First of all, I want to thank all the scummy feedscraping sites. IF YOU ARE READING THIS ON ANY OTHER SITE BUT SECONDHANDKARL.COM you are reading STOLEN CONTENT. This shit pisses me off, but I know I’m showing up on a lot of other sites out there. They do NOT have my permission to use my words, so come over to Secondhandkarl.com and read it properly. Thanks.

Thanks to NYCWD for Snacking on me yesterday. I’m honored to be amongst such gloriously wacky folks.

It felt very strange on Sunday morning to wake up and not have to worry about a noon deadline for my column in today’s paper. Perhaps it seems like no big deal to have a newspaper column. I mean, I already write something every day for 2HT, what’s another 550 words? But it’s not always easy coming up with those 550 words, believe me. Plenty of times I was up against the looming deadline with no idea what I was going to write.

At any rate, until I get another writing gig, I’m going to stay in the habit of coming up with a column every Monday. Here we go.

Lately my love/hate relationship with social networking sites is taking a serious turn toward hatred. I’ve been using these things since they started, way back when I was still living in Dallas, even. Remember a site called Six Degrees? Yeah, I was in on the ground floor there and it really did nothing for me, except suck a lot of hours out of me racking my brains to think of every person I knew.

Then there was Friendster, which is still around (and yes, I still have an account that I never use). But really, let’s face it – the first one that really broke out of the gate was Myspace. And I signed up on Myspace, too. It’s been over four years I’ve been part of that site and I never have gotten around to customizing my profile page, design-wise. I think most of the designs there are absolutely awful, but my thoughts on design are fairly well-known already. I’ll stick with the plain-white version, thanks.

But the thing that appealed to me about Myspace in the beginning was the ability to really reconnect with people you hadn’t heard from in forever. Sure, I connected with a few people, but Myspace has since soured itself greatly. It’s not about connecting with people any more; it’s about getting as many friends as possible. And spam…lots and lots of spam.

I rarely visit that site full of terribly gaudy and flashy animated GIFs. What brings me there 99% of the time is an e-mail message that informs me I have someone new that wants to be my friend. So I go to the site, knowing darn well that I’m going to get there and mark whoever it is as spam. Sure enough, it’s some nubile 19 year-old shoving her butt into the camera. Her profile is sparse, though she may have many “friends” and she wishes to share her REAL web link with me, where she’s allowed to have nude photos. By this time, I’m almost suspicious. Does Candy REALLY want to be my friend? Is she really so turned on by me that she feels a compulsion to remove all her clothes and set up a profile on an adults-only dating site? Hmm, I don’t know.

OK, I marked it as spam. No girls my daughters’ age want to get naked with me. And quite honestly, I’d feel like some sort of pervert if I were dating anyone their age. I don’t know how the famous Hollywood studs do it. Jack Nicholson is, what, 98 years old now? He’s still hanging with women 50 years his junior.

My point is that I’ve lost all the joy from using Myspace. The same can nearly also be said for Facebook, which started out to be a grown-up version of Myspace. I thought that was appealing, being the anti-Myspace. But now? It’s an incessant series of requests from your friends to add applications to your Facebook profile page. People are constantly wanting to Kiss Me or Bite Me to make me a vampire, or play Scrabble, or Ask Me Questions. There are a billion applications on Facebook, and everyone wants me to add every one of them to my page.

My solution a few weeks ago was to remove nearly every Facebook application. Now I also IGNORE all requests for me to add a new one. Right now I bet I have at least 20 requests for these useless things. No more. The madness must end. I’m just waiting for the spam to show up on Facebook, too. I’m *this* close to deleting both Myspace and Facebook accounts.

And I’ll never feel sexually desired by 20-year-olds again. *sigh*

--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

I hate mentioning her by name because, while I acknowledge she is a good writer and an accomplished photographer, I just can’t be bothered reading Dooce’s journal. (Why? Because of her no-comments policy, see yesterday’s long-ass post about that.)

But the fact of the matter remains that Dooce inadvertently coined the term “dooced” when she got fired from her job some years back because of her blog. That is, by and large, why she’s so immensely popular now as a so-called blogger. She got in on the ground floor, so to speak. Now anytime someone gets fired because of their blog, they call it getting Dooced. I’m here to change that. From now on, we’re going to call it getting Karled.

That’s right, in case you missed it on Twitter yesterday afternoon, I have been fired as a columnist for one of the local newspapers in town. Why? In short, because of this post. I have been reproducing my regular Monday column here on Mondays pretty much for the last 2-1/2 years I’ve been writing the column. Not any more.

It wasn’t the column itself that got me fired. I spoke with my editor on the phone yesterday afternoon to ask what was going on and to apologize. Yes, I apologized because it was never my intention to hurt her or anyone else at the newspaper. She told me that they had been planning to run the column in next Monday’s paper, but she needed to get permission from other editors first. Understandable.

I certainly never intended to come off as slamming the newspaper. But as my editor told me, it wasn’t the column that they had a problem with. It was the COMMENTS on the post. She was on vacation all last week, so really didn’t have a chance to talk to me about why they didn’t have any people at the charity event. They DID make arrangements to get photographs from some of the people that were in attendance, but couldn’t do the overtime necessary to send out a full-time photographer. I jumped the gun and made assumptions I shouldn’t have made. For that, I take responsibility.

I always took great care not to mention the newspaper by name here, and I never gave out my blog URL in the column, either. It’s a family newspaper and I would never send people to my blog indiscriminately because I swear like a sailor lots of the time.

Nevertheless, someone at the newspaper found my blog and brought it to other people’s attention on Monday. Having worked in close-knit cubicle environments before, I know how quickly word spreads like wildfire in an office. I’m sure it didn’t take much time at all for my blog to make the rounds. At least it’s a nice, new pretty blog design.

I’m upset, yes, for several reasons. For one thing, I should have been more judicious about my comments on the blog. I should have also called and talked to my editor before posting Monday’s post and leaving subsequent comments. But I’m also kinda pissed because what the fuck? This is MY blog and I have the right to say whatever the hell I want to say. I never expected or asked anyone at the newspaper to look at my blog. On purpose. I realize I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.

I certainly wouldn’t have made those comments on the newspaper’s web site. That really WOULD be unprofessional. But on my own blog? Bah.

I’ve been Karled. So yeah, I’m looking for more writing gigs now. If you know of any, please let me know. I promise I’ll be a (relatively) good boy from here on out. Maybe I just shouldn’t run any future columns here, to be safe.

--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

This is NOT my weekly column from the local newspaper. I know you’ve come to expect my columns here on Mondays, but this isn’t one. Instead, I give you the column that I submitted to go in the paper. I’m sure you sleuths will see why they’re running a rerun of mine in its place.

I’d never been to the Red and White Ball before, the annual gala event that helps raise money and support for the American Red Cross. Saturday night, however, I got my chance, thanks to some very unlucky circumstances. My friends, Greg and Tracy Smith, both had medical emergencies in the past couple of weeks, and both required surgery. Thankfully, they’re doing just fine, but they still weren’t able to make it to the Red and White Ball. When their tickets were up for grabs, my mother and I were given the tickets to go.

Naturally, I don’t have a tuxedo, but I do have a suit, believe it or not. That’s right, I don’t always (necessarily) wear shorts and a tee-shirt. I got all dolled up – I even showered and shaved – and so did Mom and we headed out to Highlands Ridge for the ball. I had a great time and deliberately left my camera at home. I figured there would be several photographers there from the local newspapers. I always see those “Around the Town” photos in the paper the day after a big event. But no, there weren’t any photographers, except for the professional who was there, snapping portraits of couples.

My mother outed me. When Vicki (another friend and one of the organizers of the Red and White Ball) was wondering why no one showed up to report the event, Mom pointed at me and said, “You’ve got a newspaper person right here ” Vicki squealed with delight and dragged me over to meet Phil Attinger, the Public Relations Director of Highlands County’s (and Polk County’s) chapter of the Red Cross. While I always have a pen in my pocket, I didn’t bring any notepads with me, since I wasn’t expecting to WORK during the ball.

I talked to Phil for a while and he told me a great deal about our local Red Cross. Most people, he said, think they’re safe right now since we haven’t had a hurricane since our trifecta a few years back. And let’s face it, when you think Red Cross, what do you think of? Hurricanes, floods, blood drives, and CPR training. And yes, the Red Cross is there for all of those things, and much more.

Did you know that in the last nine months, the local Red Cross has been helping a great deal on 35 separate house fire incidents in Highlands County? Some of those are multiple family fires, some are apartments, some are houses. All of the people involved need help, whether it be need of shelter, clothes, groceries, rental vehicles, and the list goes on.

“There’s no crystal ball to tell us when a disaster is going to happen,” Phil told me. That’s why the Red Cross is always in need of donations. You can’t predict a tornado or a house fire. They just happen. Of course, people should have disaster preparedness plans, storm kits they can grab and run, a support group they can count on for contingencies. But the Red Cross is there for all of those unexpected events, just in case.

“We always have volunteer positions available,” Phil said. “We’re in need of caseworkers to work on Disaster Action Teams, always need help with clerical work, trainers to teach CPR and first aid, and many other positions.”

To see the Polk and Highlands County Red Cross web site, go to polkcountyFL.redcross.org and maybe you can give a little something. In the meantime, I’m celebrating my win of six items in the silent auction. Sea World, anyone?

--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

First of all, Happy Early Birthday to my mom, AND to my twin daughters. Their birthdays are Tuesday, April Fool’s Day. Cannot believe the girls are 21 this year. How did that happen?

You watch the news and it’s sometimes very difficult to believe that God is up there. I mean, surely He’s got to be sickened by what He sees on CNN (and I don’t just mean Nancy Grace). School shootings left and right, families found dead, suicide bombings in Iraq – it’s just one big mess. So when I see good things happening to good people, I take notice.

One of the best places I’ve found to see the goodness in people is the blogosphere. I’ve been blogging for well over 10 years in one form or another and I’ve really come to know some fantastic people, particularly in the last couple of years. My best friend, Hilary, is someone I met through blogging, too.

You see it all the time: bloggers writing about their charities and causes, and other bloggers are pretty quick to step up to the donation plate. For example, last year I wasn’t in a financial position to make it to BlogHer, the annual women’s blogging conference. My friend, Karen, set up a donation fund and weeks later I found I had enough for my plane ticket. Pretty cool, considering I didn’t know over half the people who donated.

Remember last year when I went to Portland, Oregon for a blogger get-together called TequilaCon? It really didn’t have anything to do with tequila specifically. I mean, you can go and drink whatever form of alcohol you want. OK, so I’m sure there were a handful of people who weren’t drinking booze, but I didn’t see them. Maybe you’ll remember the story about me locking myself out of my hotel room at 3:30 in the morning, wearing nothing but my boxers. I was sleepwalking. Or drunk. Or drunk-sleepwalking.

Come May 2, I’ll be heading to Philadelphia for the TequilaCon ‘08. There ought to be at least 50 people there, I think. It’s a great time, really, and you get to meet some amazing people. This year, Hilary was in financial need to get to TequilaCon and so some friends quickly came to her rescue. Another donation fund was set up and this time Hilly had enough for a plane ticket within 12 hours. TWELVE HOURS. That’s incredible. Thirty-five people donated a little to make sure Hilly can get to Philly. Makes my heart cockle…or something. I’m not exactly sure what “cockle” means but I know my heart has some.

Another blogger friend does a great deal for the March of Dimes every year and set up a donation page on his blog. Not sure yet how much money was raised, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s in the thousands. A new friend of mine, British fellow, helped establish a fund for parents who have lost a child. Very nice guy – he came on my Internet radio show to talk about the fund – and I hope he got more donations out of it.

I’m always stating one of my mantras: “It all comes out in the wash.” And I believe that. When I have a little money to give, I give. When I don’t, others will. And yes, it all comes back to you in the end. For $20 I can help with cancer research, or the March of Dimes, or getting Hilly to Philly. And for a little while, all seems okay in my world. Then I turn on the news.

--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

Also, a big Happy Birthday to Dave2, my proud blogging buddy of almost many couple of years now. Hope it’s a fantastic day, dude. Looking forward to partying with you at TequilaCon.

Also also, click the Send Hilly to Philly button in my sidebar. Gots to get Hilly to TequilaCon, so go give a buck or ten.

This is my column from the local newspaper.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of all the presidential campaign politics. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are at each other’s throats now, doing exactly what I knew they’d wind up doing, despite their constant cries months ago that there’d be nothing but unity in the Democratic party. Yeah, right. Unity.

Even though I’d put my money on Obama to be the Democratic nominee, we’re not going to see a definitive nominee for months and months. Hillary just won’t have it. I’ve never been a fan of Hillary, ever since it cost the American taxpayers $49 million to find out her husband is a liar. Sure, maybe it’s wrong to condemn someone just because their spouse made a mockery of the White House. But hey, she’s the one that decided to stay married to the guy. Am I not supposed to question her judgment? Plus, her outfits are just hideous. Did you see Hillary’s St. Patty’s Day getup? Ugh.

And I’m tired of the brouhaha surrounding the Michigan and Florida delegates not being seated. Florida is whining because they decided to break the rules of the Democratic national party by holding the primary a few weeks early. Granted, I don’t see why it was such a big deal to reschedule the primary, but what do I know? The point is that the Democratic party TOLD Florida what would happen if they moved the primary up. The Democratic party TOLD everyone that the Florida delegates wouldn’t be seated at the convention. But Florida officials still went forward with the cruddy plan, anyway.

I’m all for voting, and yes, I believe every vote should count. But I also think that if you can’t follow the rules, and you ignore clear warnings, then you should just lie in the bed you made and shut up. You’d think, after the 2000 election (when I wasn’t yet living in Florida), we’d have learned a lesson in the Sunshine State. Wasn’t one botched election bad enough?

Now the voters are left in a lurch, even though they voted in the primary just like they were supposed to. And even though Hillary won Florida and Michigan (who, by the way, is looking at a primary do-over in the coming months), it really doesn’t count because those delegates she won aren’t getting seated at the convention this summer. Naturally, she wants to seat those delegates. I mean, she didn’t gripe about the rules before the Florida primary, but now that she’s won it, she needs those delegates.

Florida has recently said to the Democratic national party, “Forget you. We voted. We’re not spending money to do ANOTHER primary when the voters have already spoken. YOU figure it out.” And the Democratic party has a problem on their hands. The race is so close that they NEED to seat Florida and Michigan. In the end, the Democrats will likely pay for a solution (translation: taxpayers will get screwed again) because Florida couldn’t follow the rules. And that really means the rules don’t apply to everyone, doesn’t it?

--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

It was a big concert weekend for my mom. We both have season’s passes for Cypress Gardens and hit the occasional show there. Saturday, Mom went to see Frankie Avalon and Fabian and some other old guy I can’t remember. I didn’t go to that one. Mom told me all about it, how there were people coming up on the stage to dance. I told her it must have been weird to see. Decades ago women were throwing their panties on the stage for these guys; now they throw Depends.

And as I write this, we’re about to head out to Cypress Gardens again for an Oak Ridge Boys concert. I admit, I’m far from a country music fan, but I do at least know one of their songs: “Elvira.” That one guy has a seriously low voice from what I remember. Still, I’m setting a bad habit, going to another country concert. I just went to Mel Tillis not all that long ago. Pretty soon I’ll be crooning along with Hank Williams, Jr., wearing cowboy boots, and chewing large wads of tobaccy. Then I’ll start collecting old beater cars on my lawn and having beer for breakfast.

Speaking of beer for breakfast, it’s St. Patrick’s Day. Happy Irish Day to each and every one of you. Even if you’re not Irish, today you are Irish for a day. Get out there and buy some green beer, wear green clothes, and randomly kiss people full on the lips. Don’t blame me if you show up on tomorrow’s Police Blotter, though.

I’m definitely part Irish – my grandmother saw to that.  Funny, I lived in England for three years when I served in the U.S. Air Force. Never made it to Ireland in all that time. I’d love to hang upside down and kiss the Blarney Stone. Heck, if I can jump out of an airplane, I can do anything.

In reading up on St. Patty’s Day for this column, I came across a list of countries and how they celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. In Canada, like the United States, St. Patrick’s Day is not a federal holiday, except for Newfoundland and Labrador. Unsurprisingly, Guinness is petitioning to make it a national holiday. I love Guinness and if they declared the new season of “Dancing with the Stars” a must-watch show, I’d be hard-pressed to stop from tuning in.

In Argentina, they party in the streets, drinking beer all the way up until 8 o’clock the next morning. Those people know how to get down with the green. In Denmark they’re celebrating with a 3-legged charity race in Copenhagen. Last year they donated the funds to kids with cancer. This year, they’re giving the money to a neonatal department at a local hospital. I haven’t run a 3-legged race since Field Day in grade school. Somehow I suspect that I’m not much better at it now than I was then.

They even celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in Japan, where they have a big parade in Tokyo. The island of Montserrat? It’s the only place in the world, save Ireland and those two Canadian provinces where St. Patrick’s Day is a national holiday. They’re known as the “Emerald Island of the Caribbean” because they were founded by Irish refugees.

I guess it’s time to break out the corned beef and cabbage. Yuck, not a fan. But hey, you do what you have to do for your Irish heritage. Now, where’s the Bailey’s for my coffee?

--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

Free speech means a lot to me. I’ve often wondered what it would have been like to be raised in another country. Even though I love lots of other places – Europe, Canada, I even lived in England for a few years – I always come back to the fact that I love being an American. The free speech thing is just too important.

But where does free speech end and abuse begin? There’s the often-used example of screaming, “FIRE ” in a crowded movie theater. Can’t do that. And what about spam? All those e-mails about how woefully anatomically inadequate I am, or how I need a male “enhancement,” or how Demetria is really trying to get me to be her friend on Myspace.

Yeah, spammers deserve to die. If you don’t get spam, I’d venture to say you don’t use a computer. When I first started using the Net around 13 or 14 years ago, I’d get the occasional bit of spam. It annoyed me so much that I spent many hours tracking down spammers’ I.P. addresses. Then I’d contact their Internet Service Provider (ISP) and get their accounts shut down.

But now? I can’t be bothered. There are simply too many spammers out there, and I get more than my fair share. I’ve had the same e-mail address at Yahoo Mail for nearly as long as I’ve been using the Internet. So I get tons of spam. And what do I do about it? Not a darn thing. I let it all slide, like oil off a duck’s back…or something.

Yes, I use e-mail filters and Yahoo Mail does catch quite a lot of the spam. I don’t get a lot of those stray Viagra e-mails into my inbox. But I still get tons of spam stuck in those spam folders, both on Yahoo Mail and Google Mail (which I also use routinely). So when I see spammers get nailed with anti-spam laws, I do a little dance because, really, aren’t spammers all destined for the fourth or fifth circle of hell in Dante’s Inferno?

That’s why I’m a little gleeful at the news that the Virginia Supreme Court just decided that anti-spam laws are NOT a violation of America’s free speech. Back in 2003, Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, North Carolina, was arrested and sentenced to nine years in prison for spamming. He was, in fact, one of the top 10 spammers in the world at the time. Well, I have news for you, Jeremy old pal – if you’re using aliases and fake e-mail addresses, that’s not free speech. That’s criminal.

The Virginia court decision says that “misleading commercial speech is not First Amendment material.” Darn straight it isn’t. I’d love it if “chain letters” were added to the anti-spam movement. I still receive lots of chain letters, promising me luck if I only pass on the lovely sunshiney poems to every person I’ve ever met, or if I pass along the darling photos of babies with cute expressions on their faces. I NEVER pass on chain letters, even if they’re in the form of a lovely petition to knock down gas prices, or a touching montage of photos of our beloved soldiers in Iraq.

Basically, any time an e-mail tells me to forward it on to other people, I delete it. Thanks, but I’ll be the one to decide what I forward on to my friends and family. And chain letters never, ever make the grade. Spammers beware

--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

Hard to believe, but we’ve been putting up with the presidential campaign shenanigans for 14 months already, and we still have at least another 7 months to go. This has got to be the longest campaign in United States history. It also has to be one of the closest ever races, with Obama and Hillary pretty much neck and neck. So it’s pretty amazing, I think, that we haven’t gotten down to the nitpicky namecalling until just recently.

The clincher was a few days ago, when Hillary came out spitting and clawing after some mailings went out from Barack. Hillary isn’t at all happy about what Barack wrote about her views and plans for health care. She says the pamphlets are wildly inaccurate. Barack says they’re completely on the money and everything can be verified. Ah, there we go. Finally, we’re down to the “He Said, She Said” portion of our election. Just when we thought the Democrats might be running a different sort of race, too.

Last week, during one of the Democratic debates sponsored by CNN, Hillary went so far as to bring up Barack’s supposed plagiarism, where he made a speech that was incredibly similar to another senator. Hillary is spitting mad, desperately clawing at everything and anything that might knock Obama from his winning streak of late. So she said that Obama’s speeches were basically “Xeroxed.” And what happened? She got booed by the audience. Not a good sign.

Yes, we have big primaries still to come. Texas and Ohio, for starters. But Barack Obama has won the last nine or ten contests in a row. Every time Hillary makes a slam on Barack, it backfires on her. She needs to just concentrate on her own campaign. Better yet, what she really needs to do is drop out of the race. It’s pretty obvious that Barack is going to be the Democratic candidate, and Clinton isn’t helping matters any by the hair-pulling and face-scratching. If she was any kind of decent, she’d pack it in now and endorse Barack so he can get down to the business of the general election.

Same with Mike Huckabee. Drop out, Mike. There’s not a snowball’s chance in Hades that you’re going to win. In fact, your situation is even worse than Hillary Clinton’s because at least it’s possible for her to win. Mathematically, it is IMPOSSIBLE for Huckabee to win. Even if he wins every remaining delegate in the Republican warehouse, he still won’t possess enough delegates to gain the Republican nomination. While it may be fun to watch candidates pick each other apart within the two parties, it’s really counterproductive to the general election.

There’s only so much money to go around, after all. I’m sure McCain and Obama would much rather spend their campaign dollars on each other, rather than on candidates within their own party. Every moment that McCain fights Huckabee and Obama fights Clinton is basically a wasted opportunity…an opportunity to fight their opponent in the opposite party.

But wait, there’s more. As of yesterday, Ralph Nader, campaign spoiler extraordinnaire, has announced that HE’LL be running for the Oval Office. Yes, I find it strange that the United States only has two political parties – I compare it to having only two brands of cereal to choose from in the supermarket. But that’s the way it is here…a third party candidate is basically a waste of ink on the ballots.

I say we print up the ballots now…Obama vs. McCain. Oh, and Nader. But hey, nobody asked me my opinion.

--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

The writers strike is nearly over, according to reports that say a tentative deal has been reached with producers. This is great news and it looks as if my writers strike beard may be gone by the time next week’s column is conceived and written. My face couldn’t be happier. Right now I resemble a cross between a mountain man and the Unabomber.

I’m watching CNN’s weather as I write this and I have no idea what people in Minnesota are thinking right now. The temperature there is down to minus 40. MINUS 40. Perhaps it’s just me, but as I sit here with the front door open in my polo shirt and cargo shorts, I can’t help but think minus 40 is way too freaking cold. Honestly, how do you deal with weather that cold? There simply aren’t enough earmuffs and mittens for that sort of thing.

Onto the latest from the presidential circuit. Mitt Romney surprised everyone a few days ago by “suspending” his presidential campaign. This is the first I’ve heard of a campaign “suspension.” It means that Romney gets to keep a hold on the delegates he’s earned thus far. Eventually, those delegates will be released to vote elsewhere…that is, if Romney stays out of the race. I don’t know why he just didn’t quit and allow the delegates to go their own way. For what it’s worth, I’d be pretty ticked off if I voted for Romney on Super Tuesday and then he dropped out of the race two days later.

Obama won a few states this weekend, and so did Mike Huckabee. At this rate, we may not know who is going to be on the November ticket for months to come. Myself, I’m laying odds that Huckabee will drop out within the next two weeks. It’s an impossible shot for him now. He’d have to win nearly every single remaining race in order to gain the delegates he needs. But no, I’m sure Huckabee will waste a few more million dollars before he cries “Uncle ” Speaking of wasting millions of dollars, it turns out that Mitt Romney spent $87 million of his own money campaigning for President. Yeah, I’m sure there’s nothing better that could have been done with that money.

My lawn wants me dead. It’s usually not an issue since there’s the sidewalk that goes all the way from the front door to the driveway. Sometimes I’ll hear the grass mocking me as I walk alongside it. “Put one foot on me, mister, and you’re dead.” And now the lawn may get its wish.

It seems it’s high time to have the sidewalk and driveway pressure-washed, painted, and sealed. Don’t ask me why, they both work perfectly fine. They’re not especially stained. I compare the notion to washing ashtrays…pointless. But it’s not my call. And now, what would have been a two-day affair at most, is going to take a full week.

Our next door neighbor has the nicest driveway you can imagine. It’s all prettyfied with fancy designs and lines and inlaid stencil-work. I think there’s marble filigree or some such thing. Again, a very fancy ashtray.

Trouble with my lawn is it’s too cushy and thick. Every step is a potential killer. It’s like walking on heels…without the stability. For the next few days, we can’t park in the driveway, so my car is parked on the edge of the lawn. But wow, is the driveway ever pretty. You know, until we park on it again.

--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

So Punxsutawney Phil, the famous groundhog in Pennsylvania, saw his shadow on Saturday. This supposedly indicates six more weeks of winter weather. I’m not sure why a rodent is determining our weather outlook, but I have a tough time believing in winter weather when I live in Florida. Make me wear a sweater and we’ll talk.

Too bad Punxsutawney Phil can’t predict the outcome of the November election. Sure would save us all a lot of time and aggravation, not to mention nine more months of rallies and debates. Yes, our job is finished for the time being, our primary duties completed last week. But it’s a Super week. Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday and tomorrow is Super Tuesday. I’d like good old Phil to tell us just how much more love-fest we can expect from Hillary and Barack. At their last debate they actually started making out in front of the whole world, so determined were they to prove the unity of the Democratic party. Don’t they realize we expect to see hair ripped out by the roots, bloodied knuckles, and teeth marks on their faces?

Super Tuesday offers the most delegates in one fell swoop on a single day. So far, McCain has the most Republican delegates and Clinton has the most Democratic delegates. Each party has their own way of appointing delegates, who are really just people with nothing better to do but go to a big convention and wave red, white, and blue signs around to the other people who don’t really care. Somehow all the delegates get together and vote on which candidates should be on the November ballot – I think they play a game of Pin the Tail on the Morons.

In other news, there are rumors circulating that the writers strike in Hollywood may soon be over. Even with “Lost” returning with all-new episodes, it’s hard to ignore the impact of the strike. Personally, I think the producers are hungry to make a deal since the Academy Awards are coming up in a few weeks. They don’t want a glorified press conference like the Golden Globes a few weeks back. They want to see the red carpet, streaming with major stars and ridiculous outfits.

I’m excited about the prospect of an end to the strike, since I’m still sporting my writers strike beard. It’s really starting to itch, so I look forward to shaving it off. Why I agreed to do such a silly thing as grow a beard is beyond me. Hurry up, Hollywood. End this madness, please.

At the Oakland Zoo, Tiki, the 18-year-old giraffe is suffering through the cold winter weather. For a giraffe, 18 is getting up there in years, and Tiki already receives regular visits from an acupuncturist, a masseuse, and a chiropractor. But what do you do for a cold giraffe? Make a custom blanket, of course. Taking measurements was a big challenge that required a ladder, and it turns out that Tiki is a 42 extra-extra long.

Speaking of animals, there’s a so-called “artist” in New York, Nate Hill, who uses animals in his artwork. The weird part? The animals are all dead. Nate says,  To put it simply, what I do is cut up the animals, I sew them together in a different way, and then I submerge them in rubbing alcohol to preserve them.  You can catch videos of Hill sewing together a rabbit, a duck, and a turkey. I think I’d rather watch 9 more months of presidential debates.

--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan