I take it back.

All right, all right, I take it back. I'm not going to go out and kill everything this spring. It seems Nature has been reading this blog and decided to teach me a lesson yesterday. 

If nothing else, the rhododendrons have been spectacular this year. Further, though, I've hardly seen a single wasp on them -- but I have seen plenty of bumblebees. We're fond of those guys; they actually rated a hard B on my grading of backyard bugs some years ago. 

They've been called flying pandas, and it's hard to disagree. 

Next, I was with Izzy in the backyard when we saw a little ball of gray fuzz. Was it some weird and likely poisonous fungus? No, it was a tiny mouse that skittered away from us, but not very far. He didn't seem to be very good at being a mouse yet. I mean, the dog isn't so likely to see him when he's still, but I could, and Izzy could surely sniff him out. But I let the mouse go because he was cute. That's how they get you, you know -- one tiny one is cute, 500 tiny ones or one huge one are a nightmare. But let it be for now.

The last event of the day also happened in Izzy's company, as we emerged from the front door and saw traffic stopped in both directions and a couple of guys milling about. It seems there was a huge turtle in the middle of the road. He likely was heading for the pond across the street, and ran out of gas on the meridian. Fortunately I had not put my snow shovel in the garage yet (yes, we've had snow in May) and I managed to get the chap off the road and into the grass on the other side. Only flipped him over twice. Not that he looked particularly grateful. 

So there's my wildlife story --  Mutual of Omaha's Suburban Kingdom -- but rest assured that while I no longer wish to kill everything out there, there are many things that will perish if they cross my path. Yellowjackets, you've been warned. 

Spring! Time to kill.

Spring is here! We're almost done with temperatures in the thirties and the risk of snow! We've had snow in May around these parts, so I don't discount the possibility. However.

Time to get the rubber mats off the porch steps -- walk at your own risk, suckas! Time to figure out which of last summer's gorgeous plants have up and died. And time to KILL KILL KILL!

What am I planning to kill? Better to ask what am I NOT planning to kill. Mwa ah ah!

1) Weeds. Weeds on the lawn. Weeds on the walkway. Weeds in the cracks on the driveway. Weeds on the sidewalk. Weeds in the woodpile. Weeds on my chinny chin chin. All the weeds. Dead! 

2) Bugs. Wasps' nests. Ants' nests. Termites' nests. Individual spiders. Worms. Flies. Ticks. Gnats. Fleas. Dead!

3) Groundhogs. Kill or chase away. I'm tired of their sinkholes in the lawn. I have purchased some smokers that will send them running or kill them. Kill them DEAD! 

Ah, but even in the depth of this murderous depravity is the spark of life. My dead tree is gone, the stump finally removed, and yesterday I put a young red maple in its place. It looked so large in the SUV, so small on the lawn near its larger mates. I planted it with tenderness and care. I will mind it and bring it to root in its new home. 

And if it dies, I'm spraying the lawn with Agent Orange and calling it a day. Paint it green! Pave the Earth!

Axcents.

As you may know, I grew up within the friendly confines of the Five Boroughs, raised by parents who had grown up in Brooklyn and Queens. My father was a real dese-and-dose guy, possessor of a classic accent most associated with New York. A friend of mine had fun with the meme generator regarding the way we speak:

The last one's an expression rather than an accent, but ask anyone who grew up before 2000 in the city what they call ground beef and you're likely to be told chop meat.

The New York accent has spread to New Jersey, counties of the lower Hudson Valley, and a good ways out into Long Island, as the blue-collar population moved to the 'burbs in fits and starts in the postwar era. But what we think of as the New York City accent is much different from what people in the Civil War period considered a New York accent. I don't know much about it, but some examples of now-extinct northern American speech are detailed here.  

What people consider a street-level New York accent was spread and has been perpetuated by the movies. Wise-crackin' cabbies, surly cops, gum-chewin' secretaries, tough private eyes, all kinds of New York City working stiffs populated the pictures, and America loved 'em. 

Curious accentologists will find a good summary at a Wikipedia page, believe it or not. It notes that some of the classic features formerly associated with the New York accent, like goil for girl, are extinct in practice. I suspect that the spread of Italian Brooklyn accents in New York wiped that out, making the New Yorker sound less like Moe and Curly ("a woise guy, eh?") and more like Vinnie Barbarino ("Whussup?"). 

Obviously the city has been crisscrossed with different ethnicities and languages and foreign accents over the centuries, making an ever-changing mélange. I wouldn't want to be a professor of this stuff, because by the time you catalog it, it's different. O. Henry wrote of New York, "It'll be a great place if they ever finish it," but that will never happen any more than the accent will stay put. 

They never forget.

 

State of insanity.

Florida has got an unfair reputation as a state of insanity for two main reasons -- the 2000 presidential election and the so-called "sunshine laws" that grant "free public access to Florida's government documents and proceedings, minus some exemptions. Among the allowed documents are police arrest records," as Linda Barry in the Pensacola News Journal wrote. So Al Gore's legal challenge and one county's "butterfly ballot" caused problem one, and open books on arrest records caused problem two. All 49 other states probably have people who get drunk and try to get away from the cops on Walmart scooters, or take so much meth that they strip down and prance through the street claiming to be an unbaked potato--but we just never hear about it.

It's unfair! 

I say Florida is the crazy state for completely different and totally fair reasons. 

1) It's different everywhere you go.

From Cuban/LGBTQLSMFT Miami to gator-hunting Everglades to redneck panhandle to Theme Park City to God's Waiting Room to college towns and NASCAR (four hours from Tallahassee) to spring-break hootchie mamas, every place you go in the state is totally different from the last place you were. It has a whole town just dedicated to people fifty-five and older, the Villages, which like many other Floridian spots is full of New Yorkers. 

An acquaintance of mine who retired to the Villages told me about the singles nights at the bar, and it scared me silly. I am determined to become a hermit if my wife goes before I do. 

2) It probably has more invasive species than any other state.

Just ask the Seminoles! And there are the nonhuman invaders, such as kudzu and Burmese pythons and cane toads and monitor lizards and alligator weed and Chinese tallow and blue tilapia and on and on, including everyone's favorite, frozen falling iguanas. 

3) It's Southern, but it's not. 

It's full of northerners, some of the most irritating we can send, but they bring their retirement funds with them. It was a Confederate state and a segregated state. It's an agricultural state that is also a major tourist destination, like California, but unlike California it has basically only one climate. It's on the mainland of the United States, but just sort of hangs on by the top, like a teenager trying to get out of the house. It's the only Gulf state that's also an ocean state. It has plenty of hunting (including a bounty on those Burmese pythons) and other rural pursuits, but also its own string of Caribbean islands. Historically, culturally, and geographically, it's its own little world. 

So you see, Florida Man is not what makes Florida strange. Florida is strange already. I invite anyone who lives there to tell me different, but I have a feeling they will mostly tell me that things are even stranger than I think they are. Be my guest!

It's over.

The Chinese Death Virus Pandemic from Hell is over. The rest is just face-mask theater. 

How do I know?

The price of everything is going up, and Stop and Shop is unloading hand sanitizer for a dime a bottle. Another supermarket near me was literally giving away big bottles of hand soap. 

There are a couple of caveats to this hand-sanitizer deal. For one, they'd been hanging around for a while and were due to hit their expiration date soon. However, the fact that they'd been hanging around at all is more proof that it's over -- you couldn't find this stuff at any price two years ago. For another, you had to have a loyalty card to get it for this price. Big deal -- it's not a club card, it's just the free store discount card. I've seen cashiers scan one for people that forgot their cards. Most people have them on their phones now anyway.

That's not all. In May 2020, Time magazine solemnly declared "COVID-19 Killed the Handshake. What Will Replace It?" Well, it's back, baby! I'm greeting friends with handshakes and/or hugs, and I'm seeing that everywhere.

There are still the holdouts, of course. Quite a number of people are still walking around wearing face masks. My church is still dividing the seating--freedom on one side, masks/social distancing on the other. Which is probably about as effective as the old no-smoking areas were in restaurants and airplanes. We also don't shake hands at the sign of peace; we just kind of wave at one another like people in on parade floats. Lots of guys have gone to the fist-bump and don't want to go back. My vet's office, of all places, still demands face masks -- but it's the only place I know around here that does. 

At this point it is all kabuki healthcare, and maybe that's all these precautions ever were. 

As for me, no, I do not want to get the Chinese COVID death virus, because I don't like being sick, I can't afford the hospital, and I don't like losing my ability to taste delicious food. But this is about the least you can ask of someone like me who says Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death. I've had it and I'm not playing along anymore. 

It's over, people. We have got to try to move on.

The kids are all tight.

A few days ago Ann Althouse linked to a New York Magazine story about young professionals getting their drink on in a most serious fashion -- the martini. It's behind a paywall, but we get the gist from a Brooklyn bar owner: 

I watch these kids hammering martinis and I’m like, good Lord.... I think it is a perfect pressure valve for everything people are feeling. Everywhere you look you see war, you hear ‘keep your mask on,’ or ‘don’t keep your mask on’ — people are tired of toeing lines. They’re just like, 'Give me something that transgresses the bounds'.

As Althouse wrote, "Is 'wellness' dead? Ironic if all these precautions in the name of health led to a higher and higher tolerance for alcohol."

This isn't the first time the martini has made one of its many comebacks. In the 1990s, when I worked in the magazine biz, the martini and the cigar bar were suddenly all the rage. It tied in with the widespread fin de siècle zeitgeist of the decade. Even the Trump-owned Hyatt Grand Central had a cigar bar, and Trump himself famously neither drinks nor smokes. It wasn't long before the anti-smokers got their feet back under them and the cigar bars and shops faded or became displaced. The death of the Nat Sherman store down the street near Bryant Park in 2020 was a blow to the recreational smoker. 

Anyway, the martini got another boost following 9/11, when pressure valves also seemed desirable. Personally I can mark that era's end to 2005, when I was at a large business meeting to announce that the great company I was working for (yay!) had just been acquired by an evil company I had once fled (boo!). As we exited, the reception area was full of waiters with martinis for celebration. I dodged through them and fled to the safety of my desk. There was nothing to celebrate. Further, the evil company was so damned square that if they were pushing martinis, the drink's days in the sun were over. 

Which brings us to now. I find it interesting that young folks would want a pricey drink that is essentially solid booze. It's great if you want to get drunk fast, sure. The thing is, even experienced drinkers know to treat the martini with respect, not slam them back like some girly Bailey's shot. I suspect that most of these kids wind up even worse than Nora Charles did in her first scenes in 1934's Thin Man, after she tried to catch up with the six martinis Nick had already consumed. 

The difference is that, being in an old movie, Nora just woke up the next day feeling ill with vague memories of the night before. She didn't throw up all over everything, drunk-dial all her friends, throw up again in the taxi, start a fistfight with the driver, wake up with some ugly stranger, and feel completely wiped out and full of shame all the next day.

Brooklyn cab drivers, take warning! Put plastic sheeting all over the backseat of your cars.