“So how do you come up with this stuff, anyways???”

That’s the question that I probably get asked the most often about being a humor columnist, that is, right after “Why don’t you write more about beets?” and “Seriously, would it kill you to just throw in a couple of beet jokes every once in a while?!” And while not to intentionally turn a blind eye on all of my beloved fans in the Midwest Beet Belt of America, I thought that it might make for an interesting change of pace this month to take a little time to talk about just what goes into the making of your favorite humor column each and every week.

Maybe next time, Uncle Ned, but until then, keep those beet pies a’coming!  Yummy…

Anyways, a lot of people are kind of surprised to learn that a good portion of The Humor Column is actually based on things that happen to me in my own real life … like when I hit an alligator with my car while driving home one night, or when I met a particularly awesome fellow Scott who treated us well when we purchased my wife’s new car, or even that time when I showed an incredible amount of restraint by not covering everything I could possibly find with that delicious chocolate frosting in a can! What can I say – when your life is just as naturally hilarious as mine is on a regular basis, finding something amusing to write about can sometimes be as easy as sitting down to a nice, healthy breakfast…

Then there are other times when it’s more of a random observation that catches my eye and amuses me enough to spark my imagination, like noticing that I tend to be more productive while having nearly every need imaginable fulfilled on a luxury cruise ship!  Maybe I might see an important issue that needs to be brought to the forefront, like a few months ago when the masculinity of pretty much every man on the planet was being challenged by that very suave and very shirtless dude from those Old Spice commercials, or maybe it’s just one of those weeks where I feel like recognizing a certain snack food as the absolute bestest holiday munching paraphernalia around.

Of course, the idea is just the beginning – the mere seed for a humor column, if you will.  From there it takes a bit of creativity, a dash of luck, and for me typically three or four hours of writing, re-writing, brainstorming and procrastinating to turn that single funny thought or moment into a full-fledged humor column like the ones that you read here every week.  Some prove to be easier to write than others, and some make you want to throw your keyboard out the window and move to Nebraska to settle into a simpler life of beet farming with your Uncle Ned, but at the end of the day, nothing is more rewarding than seeing that new humor column that you just brought into the world with your own two hands making people laugh on its very own!

It’s almost enough to make you feel like writing a humor column of your own, isn’t it?!  Well, before you get too excited and go jumping in over your head, there’s still a lot more for us to talk about – things like proofreading and deadlines and whether it’s funnier to breastfeed or bottle-feed.  Don’t worry, though, we’ll go over all of these things in more detail than you could ever possibly desire as I continue to share my wisdom in this one-of-a-kind series that takes you behind the scenes of my very own baby, The Humor Column…

Next week’s lesson: the subtle art of creating your own facts!

A funny thing happened to me on the way home the other day.

Well, funny for some of us involved, anyways…

You know how when you’re just driving along, minding your own business, and then all of a sudden, you hit an alligator in the middle of the road?! Of course you don’t, because aside from Florida, that’s something that really doesn’t happen anywhere else in the entire world. When I used to live up in Michigan, it certainly wasn’t uncommon to see deer alongside the roads and occasionally one would get hit because when it comes down to it, deer are extraordinarily dumb creatures that wouldn’t know a suburban if they ran into one head-on, but alligators, on the other hand … well, let’s just say that “dumb” isn’t exactly the kind of adjective that I would recommend throwing around with regards to a prehistoric beast that could rather easily crush any random part of your body in its gaping jaws like a rag doll in a particularly hungry vise!

As you would only expect for such a tale, it was a dark and stormy night, and yours truly had just gotten off after pulling a double down at the old crab shack … well, I was driving home at night and it was raining, anyways.  I was driving well under the speed limit, as any good driver does when hazardous driving conditions are present, although I guess I didn’t know until a moment too late that said road hazards also included a six foot lizard with an overbite!  It all happened so quickly, I only saw his mighty incisors in the roadway for a split second before *bump*.  He looked mad, which I suppose is probably pretty normal when you’re just trying to cross the road and cars keep running over your tail…

It took me about a mile or so down the road before I finally put the pieces together and realized that I had, in fact, just ran over a giant log with teeth and an appetite!  At that point I immediately turned around and drove back, half expecting to find a wounded gator hobbling off into the ditch, but nothing – no tail slipping out of sight, no flattened alligator carcass obstructing traffic, not a single sign of my scaly, slithering speed bump anywhere.  Of course, that’s when the worrying began to kick in…

For the rest of the trip home, my mind raced as I pondered the situation and where exactly my gimpy gator might’ve disappeared to – maybe he was in a hurry when my front tire came along, so he was already running and thus long gone by the time I had circled back.  Or maybe he actually ran into me and as a result, felt kind of embarrassed about the whole situation and took off cowering in shame before his other alligator friends could give him a hard time about being such a klutz of a lizard.

Or maybe my absolute worst of fears had been realized and he was actually still stuck underneath my car, just waiting for me to stop and get out so that he could grab my feet and begin his violent, albeit arguably warranted revenge!  He’d wait until I was back home and the garage door had closed, thus eliminating both the risk of having witnesses and also the majority of my potential escape routes in the process.  Then, once I opened my car door, out would pop his flattened, little head to nip at my ankles before my feet even touched the ground, ready to inflict onto me a world of hurt normally reserved for water buffalo in Discovery Channel specials.  Before long he’d drag my lifeless, battered body back into the makeshift lair that he had created underneath my car to be feasted on at his leisure, biding his time until morning when my wife would return home and open the garage door, thus allowing him to slink off back into the wild as nature’s not-so-silent assassin once again…

Thankfully, though, all of that didn’t actually happen and my fate was spared with a minimal amount of jumpiness once I finally returned home and slowly dared to inch open my car door!  I did check underneath the car with a flashlight – from a distance – just to be sure, but luckily my carnivorous victim was nowhere to be found.  Then again, I suppose one might argue that not knowing whether a vengeance-seeking gator is out there on the loose somewhere, plotting to one day return the favor when I least expect it could be even worse than just getting dragged to my own horrific mauling and getting it over with in the first place!

Only in Florida, indeed…

Let’s play a game, folks!  It’s just a little something I’ve cooked up in my spare time lately called Things You Never Want to Hear in Florida … in July, and it goes a little something like this: simply choose from the following what you think would be the worst possible thing to hear mid-summer here in the Sunshine State of Florida…

a)      ”The AC’s not working.”
b)      “We’re all out of rum.”
c)      “There’s an alligator at the front door and he looks pissed.”

If you answered A – “The AC’s not working,” you win the prize, which coincidentally is this nice box fan from Wal-Mart that sure would’ve been nice at my house a couple of days ago when tragedy struck our quaint, Floridian household here in the dead of summer!  As for those of you who opted for pina coladas or giant lizards as your answers … well, despite the stereotypes or your apparent alcoholism, let it be known that either one of those things on their own don’t even stack close to the idea of Florida living, au natural.

Maybe both of them put together might come a little closer because hey, when the Bacardi doth runneth dry, opening the door to see if the lizard on the other side came bearing fruity coconut and pineapple-flavored refills may very well sound entirely reasonable, but of course, that’s an entirely different column altogether…

But regardless, by far the worst is still having the air conditioning just mysteriously die without warning, and if it happens after business hours like mine so conveniently did recently, then all the better!  Really, there’s nothing quite like coming home at about eleven o’clock at night after a long and grueling day, only to find that it’s rapidly approaching 85 degrees inside your humble abode … and it’s still warmer outside than it is inside … and there’s no breeze outside whatsoever, even if opening up windows was a minute possibility.  If there was ever a time to call in a favor from that friendly, neighborhood repair guy whose fence you had recently helped paint, now would’ve been a wonderful time to call in said favor!

Unfortunately, though, I have no such recently painted neighbor, and even if I did, chances are *I* wouldn’t have been the first one out the door on a blisteringly hot Sunday afternoon to help him save a few bucks by painting it himself!  Remember, with the Florida heat and all?! So there I, my better half already sweaty and less than thrilled because she’d gotten home several hours prior and was clearly done with this whole no AC conundrum – the two of us destined to bear the brunt of this lack of proper household cooling for at least the next twelve hours or so, all depending – of course, on just how available the repair guy would be to come relieve us the next morning.

And the trouble is that really when you think about it, there’s not a whole lot you can do when such a disaster strikes and you find yourself sweating to the oldies, minus the spandex and a creepy Richard Simmons frolicking around on TV.  Sure, you could spend the night eating popsicles with the refrigerator door propped open, or maybe just make the best of it by falling asleep in the tub, but either is going to leave you in pretty rough shape the following morning … assuming you can actually get out of the bathtub after what I can only imagine would be one of the worst sleeping positions ever!  Nonetheless, my wife and I finally opted to endure the old-fashioned way – by opening all of the windows, turning the ceiling fan in our bedroom up to blow everything that isn’t bolted down around the room in a frenzy, and simply hope for the best.

A matter of hours later, as the sun came peeking up from behind the trees, with songbirds chirping all about, we awoke, knowing that the worst had passed.  Well, there were papers strewn in every corner of our bedroom, it was still scathingly hot, and at one point throughout the night I could’ve swore I heard a wild animal of some sort clawing at the window, but other than that, we were good to go!  Now thoroughly drenched in sweat, we waited for the repair guy to come and lend us his services, which would promptly return us to the land of the civilized.

Twelve hours, folks!  That’s how long I went without air conditioning one hot and sweaty night in July of the year 2009, and frankly, those were probably the twelve worst hours that I’ve had since I moved to Florida over five years ago.  The human body just isn’t designed to endure non-conditioned air, much less temperatures with the digits 8 and 9 in them!  It’s something that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies … well, maybe that one guy, but that’s what you get for cutting in front of me in line for It’s a Small World. No remorse!

So the moral of our story today, simply put, is this – if you live in Florida, don’t ever put yourself in a situation where you could possibly be without air conditioning for more than, oh say, four and a half minutes, max. Buy a second backup air conditioner, make a copy of your neighbor’s keys the next time they’re out of town, or even – dare I suggest it – actually help your friendly neighborhood repairman paint his fence one weekend, if for no other reason than so you can call him in the middle of the night should such an occasion as this arise in the future!  If he doesn’t have a fence, build one for him – trust me, three weeks of digging post holes and hammering boards will be time well spent if it might help you avoid spending seven or eight hours sleeping in a pool of your own sweat.  Whatever it takes, really…

Don’t let your household become just another sweaty, broken air conditioner-related statistic.

I woke up with one hell of a bite on my neck the other morning.

Using my awesome powers of deductive reasoning, I’m led to believe one of the two following scenarios:

a) My wife is actually a vampire, something that coincidentally never came up before we got married, but now certainly explains the absence of garlic and wooden stakes in our home.

b) Admittedly more likely, the coming of spring has also brought forth the coming of bugs and it’s now time for me to pesticide the holy hell out of our house’s perimeter before we get invaded like in years past…

Frankly, I guess I probably should’ve seen this coming – I mean, I’ve lived here long enough now to understand that spraying for bugs each spring is part of that whole maintenance package that you just do, along with preparing the alligator hooks and setting the elderly nets and everything else that we have to do here in Florida to keep our pest problems under control. And that’s all fine and dandy, except for the one notable fact that I’m extremely lazy and despite numerous warnings, will no doubt put off doing all of that stuff right up until I’ve got reptiles crawling through my living room and somebody’s grandmother asleep on my couch.

The problem is, I’m apparently not very good at the whole maintenance thing in general, as evidenced by the last time my car has been washed … and that was pretty much only done out of guilt because we had company coming into town and I didn’t want them to think that I was mistreating my supposedly shiny, new car! Which is kinda odd if you think about it because although said car certainly gleamed in the sunlight as we cruised along the beach that weekend without a care in the world, there was no underlying fear of waking up to find it attacking me in the middle of the night!

Well, there was that one dream, but that’ll teach me to watch The Car That Ate Its Owner right before bedtime…

Nevertheless, B-rated nightmares aside, if there’s one thing that you just can’t afford to skimp on when you reside here in sunny Florida, it’s without a doubt the air conditioning … and after that, of course – well, pest control is most certainly a very close second, if not even a tie. I mean, really – sitting around all hot and sweaty, but bug-free isn’t all that much better than relaxing in your climate-controlled living room that also happens to be swarming with insects … it’s kind of a joint package, if you think about it! Fortunately, however, the air conditioning more or less takes care of itself, thus leaving me to neglect the other required maintenance around our home instead. And if you think I’m good at neglecting pest control, then you should see just how thorough I am when it comes to disregarding our pets!!!

I kid, I kid – of course, I treasure our beloved fish very much and I’m fondly looking forward to the day when I have to follow behind a furry, four-legged little guy in the middle of the night to scoop up his poop, too, however in the meantime we’re getting to the point where if I don’t take action about these six- and eight-legged freaks pretty soon, we’re going to find ourselves with a whole new breed of “pets” underneath this roof and believe you me, spiders and cockroaches are a lot higher maintenance than tropical fish! Besides, by now you’ve heard about my previous interactions with the insect kingdom – if word gets out that my defenses are down and they have time to mobilize an offensive, we can kiss this little suburban homestead goodbye…

Ultimately, however, you’ve just played key witness to my problem here because in the time that it’s taken to chronicle this ordeal from suspicion of vampires to mutant automobiles, I could’ve just as easily picked up some bug spray from the store, done a couple of death-dealing applications around the house, and still had time left to make myself a delicious grilled ham and cheese sandwich to boot, but instead I’ve procrastinated as usual and now all I’ve got to show for it is a handful of thoroughly-amused readers and a family of spiders rapidly advancing on my current location with all of the lead time that they needed to assemble a formidable army of neck-biting nasties!

And don’t get me wrong – I certainly appreciate your undying love and laughs, but as they say … somewhere or other, a crowd full of laughs won’t hold back the insect invasion as they come swarming into your humble abode like a flood with lots of tiny, little fangs. That is, unless a few of you happened to be free and could stop by with some bug spray and fly swatters … call me crazy, but an army of humor column-loving fans to thwart off an army of spiders and other creepy, crawly insects hell bent on biting me in the middle of the night just might work!

That’s it – problem solved! So just buzz the gate when you get here and in the meantime, I’m just going to skip ahead to the grilled cheese portion of that aforementioned plan because as far as I can tell, this pest problem is as good as licked!

Come to think of it, if you want to bring over some gloves fit for handling gators while you’re at it…

So many pink and red stuffed animals, so much chocolate…

…and yet yours truly is having an awfully hard time scrounging up the desire to dive into that heart-shaped debocle this year. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve already got enough on my plate between shopping for replacement garbage can lids and straining to maintain unrealistic New Years resolutions and cleaning up drunken remnants from the Super Bowl off my front yard to also factor in a healthy dose of worry about taking a walk on the mushy side without also kissing my wallet a fond goodbye.

Now I’m sure that some hardcore Valentine’s Day zealots (read: women under the age of 175) will be up in arms with the fact that we’re not dedicating every fiber of our being towards making this February 14^th even more credit-score-impacting than last year, and maybe I’d have a little sympathy for y’all if us guys had our own holiday dedicated to showering us with affections of the grandest scale, although just for the record, this year’s apathy isn’t really about jealous towards this sexist day … regardless of how much we’d love a three-foot tall solid chocolate statue of Cupid, complete with real working bow and arrows and the largest glass of milk you can find…

Realistically, I think for me at least this year’s fault can more so be blamed on simply the overwhelming complexity of it all, between Valentine’s Day gifts having already dominated the shelves since roughly the day after Christmas and roughly a gajillion other stresses already bouncing around inside my head before even considering the romantic ramifications of this red-laced ritual. I mean, really, do I go with the singing alligator bearing a light-up box of chocolates or the 158-page heart-shaped diary to fill with poems of my most romantic desires or, dare I even suggest it, something that can’t be found within the confines of Wal-Mart’s seasonal Valentine’s aisles?!

…because I’m going to be honest with you – us guys don’t necessarily enjoy purchasing all of that novelty, heart-splattered, $7.99 bargain bin crap, but at the end of an already tumultuous week where we’d just as soon come home and pass out on the couch with Leno trailing off in the background, sometimes it’s just easier to phone it in with a cheap box of chocolates and a singing hippo than it would be to spend umpteen hours on the phone booking travel arrangements for an 8-night vacation in San Juan, complete with romantic walks on the beach and confrontationally seductive waiters named Rodriguez who are working for a bit more than just a 20% tip, if you know what I’m saying. And besides, not for nothing, but realistically speaking, not every year can warrant an 11-piece orchestra playing that song from your sweet sixteen party that you kissed your first boy to under a pale moon sky … sorry ladies, but sometimes it’s just a singing hippo kind of year…

…and frankly, with the economy the way it’s been, maybe you should just be happy that the hippo is even singing at all! For there are plenty of other assorted purple and red stuffed animals in that bin and not all of them are predisposed to belting out Let’s Get It On every time you squeeze their lovable, asbestos-filled little bellies. And I know that this probably sounds like a bit of a downer for you, especially considering that many of you have been eyeing the jewelry stores ever since Santa neglected to get you those diamond earrings that you wanted for Christmas (Hey, don’t look at me – I was just as shocked as you were when jolly, old St. Nick let you down that morning!), but remember this – every surprise that you don’t get on Valentine’s Day is just one more thing that we can woo you with come our anniversary or your birthday, and unlike Valentine’s Day, you don’t have to share either of those with anyone else!

Well, it’d be nice if you could maybe split the anniversary with us 60/40 or something this year, but we can continue that discussion at a later day closer to our actual anniversary date … whenever that might happen to be. In the meantime, though, enjoy your smooth-talking hippo as a humble symbol of my undying love. Just try to keep it down, though – it’s been a long week…

In these grand, historic times, I’d like to begin our weekly meeting of the humor-loving minds with a quote from one Nelson Muntz of The Simpsons fame. If Mr. Muntz was here to celebrate with us today, I think it’s safe to assume that he would agree with my choice of sentiment…

Simply put, “Ha ha!”

Seriously, what a week it’s been, eh?! After countless excruciating months filled with bailouts and plumbers and obnoxiously sexy winking that would’ve been even sexier had we not been fairly certain that she’d have happily fed us to the fierce and unrelenting wildlife of the great state of Alaska given the chance, it all came down to one vote. Not the multitude of voting counts and recounts that the Bush administration has grown accustomed to, but a single, solitary vote in which the people of this great country came together and as one, proudly exclaimed into the night, “You didn’t seriously think that we were going to elect The Old Man and the P, did you?!”

And just when I was starting to have doubts in the electoral aptitude of our country – can we, the people, stand up and prevent a conservative windfall with antlers from turning the White House into a weekend hunting shack where the red power suits are the only thing we’re more dependent on than that sweet, sweet, Texas tea? Yes, we can…

I know that deep down, we’re all going to truly miss Sarah Palin … miss her like the bully in high school who picks on you for three semesters before finally getting transferred over to the Correctional Learning Center where he’s the scrawny, weakling of the bunch; miss her like the latest horrible creation to come out of McDonalds’ labs that pushes the McRib off the menu yet again; miss her like a mommy alligator who misses her young shortly after eating them … that is, until she then spots their grade school buddies just off the horizon, alone and looking particularly scrumptious.

It’s almost enough to make you feel bad for John McCain because had he not made the single worst blunder of the season by choosing said lipstick-laden bulldog as his running mate, he might’ve stood a better chance against the We’re Not Total Idiots crowd. But then again, while saucy Sarah certainly monopolized the camera time from that fateful moment when her name was introduced to us on August 29^th forward, at least McCain can still rest assured that at least he’s still got a chance to enjoy a few more years in his political career, whereas Palin will probably be lucky to land a position as Assistant to the Regional Diplomat for Russia once her term as governor has ended in a couple of years…

But I don’t entirely want to dwell on the plight of Palin on this day because today is a happy day. In fact, yesterday and the day before were also considerably happy days, in addition to even the final hour or so of the day before that. By my watch, we’re going on about 57 consecutive hours of happiness to date, which in comparison to the Bush administration’s record 43 minutes of happiness before we all figured out that those “economic surplus checks” were going to save us from precisely bupkis, I think is pretty darned impressive! If anything, this isn’t a time for being all down on the Republican party for presenting us with the most unqualified, albeit entertaining, electoral contenders since Michael Moore urged us all to Vote Ficus! (the tree, that is…) back in 2000.

I’d like to urge the American public who voted for President Elect Barack Obama to spend the next few weeks and months as we prepare for this administrative transition doing what is only proper after one has endured some eight years of executive empty-headedness – gloat. Whether you’re in line at the grocery store and overhear somebody saying how Sarah Palin would’ve made a swell Vice President if the media just hadn’t been so hard on her or if you find yourself stuck behind a minivan plastered with so many McCain / Palin ‘08 stickers that it looks like the You Betcha Mobile, don’t be afraid to revel in the glorious fact that you did your part on Tuesday to help derail their crazy train. I mean it – really rub it in good about how McCain won’t be enjoying any Presidential Prunes next year or how if pretty girl Palin still wants to see the inside of the White House, she’ll just have to go ahead and take the tour like everybody else…

These are times of rejoicing and celebration, and what better way to bask in the glory of change than by flaunting said happiness in the faces of all those who’ve suggested a more conservative manner of living incessantly for seemingly as long as we can remember at this point?! The campaign trail has been a long and arduous road, filled with more potholes in the form of acorns and plumbers than a midwest highway after an unusually hard winter, but those times are behind us now – quite triumphantly so, I might add. Now is the time for gloating, rubbing it in their faces, and shouting out loud from the hilltops … because if the numbers had swung the other way, you can bet your $15,000 power suit that they’d be doing the same thing to us! Hell, that’s what they’ve been doing for the last three months before the election itself even happened anyways, so there’s nothing wrong with a bit of gentle jeering in the thrill of victory to celebrate the end of nearly a decade of clumsy Commander-in-Chief-i-ness.

We’ve waited a long eight years for this, America – now get out there and gloat your hearts out!

It’s the middle of summer, it’s hotter than the surface of the sun itself here in Florida, and here I am afraid to step foot in the water for fear of being gobbled up or snarfed down or at the very least, nibbled to an uncertain death by nefarious creatures in search of an easy meal. Well, I guess I can admit that I’m still technically facing those fears and stepping foot in said water, otherwise they’d revoke my Florida Resident’s card and send me packing back to Michigan where outdoor pools are more of a burden than a luxury, but I certainly do a bit more to watch my back this time of year, and let me tell you that this alone isn’t exactly the easiest of tasks when I’m constantly fighting against these darned water wings all the time!

Yeah, that’s right – I said pool. Don’t judge me, at least not until you’ve heard my entire predicament…

I guess by now it’s not exactly any secret that I’ve got what some might call issues when it comes to self-contained aquatic recreational areas, as I first aired a bit of dirty laundry last fall expressing my concerns for pools that are either empty or otherwise under some sort of refurbishment. And I know it was the kind of thing that sounded, well, a bit silly to a select few highly insensitive meanie-heads out there, but hey – Free Willy was a sad movie, what else can I say?! But we’re not hear to revisit those nightmares, mind you, for I thought our time might better be spent here working through an entirely different oddball, pool-based fear of mine – that in which I find myself wondering if there’s any possibility that some sort of diabolical madman may have placed piranhas in my local swimming pool.

It’s usually after I’ve been in the water for a ten or fifteen minutes and started to really relax, and it might help to add that it’s almost always nighttime by the time that I finally make it down to the pool, but sometimes I’ll be floating there alone, looking up at the star-filled sky, and then my mind starts to wander back to the days of James Bond and all of the appropriate knock-offs where our strapping, young hero would find himself dangling for his life over a pool filled with ravenous sharks circling hungrily below. Sure, there weren’t any such beasts circling the pool when I first walked in – I try not to hit the cocktails under after I’ve submersed, so I like to think that I would’ve noticed something like that – but I don’t have eyes in the back of my head and I certainly don’t have any on the bottoms of my feet, so maybe it wouldn’t be all that hard to release a few hungry chompers into the water as I float there unknowingly in the pale moonlight – who knows???

The way I’ve always pictured it going down would be by releasing whatever’s going to eat me into the pool through the vents on the sides – I’m not exactly sure how something as large as a shark would fit through one of those, but I guess I’ll have plenty of time to ponder that little mystery while I’m being eaten to death! Or even an alligator, and hey, living here in Florida, that one wouldn’t even be all that far-fetched! I’ve never seen the situation in person myself, but I’ve certainly heard the stories and seen the pictures where the family randomly finds a new occupant in their pool out back only moments before diving in themselves. And granted, these are wild gators, not some sort of mutated reptiles driven to a frenzied thirst for blood by their maniacal leaders, but still – if it’s so easy for the normal variety, then maybe a visit from their genetically-altered brethren isn’t so out of the question, anyways…

I should probably mention that this little obsessive paranoia of mine isn’t simply limited to pools, either – it also encompasses hot tubs, Jacuzzis, and wading pools – pretty much anything except open water. I know – weird, isn’t it?! The one place that legitimately does pose the threat of my toes getting nibbled on doesn’t phase me in the least, and yet dunk me in a container of highly-chlorinated liquid sunshine and it’s a whole ‘nother story! No problems with the beach, as proven by my unwavering devotion to watch the movie Jaws or any of the sequels no matter what time of day they come on TV, no problems even with pool parties, as at least in those situations I’m in the water with other people and thus I guess I feel that I’ve got some chance of survival considering that the deadly carnivores have options for their first victims – so feel free to invite away!

Just like my last aquatic column where I opened up and shared one of those less-than-flattering traits about myself, I’m sure that a few folks out there will get a good chuckle out of my plights, but I want you to know that I didn’t write this column for them. Nope, I wrote this column for those other people out there just like me – for those ruggedly handsome, hilarious guys who are great in bed and have nice, long lives ahead of themselves, whose only flaws are that they find themselves a bit cautious about stepping foot in those seemingly controlled waters where terror lurks below the bubblers. For you are not alone, my friends, and while everyone else is having a grand time playing Marco Polo, they don’t even know it, but they can enjoy their game in peace because we’ll be keeping our eyes on the grates and filter openings for everyone.

We may tread water with a bit of fear in our hearts, but as long as our watchful cowardice is around, you’ll never have to worry about not hearing that loyal reply of “Polo!” after every “Marco!” Well, at least until the first sighting, but once we’ve shrieked out in terror, we’ll be high-tailing it out of there, shouting “I told you so…” all the way to the rinsing station and beyond…

I’m stuck in a cruel loop that shows no signs of ending in the discernable future, kind of like Groundhog’s Day, except without the hilarious chemistry of Bill Murray to lead us through an otherwise mundane plot about the psychic abilities of oversized house rats.

Also, the oversized house rats are all wearing shades in my version.

You see, here’s my problem – you may have noticed recently on the news or something, but the Sunshine State of Florida where I call my home these days has this tendency to offer an abundance of very bright light throughout the majority of the waking hours. I really wasn’t surprised by this – heck, that nickname is plastered over signs and banners and even souvenirs to mail back home to all of our friends reminding them that Florida, indeed, gets a crapload of sunlight (note: trademark “Florida – We’ve Got a Crapload of Sunshine … Come Get Some!” – spring break slogan gold!). But it’s certainly something that while although I thought I was doubly prepared for when I first set foot in this alligator-encrusted homeland, the current times are proving to preach a much different story about my ability to block 95% of UV rays on my own…

The trouble is, I came to this fair state nearly five years ago with a great pair of sunglasses – you know, one of those pairs that you see in the mall for an outrageous sum of money and think, “No idiot in his right mind would ever spend that kind of money on a stupid pair of sunglasses!” Well, I did, or rather I got them as a last-minute gift as a way of saying, “Good luck in Florida – try not to get skin cancer…” and for the next couple of years, life in this bright, bright state of ours was anything but to me behind my super-expensive, all-filtering shades. It was my understanding that they even added +1 to my Coolness attribute, an attribute that I sadly just decreased by -3 with that Dungeons & Dragons reference, but needless to say, it was pretty freakin’ sweet when I had those sunglasses.

As you can probably guess, however, this is where our story takes an ugly turn because eventually came a day when my awesome shades were no more, broken under the weight of just being loved too much, I like to think, although it’s probably more likely that they were broken under the weight of my accidentally sitting on them one day when they slipped out of my pocket while eating lunch at the local chicken shack. I was devastated because not only was it like losing a good friend who was always with me through bright times and dark over the years, it was like losing a good friend who I couldn’t in my right mind afford to replace on my current salary without going without food for the better part of the month! I’d have to go back to wearing those cheap sunglasses that one buys off the rack at the local superstore for $9.88 a pair and then proceeds to lose before they even make it out of the store in shame … was that really a road that I was prepared to turn down?

Well, sadly as I have gotten somewhat accustomed to eating over the years, I threw in the towel that was my dignity, ordered up a big, Fat Albert-sized helping of Humble Pie, and picked myself up a pair of those el cheapo shades that don’t require monthly payments as my former sunglasses did. Then about three weeks after the fact, I walked back into said discount superstore and bought another pair of el cheapo shades, and mind you not so much because I loved the things so dearly and wanted to buy pairs for all of my friends, but more along the lines of the el cheapo things lived up to their el cheapo name and promptly broke not long after having left the store with them. It was a simple break – the arm of the sunglasses apparently just one day decided that it wanted to live the rest of its life unattached from the rest of its sunglass counterparts – however this was also when I sadly earned that the ever-popular concept of “warranty” does not apply when one is purchasing el cheapo sunglasses.

It’s always important to read the fine print, kids, and also, to consider that it should serve as a warning sign when you’re purchasing a product referred to even by the store employees themselves as el cheapo sunglasses.

So basically, take that little scenario and just play it over and over and over again, a la Groundhog’s Day, and you’ve pretty much got my current situation with regards to owning a pair of sunglasses here in the Sunshine State. Sometimes the arms break, sometimes the lenses pop out, and sometimes the entire apparatus just up and disintegrates right off the front of my face, but it’s pretty much like clockwork at this point – give me a pair of cheap sunglasses, and within three weeks time, I’ll hand them back to you in a mangled pile of wires and UV-resistant plastic incapable of being worn by any man, woman, or even dog whose owners are cruel enough to try to dress him up like a people even though it’s clear that he just wants to be a stinkin’ dog. The only real benefit to having this skill would be if you had a strong desire to waste $14.87 about every three weeks by buying the exact same poorly-made eyewear over and over again, and my research thus far shows that nobody in our current society really has that desire.

And as far as I can tell, the only real way for me to buck this horrendous cycle of sunglass-shattering events would be to spring for a new pair of overpriced, non-el cheapo sunglasses, but seeing as my fiancée if consulted would probably prefer that we pay for our wedding this fall rather than buy me a new pair of sunglasses, it looks like I’m going to be stuck going through sunglasses like FOX goes through horrible ideas for reality TV shows for at least a little while longer!

Next week on FOX: from the people who brought you Foxy Boxing and To Wed a Dwarf, a new reality adventure about a man so desperate to get a pair of sunglasses that don’t suck that he’s actually willing to eat all of his meals for a month off the floor of the very sunglass section where he’s been buying cheap sunglasses for far too long! Will he make it the full 30 days and walk away with the shades of a lifetime, or will he crumble in defeat and go home with nothing more than A Dirty, Hairy Mouthful? Monday night at 9:00pm, dinner is served…

Does it make me a bad person to wish that an alligator would mysteriously eat my neighbor’s cat in the middle of the night?

If it helps, there’s a possibility that it might not even actually be my neighbor’s cat, but simply a stray that no longer has a home and hence, no longer has feelings. You know, kind of like the homeless people that you pass every day driving home from work but never toss your spare change because you know that they’ll only spend it on drugs and booze anyways…

I think it pretty much goes without saying these days that I don’t really care for cats, although I’m going to keep bringing it up anyways for emphasis. As far as I’m concerned, cats are pretensious, self-centered, and despite the family dog, who proudly bears the title of man’s best friend and would gladly endure a terrible foot odor just to bring his owner his stinky slippers each morning, your cat really doesn’t give two shakes of the dog’s tail about you. Look at your dog from across the room and chances are his thoughts are something like, “Hey buddy, can’t wait to go down to the fishing hole with ya tomorrow!” whereas catch a glance from a cat across the room and it’s more along the lines of, “I’m better than you, and when you go to sleep I’m going to poop in your sock drawer…”

And just to clarify, though, for me it’s not even an issue with all cars – when I see a lion or tiger in the zoo, those are pretty cool because while yes, they do still give off that same I’m better than you vibe that your average housecat exudes, for all tends and purposes those larger cats actually are better than me! The average Bengal Tiger weighs two or three times my weight, is likely a whole lot more lean than myself because I’ve yet to see a tiger lounging around munching on doritos into the wee hours of the night, and it could likely shred me to pieces in a matter of minutes … I have no problem admitting a creature like that to being better than me. But a scrawny, little thing that just lays around the house all day, leaving behind a mess of hair and crap for me to clean up … not so much…

Hence the reason why when I started noticing a strange, black cat poking around our patio in the evening hours, my first instinct as a supporter of the Everglades was to put those mighty lizards to work reducing the annoying cat population. And just think, with each feline, errr, donated, that’s one less alligator in Florida going to bed hungry tonight … and really, in the end isn’t that what it’s all about?

I’m sorry if this brilliant, seemingly foolproof plan upsets the two or three fans of these snobbish felines out there, but we really don’t have any other choice. I’ve tried dealing with them in other “more civilized” ways – sending them up in a balloon or way out west, for example, but the darned things just keep coming back! One time I even devised a particularly clever idea to send one to the man in the moon – I really thought that one was a goner, but well, you know the song…

So ultimately I suppose I’m always open to your suggestions, but in the meantime if you happen to see any gators just waddling across the golf course near our home, let ‘em play through, will ya? They’re working for me now…

No cats were harmed during the making of this humor column, but tomorrow is another day.

Oh, the wondrous beauty of autumn.

Isn’t this a great time of year? The hot, scathing weather has slipped away for a much more manageable, cool breeze. The leaves turn the most brilliant shades of yellows and oranges and reds before finally saying sayonara and plummeting to the ground, resulting in piles upon piles of leaves with which to jump into in whimsy. Halloween is right around the corner, filled with pumpkins and ghouls and ghosts, and beyond that we’ve got the cornucopias of Thanksgiving to look forward to before the season finally departs to make way for winter.

Well, at least that’s what I remember happening around this time of year, anyways…

And you know, that’s probably one of the biggest complaints that I here from other people around here about Florida, besides “Those tourists don’t know how to drive!” and “That alligator just ate my cat!” of course. Whereas in other parts of the country, seasons are fairly distinct – fall with the leaves, winter with the snow, spring with not the snow, and then summer with somewhat tolerable daytime temperatures; Florida, on the other hand, is a completely different ballgame. Our seasons, if you even want to call ‘em that, are more along the lines of somewhat tolerable, actually pretty nice, gettin’ warmer again, and good god, why would anyone venture outside in this sweltering heat?!

Of course, I guess there are tradeoffs pretty much wherever you decide to live. Sweat your ass off or freeze your ass off – either way, your ass is going to be subject to less than optimal weather conditions at one point or another throughout the year. Unless you can maybe afford to spend your summers up there and your winters down here, then at least you’d have fairly nice weather all year round. Granted, then we’re back in the boat of not really getting to experience seasons, per say, but not to worry about that because not for nothing, but humor columnist isn’t exactly a vacation home owning-kind of job, if you know what I mean…

That said, despite the lack of seasons I think I’m fairly content with living here in Florida. Yes, the heat can be a bear, and the threat of hurricanes wiping out your very existence seven months out of every year can take a little getting used to, but in my eyes hurricanes aren’t really all that different from tornados or earthquakes or mudslides or blizzards. The only real difference is what kind of attire you get to wear while you’re weathering the storm, and if I get to chose, I’ve got to say that I’d pick shorts and a Hawaiian shirt over a snowsuit, furry hat, scarf, wool gloves, and those big, clonky boots that you can only lift three inches off the ground any day! At least when waiting out a hurricane, I can actually order a Hurricane from the bar and have it delivered to me in a tall glass with an umbrella in it; unless you prefer your drinks frozen…solid…that doesn’t work so much up north.

So I guess ultimately there’s really no sense in gloating over another region’s ridiculously inane weather because when it comes down to it, we’ve all got our own problems. Now if you’ll all excuse me, I’m gonna go swimming … have fun raking leaves or shoveling snow or whatever it is that you non-southerners do this time of year…