If someone tells you a racist, sexist or homophobic joke, don’t get mad at them. Just tell them you don’t get it. Keep telling them you don’t get it until they are forced to explain why women/minorities/homosexuals are stupid/etc.
Then just walk away.
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All the critters here in The Swamp off the Saint Johns River in Central Florida wish everyone a Happy Saint Patrick’s Day…
I’ve had some great experiences with people from the “Auld Sod.”
My first was in ’87 when I was bringing an old, classic wooden Grebe motor yacht from Fort Lauderdale to Cape Cod. I had two young Irish lasses, Ann from Limerick and Gerry from Kerry as my crew. Took nearly two weeks before I stopped saying, “What?” and “Huh?” after everything they said and got the hang of their brogue. They were good girls and we had a blast. Hit every happy hour from Lauderdale to Hyannis. Ann, though, was actually an American citizen. He parents had been the Irish Consuls in New Orleans and she was born there. Gerry had a brother that lived in Ponchatoula on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain and she’d lived there for about a year. One of the things that made the trip enjoyable, other than the fact that the two were good kids, was that people would hear their accents at the bars and restaurants we went to and would approach us and strike up conversations. We got lots of free drinks along the way.
Over in Antibes, France, there were a lot of Irish living there and working on the yachts. Comparing them with the Scots and English that also lived there, the Irish spoke French, Scots and Brits only spoke English. Period. Irish, with a reputation in the U.S. for loving to fight, never got in fights in France. Never saw an Irishman in a fight in three years there. On the other hand the Brits and Scotts are among the most pugnacious assholes ever placed on this green earth. They were in fights almost daily.
When we sailed Jolie Aire across the pond in ’91 one of the crew was Martin, a lad from Dublin. Martin kept us in stitches at the dinner table each night with his stories.
Gerry, from Kerry on the left, and Ann from Limerick on the right after we arrived in Hyannis.
I love the Irish.
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I would normally be posting these on Facebook, but I’m doing a 30-day stretch in FB Prison. So I’m posting them here. I won’t be posting on FB when I’m released. I’ll post here and the link to FB …
But not everything today is negative…
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Lately I have been “reading” Steven King’s novel “Billy Summers.” I put “reading” in quotations because I’m actually listening to it via Audible. Once again a King protagonist is wrapped up in writing a book. He comes to a turning point…Will he stop writing or carry on? What he says made me instantly think of a friend who has been “writing” a book for several years now. I’ve actually read a couple of chapters of it. Recently I asked him if he was still working on the book and he replied he was. But I’m not so sure about that.
Billy is a hitman, not a writer. Being a writer has been his cover story. So, almost for his own amusement he started actually writing while waiting to carry out a hit. Later he opens up his story on his computer and after reading the first line he “feels a kind of despair. This is good work. He feels sure of it. But what felt light when he started out now feels heavy because he has a responsibility to make the rest just as good and he’s not sure he can do it. . .” He looks out a window and wonders if he “just discovered why so many would-be writers are unable to finish what they started. He thinks of “The Things They Carried.” Surely one of the best books about war ever written. Maybe THE best. (Aside: I “read” that book, too, and I have to agree with King. In fact, when I get finished with “Billy Summers” I’m going to have to read “The Things They Carried” again.)
“He thinks writing may be a kind of war when you fight with yourself. The story is what you carry. And every time you add to it it gets heavier. All over the world there are half-finished books. Memoirs, poetry, novels, sure-fire plans for getting thin or getting rich in desk drawers because the work got too heavy for the people trying to carry it and they put it down. ‘Some other time, they think.’ “
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I see on the news on line that much of the country from the midwest to New England is going through some rough winter weather. We’re feeling some of the side effects here in The Swamp off the Saint Johns River in Central Florida.
Yesterday our afternoon temperature was in the mid 80sF. Today, Saturday, 3/12/2022 we might get up to the mid 70s. But then things are going to drop like lies from a conservative Republithugs lips and will get down to the low 30s though not hitting freezing, thank heaven for small favors. I’d switched over to the light sleeping bag a few nights ago but will be crawling into the cold-weather sleeping bag tonight.
The wind is really honking. I’m pretty well sheltered where I’m moored. The trees on either side of the canal are a good 30-40 feet tall and act as a good wind break. BUT the wind’s blowing almost directly out of the west and tooting right down the canal and moving the boat around quite a bit. According to one weather site the wind here in DeBary, where the canal is located, is steady at around 20 mph but it’s frequently gusting into the mid 30 mph range.
That’s still better than down off Anna Maria Island where I’d anchored for 4 years. There, the wind is steady at the mid 30 mph range and gusting up into the mid 40s. I went through a lot of that. And it’s out of the north so the general anchorage will be rough as a cob. Down where I was at the Coquina North Boat Ramp the water was shallower and not as uncomfortable. But with the wind like that I’d be confined to the boat. It would be impossible to row my cockleshell dinghy the hundred plus yards from the ramp. I’m not confined like that here in The Swamp, but I’m not going anywhere here today, either.
I can’t leave without adding this:
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For the most part I am unapologetically liberal when it comes to politics. Essentially I hate, yes, the dreaded “H” word, conservatives of every stripe. It was not always so. ..
I grew up in the little town of Orleans, Mass., out where the forearm of Cape Cod juts into the cold waters of the North Atlantic. My parents were staunch Republicans and like children the world over I became what my parents were. In 1960 JFK might have raked in a couple of dozen votes in Orleans. If that many. I cast my first presidential vote for Barry Goldwater. I distrusted LBJ like the good Republithug I’d been brought up to be. Though I didn’t take part in them I was living in Chicago during the 1968 convention and was appalled by what I saw. My second presidential ballot was cast for Richard Nixon. I could never have voted for Hubert Humphrey no matter what. A president with the first name of Hubert? Come on! Plus he’d spent 4 years running around with his nose firmly embedded in LBJ’s butt crack.
But 1972 and Watergate was the breaking point and, with one single exception I never voted for a Republikunt ever again.
But I don’t cleave to the Progressive liberalism of the left, either. While I admire her greatly I call bullshit on Michell Obama’s philosophy of “When they go low, we go high.” You CAN NOT be nice with the rightwing bullies. They don’t understand “Nice.” To them being Nice is a form of weakness. The only way to fight the right wing is to be as nasty and ruthless as they are…gouge their eyes out…kick them squarely in the gonads…choke them…battle them wherever they are found and NEVER SURRENDER!!!
In general, don’t tell me what to do, and that includes telling me to “have a nice day…”
If I boycotted everything the left wants me to I’d have starved by now. Sure, there are certain things I avoid because of the political intonations even though I love them dearly…Oreo cookies, for example.
But, living on the fixed income of Social Security I break some of the big rules. I buy my groceries at the local WalMart food market. Lots of people have said I should shop at Aldi’s but their prices almost alway match what Wally World offers, and the few cents in savings I’d get from shopping at Aldi’s would be eaten up in the price of the gasoline I’d burn up getting to that store. So Wally wins even though I begrudge every single cent the Walton kids get from my purchases.
Another big “No-No” for committed left wingers is using Amazon. But I do it all the time and there’s a reason. It effin’ WORKS!!! Take today, for example. The other day I got a new Medic Alert medallion that specifies Do Not Resuscitate…But the chain that came with it was pure crap. There’s a 70% chance of rain today here in Central Florida so I got out early to get things done. I went to (boo – hiss) Wally World. They had a “Fine Jewelry” department. What they need is an “OK jewelry” department. There were no necklaces. Then I drove to a Walgreens. TWO OF THEM. They always had a display of Medic Alert jewelry at the Walgreens and CVS stores I went to when I was anchored off of Anna Maria Island. Not here. In fact, when I asked where the display might be at the first one I went to they said they don’t carry them anymore. Target’s jewelry department didn’t have anything nor did the pawn shop I popped into. However, back on my boat here in The Swamp I found one that seems to fit the fill and for about $20. And if it sucks I can return it no questions asked.
So there you have it for today.
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Dreary morning here in the swamp off the Saint Johns River in Central Florida. Rain started around 7 a.m. and probably isn’t going to let up anytime soon. But at least it’s rain and not snow. For that I’m grateful. And the temp is decent. A few nights ago I traded in my cold-weather sleeping bag for the lighter weather one. But take a look at what’s going down between Friday night and Saturday morning. Getting down close to the freezing point. Back to the cold-weather bag. That’s not a problem, though since right now it’s sitting at the head of the bed so it’s only a matter or seconds to swap the two out.
I remain in Facebook prison for another 25 days…
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When you live in The Swamp off the Saint Johns River in Central Florida and need to dry your laundry but you don’t have a line or clothes pins…
Last August I took a trip in my SUV to visit family in North Carolina and friends in New Jersey. On the way back to The Swamp in DeBary, FL, I stopped for a few nights at Three Rivers State Park in Sneads, FL. I took some photos and just for S&G (shits and grins) I posted them to Google Maps. This morning in my email I received this message…
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One More Good Adventure 