girl, appearing

Hey denim girl, with eyes so bright
I'll see you in my dreams tonight
To see you smile just sets my world a'spinning
The miles between your hand and mine
Are just a bridge we'll cross in time
And on the other side is our beginning

My heart beats like a restless drum
In rythm with the one I love
Each morning dawns with lonliness to greet her
The ocean sets its own sweet pace
Just like a woman. I can say
Sometimes I curse the day went down to meet her

I fall asleep without your voice
To say how much I love you
So I toss and turn and dream myself back home
The Louisiana breeze is blowing
Outside on the front porch, you say,
"Come here boy, you've been away too long"

Hey denim girl, with eyes so bright
I'll see you in my dreams tonight
To see you smile just sets my world a'spinning
The miles between your hand and mine
Are just a bridge we'll cross in time
And on the other side is our beginning

I fall asleep alone again
A trace of whiskey on my breath
A night like this goes better with a chaser
The Nippon moon is hard and cold
Without my little denim girl
I miss her. Now I understand forever

Ed
Yoko

T-t-that's fall, oaks
Ramblin' Ed

The past future

I record a lot of TV on my HDD recorder. Sometimes it's because we will be out during that time, sometimes it's because there are good shows on simultaneously, and often it's a ball game I will watch later, before the wife gets up/after the wife goes to work. I don't necessarily watch them in the order I recorded them in. Which leads to the phenomenom of seeing preview ads for things you have aready watched. The past future, if you will. It is, as the Aussies unexplicably say, cool beans.

The guy who gets my vote for sainthood is the guy who came up with clumping cat litter. I will admit that, at first, I didn't fully understand it. I kept asking the wife how such a little cat could pass a turd almost as big as himself and not be at least a little tore up for it. After a while I came to understand that it was clumped up pee. That's about the time the light bulb came on as to why it was called clumping litter. Well, no matter all that. All is right in the world at this time.

I heard the phrase "...and beaten with a sack of pineapples". For some reason, it spoke to me. Can't you just see Bruce Willis, in Die Hard VI, after being beaten bloody by goons with a sack of pineapples, dragging his battered carcass upright and uttering, "Aloha.... scumbag", as he drives a shiv into said goon's heart/crotch/eye? Well, can't you?

Back to recording. I seem to watch NBC and Fox sitcoms. I tend to record ABC sitcoms. I actually feel that that ABC's fare are a kind of second class citizen in the TV sitcom world. Of course, your experience may vary.

Having been married twice, I am skilled in the art of deception. Unless, that is, I'm just fooling myself.

OK, raise your hand if you are one of those people that extends the antenna on your cell phone when you use it. OK, I'm having a little trouble here. Someone tell me, is my hand the only one that's up?

It was a commercial. It was for a show. I forget which show but prefer not to be sued over it. All I remember was hearing someone say, "Feliz Naviblah".

Randal won on the Apprentice. When Donald asked him should he hire Rebecca also, which by the way, he should have because she was good, Randal surprised me, even though I had to smile at how he phrased it. He said, No, Mr. Trump, you should not. The show was called The Apprentice, not The Apprenti."

So I went to the movies. I saw Narnia. It was good. Real good, in a two and a half hour way. Upon exiting, I stopped in the restroom. Now the story could end right here and certianly be entertaining enough. But there is more stuff. Amazing stuff.

I had on a t-shirt from one deployment or another I had made on a previous ship. It was one of those darn Middle East deployments where we got to pretend that Bahrain was a good liberty port and that Saudi Arabia was a "normal" country.

Now when I pee, I normally face in such a way that I am facing towards a wall (should I have just said wallwards?) and have my back to the sometimes patient, sometimes jeering crowd. This was my position on that night, in the theater after watching Narnia. So you can see, the suspense is building.

So, as I am concentrating on the bidness at hand, I hear a voice. It was a male voice, but that makes sense since we were in the men's room. Although, technically he was more a boy than a man. (Must investigate that later.) He simply said, "Bunker Hill? My dad was on Bunker Hill." I asked him when and he said during the Gulf War. I told him I got off the ship right before the war, washed my hands and left.

But then I got to thinking, which yes, is indeed a sort of delayed function for me, if his dad was on during the war and I got off only two months before the war, there is a good chance I know the dude.

I waited until he had finished and returned out. I didn't shake his hand because I had not actually seen if he did or did not wash his hands, but, since he was a boy, he likely did not. I asked, "Who's your dad?" You must note at this point that to have asked, "Who's your daddy?" would not have been proper.

As it turns out, I did indeed know his daddy. Like me, a retired Senior Chief Fire Controlman from way back. I used to go to his house for beer drinking and football watching, back in the day. Heck, I still have one of his sweaters in my closet, but since he probably doesn't remember loaning it to me, we'll just let it be. I mean, it's a real nice sweater. The kid is fifteen years older now, which is why I didn't recognize him. It is a small world, after all.

OK, last on today's list of things you need to know. I have a clock that chimes on the hour. Or at least near the hour, depending on my accuracy are setting it. It has always played a clip of music, but I have kept the volume very low on it for years. Well the wife made me turn it up, even though when she told me to I looked right at her and said, "Yes, dear." Now, instead of a faint chiming sound in the background, I can hear the tune. It is kinda eccentric. It is kinda cool. It's at least 3 fifferent songs. They are: OH MY DARLIN', CLEMENTINE; 10 LITTLE INDIANS (one little, two little, three little indians, four little....); and ROCKABYE BABY. Like I said, there may be more, I'm not sure. But think for a moment, aren't the first two songs a strange choice for clock chimes?

For the next song, I have made the title a link to the song as it was recorded, should you wish to hear it that way. My request, however, is that you read it first before you listen to it. C'mon, humor an old guy.

Wings That Won't Hold Me

I stopped by this evening
Just to pick up the pieces
Just to see what was shaking
If it's shaking at all

If I were a gambler...
If I played with fire...
If I knew my desires,
I wouldn't even have called

Touch me and make me a ghost in the gallery
A free rambling mem'ry where you no longer go
Then send me flying on wings that won't hold me
Crashed like you told me such a long time ago

I wanted you badly
Back when price was no object
I had money to give you
Oh, but you wanted more

You wanted my heart, girl
You mined me for feelings
Then you wanted my time
More than I could let go

Touch me and make me a shadow that's fading
A small patch of dirt where there won't nothing grow
Then send me to fly off on wings that won't hold me
To crash down and burn just like you told me so

There's nothing worth saving
There's nothing worth having
There's nothing I'd miss
If it all went away

There ain't no stories I'm saving
To pass on to no babies
Who'd just grow up without me
Anyhow. Anyway

Touch me and make me a fire in the distance
Burned out so long that no embers still glow
Then make me fly on those wings that won't hold me
I believed in you once, and that's a hard way to go

Ed
Yokosuka, Japan

Hamsters,and gerbils, and rats. Oh mice!, out
Ramblin' Ed

"SHE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE" is stuck in my head

Here it is, the neo-conservative smash hit: BUSH WAS RIGHT

Not so sure I agree with THIS PARTICULAR TOUR

Quotes from yesterday:

Constant talk is not communication
Let the world change you and you can change the world
OK. Hmmm. Well, she's gonna be drunk and stupid now
Can you help me? I'm looking for the self-help section

News from yesterday:

The newspaper ad for John Prine's concert last night was this: Troubador for the times John Prine's antiwar messages find a new audience these days.
Well, OK, John did a couple of anti-war songs in the early 70's, although they weren't blatently anti-war. Well, actually, I guess they kinda were. Still, I can really only think of two, SAM STONE and PUT A CANDLE IN THE WINDOW. But he can hardly be called an anti-war singer of protest songs. He's no peacenik. He's no activist. He's no Joan Baez.

This happened in Chardon, Ohio. A 75 year old Amish widower, afraid about his church community finding out about his seeking sex from a prostitute, was scammed out of more than $67,000 by a hooker and her boyfriend. He gave them money after they convinced him that photos of him and the prostitute would appear on the internet.

OK, fair enough, although when I turn 75 I'm not really planning to make apologies for anything I may or may not be able to still do. My biggest question about this whole thing, and mind you, we're not eat up with Amish folks here in Florida so I'm not real familiar with their society's list of dos and don'ts, is this. Ain't the Amish kinda like a little clan of technophobes? Don't they eschew modern contraptions and convienences like electricity? Convienences like, oh I don't know, maybe THE INTERNET?? And if I am correct in my assumptions, which I am amazingly often, then doesn't that mean he could only be found out breaking the community standards by someone breaking a different community standard? Or do the Amish, perhaps, have a non-Amish that surfs porn for them and reports back with the latest developments? I don't know. This one is fairly perplexing to me although between you and me, I'd high five the guy and move on.

Thank you, thank you. You've been a wonderful audience. I'll be here all week. Never a cover charge and a very reasonable two drink minimum. Good night.

The Blues and Me

Don't believe you're lonely
Don't believe you're falling out of grace
But don't you look to me to find the answers
You tried that once and I could not be honest
And the tears you cried were tears I could not face

I am not a martyr
A martyr dies for something he believes
And I could never pin down my emotions
The ebbs and flows more like the restless ocean
But I am weak, unlike the mighty sea

You came to me a lover
You came to me a spirit running free
I came to you with hands outstretched and wanting
And all the while I know I gave you nothing
For some reason I can't share that part of me

For some reason I can't share that part of me
And the blues have led me home to New Orleans
The blues and me are home in New Orleans

Ed
Caribbean

Bouncy, like a red rubber ball, out
Ramblin' Ed

Donald & Martha, thanks

Well, thanks to Donald Trump and, again last night, Martha Stewart, I now know it's me. I'm talking about me still not working. It has to be me.

Before I was pretty sure that in some cases I was dealing with flakes, and in the case of the government jobs, the hiring process was long and convoluted in order to keep out lazys and ignorants. Youch!, the more I deal with the county government, the more I know the long and convoluted thing is not wholly effective. And as for the flakes, well... Let me tell you a story 'bout a man named Ed, poor country boy barely kept his family fed...

I came to the realization that I am not corporate material when, as happens most every (Donald or Martha) The Apprentice show, I stated, "Yep, that Jim, he's got it going on. He's really good at this. He's going to win this easy."

At the conclusion of the show, while all the little job seeking lemmings were seated around the board room table, Martha flamesprays my sure thing, Jim, calling him, among other things, a loose cannon and someone I wouldn't want to trust to covering my back. Then she sacked his ass. You know, the guy who I thought was a lock. Now since this happens nearly every show, with varying degrees of rancor from Donald or Martha, it occurs to me that maybe... just maybe, I don't understand the corporate mindset. See, as I have said for years, TV is cheaper than therapy and eventually as effective.

I already gave my wife her main Christmas present, although I have her believing it is her only present. I got her a Garmin i5 GPS unit for the Pontiac. But it's really portable, about the size of a baseball, maybe a tad smaller, so I can use it in any car I choose to. And it talks. So I programmed in a few places that she likes to go, places she always made me drive her to before, and gave it to her.

Now she hops in th car, turns on the unit and when it asks WHERE TO?, she selects Bro Dave and it calculates her route from wherever she is. (Spoken in robot voice) In... point ... three ... miles ... turn ... left. She drove all over two towns last night. In fact she even told me, "sometimes I thought it was wrong but I just did what she (female robot voice) told me. It works good."

I wanted her to have it after I sent her down the street two and a half miles one day, she somehow managed to make a turn that was not a part of the plan, and after a while called me with this most unforgettable call:

Ed: Hello?
Wife: Hello. I don't know where I am.
E: Ummmm... well, what do you see?
W: I see a CVS drug store and a 7-11.
E: OK, I'll come find you. (Note: I am showing remarkable restraint because, and I think I can say this without fear of contridiction, that in the Tampa/St. Pete area there is a drug store and 7-11 on every single corner of every single street.)

I found her and as her way of saying thanks for dropping what you were doing and coming to find me, she scolded me for giving her bad directions. Whatever.

Another one from my run through the Caribbean:

Hint of Skin

It happened down a slippery trail
With twists where human kindness fails
You dropped your eyes for just a flash
That's all the time I needed

I like seeing just a hint of skin
You know that
Think you were teasing me again
You show that

We run from place to place to hide
Our sparks light up the evening sky
You wrapped your legs around my spine
I danced off with your spirit

I wrap my fingers in your hair
And twisting
I like touching all the clothes you wear
You're gifted

There's a ball of fire in the southern sky
Burning just like you and I
As we scratch and claw towards ecstacy
In a molten dance exploded

A slash of red becomes a smile
You kiss me
Slam your fist into the bed
You'll miss me

A slash of red becomes a smile
Yeah... you'll miss me

Ed
Caribbean

I love the line: A slash of red becomes a smile. Sometimes I really impress myself.

Smack my butt and call me Alice, out
Ramblin' Ed