Beware the Immortalizing of Mortals

Okay, kiddies, a little history lesson.  There may be a quiz, so pay attention.

Back in the mid-1600s--you remember--a Spaniard named Pedro Menendez de Aviles set sail with a number of ships and men for Florida.  His king was distressed that the French had established garrisons and colonies in a place he considered rightfully his for exploitation.

Pedro was a loyal follower of his king and had by previous service and the delivering of untold treasure from faraway lands proven his value.  If you were Spanish, this guy was a heroic figure; if you were anyone else, particularly French, well, not so much.

Anyhoo, on August 28, 1565, Pedro entered and named the Bay of St Augustine and established a fort, thus becoming the founder of our nation's oldest settlement.  On September 20 he captured the French post of Fort Caroline, which he renamed Fort San Mateo.  In October, when a body of Frenchmen who clearly hadn't gotten the memo appeared to relieve their colony, Pedro, after releasing the women, children, and those men who claimed to be Catholic, murdered the rest and hung their bodies in trees with a sign that read, "Not as Frenchmen but as Lutherans".  I doubt the doomed Protestants took much solace in the distinction.

Let us transport ourselves to present-day Tampa, several centuries later and a couple of hundred miles southwest of the Oxbow-ish incident of the swinging stiffs.

Tampa City Councilwoman Yvonne Yolie Capin has thought it would be a super, neat-o, peachy-keen idea to rename Nebraska Avenue, one of Tampa's main north/south arteries, after Pedro.  There are any number of problems with such an undertaking, as one might well conclude.  To wit:

* Pedro was a persecutor of non-Catholics and a murderer.

* Granted the guy founded St Augustine, but what's that got to do with Tampa?  I know, I know--what does Nebraska, a fly-over state of mainly cornfields, have to do with Tampa?

* City officials estimate it would cost about $75k to rename the streets.  Business owners would have to spend thousands to change their stationery, business cards and advertising to reflect their new addresses.

Moreover, it seems to me prudent to consider the venue of one's veneration as well as the personage him/herself.

For example, would a Barney Frank Room be more appropriate in the Playboy Mansion or in the Powder Pouf Lounge?  How 'bout Bill Clinton Boulevard--Romance, Arkansas, or Hooker?  Renaming the Golden Gate Bridge after Richard Nixon, or Folsom Prison?  The Bruce Jenner/Kenny Rogers Wing--Mayo Clinic or the Sarasota Clown College of Plastic Surgery?  I mean, what's next--the Adolf Hitler Center for Torah Studies?

In the face of community outrage at her suggestion, Yvonne requested that her proposal be tabled.  However, she pointed out that Jacksonville is named after President Andrew Jackson, who drove the Cherokees out of the Carolinas and Tennessee in what became known as the Trail of Tears.

"If Jackson had been judged by that alone, he never would have had a city named after him," she said.  "As with Jackson, Menendez de Aviles' history should be looked at in its broader context."

Point taken, Yvonne.  If you really want to revere a genocidal lackey of Spanish imperialism and pillager of foreign lands and peoples, how 'bout renaming an alley in Ybor City?  Pedro would have fit right in there.

Secret of the Cape Revealed!

So I'm sitting at home watching "Life Below Zero" when the phone rings.  Thank God for Tivo, huh?

"Hello.  You have reached the number you called.  No one here wants to talk to you.  If you want to talk to someone here, leave a message (snicker) at the sound of the beep (snort) and we'll get back to you (guffaw!)."

"Yo, pacfan!  Pick up!"

"Supe, is that you?  Where the hell you been?"

"Man, I'm whipped!  You know I moonlight doin' stunt work for the Superman movies, right?  You seen the last one?  My god, they had me breakin' the sound barrier three times in one flight, and they don't even give me a runnin' start, anymore.  They got me leapin' into the air like a hoppy-toad, for chrissakes!"

"But you gotta be bringin' down the big bucks.  That flick did more business the Thursday night before it opened than most movies do the whole first weekend."

"Yeah, but comes a point in a man's life when you gotta wonder if it's worth it.  I go home after work, and all I want to do is catch some Zs.  To top it off, Lois has lost interest in Mighty Mouse, if you get my drift.  I can't blame her; since I started working on that movie 'faster than a speeding bullet' has taken on a whole different meaning.  How's that comport with my 'man of steel' image?  'Course, it doesn't help that she looks like Nancy Pelosi--you know, Sam Jaffe in drag--instead of Amy Adams."

"So, go ahead and quit."

"I would, but Lois'd have a hissy-fit.  Clark makes next to nothin' doin' his reporting gig.  We'd have to move into a trailer park.  Speaking of, how's things in Florida?"

"Lollipops and coconuts, as usual.  This place is like Arkham, man.  Your BFF, the bat guy, would fit right in down here."

"Want me to take care of it?  A little nudge to the next hurricane, and Florida would be restored to its Ponce de Leon roots."

"No, no!  This place is Eden.  The insanity is just gravy on the biscuits."

"Well, after what the special effects and CGI folks did with the destruction of Metropolis, I have to say, it looked pretty good to me.  But I'm just burned out, is all."

"Listen, I've got a couple of questions for you.  Why not ditch the cape?  I mean, it's gotten so big it drags the ground like some bridal train.  It's not like you need it."

"You kiddin'?  That thing's a chick magnet!  The girls love it, don't ask me why!"

"Yeah, but you're married.  What you worried about girls for?"

"It's like my drinkin' buddy 'Tater' says.  I'm a good dog, but if you don't pat me on the head once in a while, it's hard to keep me under the porch.  Know what I'm sayin'?"

"And the beard.  Bullets bounce off of you.  You're impervious to flame.  Knives can't penetrate your skin.  How do you shave?  How do you get haircuts?"

"Look, unless you slept through your biology classes, you know that hair is all dead cells.  No problem cuttin' dead cells.  I gotta go.  I've been hearing rumors of a supposedly super woman who lives up on the North Slope.  I want to find out if she's my long lost cousin, Kara, hidin' out.  Up, up and away!"

Sunshine State Silliness

Folks who read my blogs about Florida foolishness may wonder why all the hate.  Why live in Florida; why not move?

I don't hate Florida.  Au contraire.  I have billions of reasons why I live here.  They're called "snowflakes."  I love the water; I love the warmth, and I especially love that I don't have to dress up like Nanook of the North, scrape ice off my windshield, and shovel a foot of snow off my driveway every time I want to go somewhere.

As for the foolishness, well, where else are you going to find such a variety of inanity, both tragic and comic?  For example:

* St Petersburg thinks it would be a super, neat-o, peachy-keen idea to replace all the streetlights with LEDs at a savings of $1.8 million per year.  Duke Energy, which supplies St Pete with electricity, says, "Now, y'all jus' go rat ahead and swap 'em out.  Jus' don't be lookin' for no $1.8 mil, though.  We do it for y'all, we gotta do it for every other cracker town in our area.  How's that gonna work for our bottom line?  Our folks gotta pay them golf club memberships, too, ya hear?"

* A Department of Environmental Protection lawyer successfully won a case against a couple who illegally filled in wetlands by an aquatic preserve.  Instead of celebrating, he started clearing out his office.

"As soon as the verdict came back, I had a sinking feeling," he said.  "I thought, 'When Jeff Littlejohn (DEP Deputy Secretary) hears about this, I'm probably going to lose my job.'"  Five months later, he and three other lawyers charged with enforcing DEP regulations were emptying their desks and hitting the bricks.

See, the thing is Florida's DEP is mainly for show, a sop to the state's tree-huggers and animal rights whackos.  Florida's legislature is practically a wholly-owned subsidiary of developers and big business.  If it had its way, the Everglades, for example, would at best be reemployed to carry away phosphates from the sugar industry and at worst be paved over to provide more land for upscale gated communities.  These enterprises generate revenues for campaign coffers, don'cha know.  Birds, gators, panthers, deer, bears and other such nuisance critters are just detriments, impediments, to progress.

* Tyndall AFB scrambled two fighters to intercept a Flight Express cargo plane on its way from Greensboro, NC, to Tampa.  Air traffic controllers had lost contact with the 28-year-old pilot "for significant periods during his flight."

"Hell, ah might have dozed off fer a spell, but that's whut autopilots are fer, duh!  All of uh sudden, ah look out muh window, an' thar's uh couple uh them fighter jets gettin' ready to lock on and send uh missile or two up muh ass!  Ah had tuh change muh drawers after tha', ah don' mind tellin' yuh!"

The pilot's blood alcohol level was more than three times the level at which the state presumes impairment.  He's looking at a max of 15 years in the slam.

* A two-year-old toddler crawled through a doggie door and made her way into her family's swimming pool.  She was found after several minutes and resuscitated, but remained unconscious as she was transferred to hospital.  Pinellas Park police were not expected to file criminal charges.

So, you might wonder, what's so "Florida" about that?  Since you asked, I'll tell you.  If that same little girl was found alone and unconscious in a locked car, the parents would have been handcuffed and doing the perp walk to the slam, where they'd have been charged with, at the least, criminal negligence and child endangerment.  What's worse, the girl probably would have been entered into the foster care system, which in Florida is tantamount to a death sentence.

The danger of living here is not the hurricanes, it's how easy it would be for one to OD on all of this insanity.  To do so would be to destroy whatever faith in humanity you may have left.  Me?  It's not surprising to me, anymore.  It's just confirmation.

Tales from a Yeshiva

Did you read the story about the 100 or so Jewish students on a trip to Atlanta's Six Flags who were booted off their flight because they refused to follow the airline crew's instructions?  What's amazing about the incident to me is that the rabbis are siding with the kids.  I know that kids will be kids, whatever their race, color, creed, sex, or religion.  But rabbis, at least in my experience, have zero tolerance and absolutely no sense of humor.

In my previous life as a public high school teacher, I had occasion to moonlight at a yeshiva for a couple of years.  I was able to do that because yeshiva kids take their required lay courses in the evening.  During the day they are busy with religious and Hebrew language studies.  They confided to me that if the rabbis had their way, there would be no secular study at all.

You would think that after going to school all day the kids would be too tired to sit through history, geography, etc, wouldn't you?  Well, you'd be wrong, kosher dill-breath.  Those kids came to class after their dinner with boundless energy and enthusiam.  And if I wasn't ready to deal with that, to make their presence worthwhile to them, they would let me know it tout de suite.

Give them a test on Monday?  Better have it graded by Tuesday.  Skip a night of homework?  Next day they're complaining to the head rabbi.  And don't even think of coming to class without a lesson plan.  Those kids would eat your lunch.

But, kids being kids, once in a while they'd test the teacher.  While grading the first homework papers I had assigned, I noticed that the paper I was reading looked familiar.  I leafed back through papers I'd already graded and found one identical to it.  I put them aside.

During the next class I called the two students to my desk.

"It's clear to me that one of you copied the other's homework.  Since I don't know which one, I'm failing both of you on this assignment."

"No, no one copied.  They look the same because we did the research and prepared the assignment together.  You can't flunk us for that."

"Okay, maybe I'm wrong.  Tell you what.  I'll give these to the rabbi and tell him my story.  You can tell him yours.  I'll go with whatever he decides.  Fair enough?"

Their looks of utter terror told me what they thought of that idea.  They both pleaded with me not to do that, and indicated that if I did, they'd be castrated.

Another time I administered a test during which one student was absent.  I never liked to give make-up tests, because there was just too much opportunity for mischief.  However, the absent kid made such a case for a make-up that I relented.  By the time he took the test, the others had all been graded and returned.  He aced it, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.

"I've got good news and bad news.  The good news is, he aced the test," I told the class.  Pause here for cheers, high fives, fist bumps.  "The bad news is, he blew the curve for everyone else, so I'm lowering all of your grades except his one letter."

I thought they were going to pound him into the floor.

A story I was told was of two freshmen who had flown in from LA to attend the yeshiva.  Shortly after settling in, they sneaked off campus and headed downtown.  When the rabbis realized they had a couple of AWOLs they drove into town to find them.  It didn't take long.  They took them straight to the airport, put them on the next flight to California, called their parents with the flight information, and told them they'd send their belongings later. 

That's why I find the rabbis siding with the kids who were thrown off their flight so unbelievable, so disheartening.  I mean, if you can't trust rabbis to hold firm on principles, who can you trust?

The Idiots Who Run the Asylum

In my previous life as an airport shuttle driver, I set out for work at the crack one Saturday morning.  Mine was the only car on the Bayway, it appeared, and although I wasn't running late I nevertheless was generous with my foot pressure on the go pedal.

Turns out I wasn't the only car pointed in my direction.  The other one was hidden behind some landscaping in the median.  As I went by at about warp factor six, in a stretch where the speed limit is 40 mph, the other car pulled out behind me, red and blue lights flashing.

My car at the time was a four-cylinder, five-plus-year-old Saturn.  Even if it had occurred to me to try, there was no way I was going to outrun a St Petersburg police cruiser.  I pulled over.

The cop approached, glanced at me through my rolled-down window, and a look of abject disappointment at once crossed his countenance and relaxed it stern features.  He clearly had thought he had bagged a DUI.

I never, ever, try to BS cops.  They've heard all the stories.  Besides, I've learned things go a lot easier if you 'fess up and take your lumps.  When you're caught with your hand in the cookie jar, well, as my German friend says, "What you can doing?"

The cop was almost apologetic when he told me that instead of writing a speeding ticket he would ticket me for "failure to obey a traffic control device."  The traffic control device was, he explained, the speed limit sign.  The difference betwen the two citations saved me about $80.  I was both grateful and appropriately contrite.

Not so Charles McBurney.  FHP trooper Charles Swindle (unfortunate name for a cop, but that's neither here nor there) pulled him over for doing 87 in a 70 mph zone.  My bugbot, on the way back from another mission, caught the conversation.

"You know who I am?" asked McBurney.

"Let me guess.  Speedy Gonzales?  Big Daddy Don Garlits?"

"I'm Florida State Representative Charles McBurney, and your name tag is going to read Barney Fife when I get through with you.  You hear, Chief Gillespie?"

"Tell you what, Chuck.  You being a political hack and all, let me check with my boss and see if we can't cut you some slack.  You just sit there in your car and harrumph and play with yourself a bit while I get on my radio, 'four?"

"I don't want any slack, Deputy Dawg.  I want no ticket at all!"

"You're in luck!  My boss says to give you a ticket for not having proof of insurance.  'Course, if it was up to me I'd cuff your arrogant little megalomanical ass, tip off the TV stations and let you do the perp walk in front of the cameras."

No one is more pompous or more vindictive than an outraged politician who fancies himself an omnipotent power broker on the order of a sentator in ancient Rome.

"I think it's disgraceful that a law enforcement officer would give me a break on a violation just because I'm a state representative,' McBurney complained to FHP Col David Brieton.  "What's going to become of us if lawbreakers like me are allowed to run rampant while in fear of little more than a slap on the wrist?  And besides, I had proof of insurance.  Wyatt Earp, there, never asked to see it."

That was Swindle's well-meaning mistake.  Instead of giving McBurney the $170 ticket he deserved, he wrote him a $10 one for something he didn't.

And that's what got him fired.