Mental Mall

As a tenant living in San Francisco, CA, I routinely received hazing-type telephone demand-calls from people who demanded reports and other information.

One such call elicited a response from me about the dearth of walking police officers on Haight Street who might help keep the sidewalks clear and walkable, rather than toleration of the hang-around storefront atmosphere characteristic near the University of California AND University of San Francisco campuses, as well as near the Scientology temple.

That would be, in hazing terms, the absence of Haightian police officers. Paradoxically, a movement was initiated to employ Haitian immigrants as police officers in Martin County, FL, as a way to widen the threshold of Deep South alumni feet-in-the-door AND the foot itself, presumably. Helplessly, the national population watched as Haitians were also lured into real-estate ventures and other questionable actions such as illegal immigration by means of boats directed at Jupiter Island, where the county's Women's Shelter was set up (far, far from Jupiter Avenue in San Francisco, CA, and TV-star Ellen's mansion near the Baker Beach shoreline cliffs).

A history of the region printed in local journalism tells us about a pile-up of dead black people in the region during a hurricane storm more than a century ago. The recent educated (that's post-secondary) attempts to welcome Caribbean Haitians into southern FL have apparently recreated a similar scenario.

The Little Buddy

Lizards abound in the St. Lucie River region and throughout FL. Judging from past experience receiving store-bought lizards in PA and as a tenant residing in northern California, the little beasts thrive without molestation and especially like escapable lamplight zones.

Above:  slightly-open utility-access cover, Old St. Lucie Road in Stuart FL [time-date stamp is wrong]

This past week, the household 'little buddy' again demonstrated somewhat ghastly capabilities that appear to be training exercises remotely controlled by his outdoors mother. Having one time thought to grasp his tiny tail and move him so as to prevent crushing him between planter box and watering-container, he quickly back-stepped and shed the tip of the tail and ran away, just as some varieties of salamander do.

But last week, he demonstrated his 'shed-skin' capability -- tiny and almost weightless, the 'little buddy' entered the condo from beneath the door and began to navigate the kitchen environment, searching for crumbs and garbage-pail cast-offs. However, upon encountering my walking form he alighted on my foot and was thrust into the bedroom quite involuntarily. With two people sleeping soundly in twin beds, he was pinned on the floor just a few feet from some apricots in a dish.

Upon arising in the morning, the spirit of the 'little buddy' was gone; only a dried husk remained, its open mouth stuffed with household dust/human skin cells. During routine pick-up, an old birdseed, a feather from a comforter, and the shed lizard-husk were tossed outside onto a bush.

Some people might cruelly flush them.

"To be or not to be..."

o The Black Shirt -- Recent Internet journalism described the train trip of a young woman in India whose infant was found on the train tracks after she used the rest room. Subsequently, a story was also disseminated about a young man found dead on trolley tracks in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, with screen-printed black jersey shirts lying nearby.

Here in Kingswood condominium complex in Stuart, FL, residents/inhabitants have apparently been included in the "mysteries" with the drop of a black t-shirt on the ground behind recycling containers near SE Ocean Boulevard. The jersey shirt has been lying there a number of weeks now, with creases browning a bit in the crumpled garment after TV-warning-status thunder-storms.

o All X-names Belong in the South -- The recent political moves of FL military-service-representative Wexler include an application of 'articles of impeachment' to the Vice-Presidency of Richard Cheney, no doubt an 'impeach or be impeached' ploy since it has come to light that the 'Collier' name as mapped among FL counties might be expediently replaced with a tropic-zone 'X-name' as a possible action perhaps operational during past decades now.

Collier Brothers published an atlas in the early 1900s which shows sinkholes-managed-as ponds labeled using the word "lake" when printing up Golden Gate Park in northern California.

o Doll-Baby Scares -- Within past months a story was printed up in a local newspaper describing a deformed toddler who was fitted with titanium ribs. Recently, a story and video were disseminated about a bus-ride where a child was stomped to death near the driver as passengers were disembarking, shrieking and crying "no, no".

*****
References perhaps worth looking into include past articles in The Skeptical Inquirer magazine at website csicop.org, such as the September/October 2002 article titled 'Why was 'The X-Files' so appealing?' by Erich Goode; or the January/February 1997 article titled ''The X-Files' Meet the Skeptics' and other(s).

Civil Scramble

This week a major change was quite suddenly made in the size and print-type of the Stuart News, a local Martin County, FL, newspaper -- the overall size is smaller, perhaps as a hint about the tabloid-type incident rate in the region. The News is easier to hold and to turn the pages and the print is a bit more severe than last week's format; the sudden change is suspected to be a sort of civil defense ploy.

Also quite suddenly, within a day after the format change, newspaper and TV broadcast journalism described a teen's encounter with an alligator during which his arm "was taken", near Lake Okeechobee, during a mutual swim. It's a wonder whether other civil defense ploys in the past can be correlated with injurious alligator encounters afterward--as a consequence of balance-affecting sudden change.

Palm Beach journalism describes lax attendance at a regional boat show, while a dearth of skiffs at shoreline parks is easily ascertained.

The television ads for Comcast cable television give notice with some warning tones about an upcoming switch to all-digital television programming -- push-button only upcoming, perhaps with remote capability to explode the television screens as viewers watch? There is little doubt that such a possibility might also be categorized as civil defense.

When the PC terminal functions unusually, keep those drug-store silicon gloves handy.

In a New York Panic

As all uniformed navaldom knows, the Saint Lawrence River is located at the border with Canada and the United States. Since some sort of logic has been used to include Alaska claimed to be a state of the U. S., further such logic is exerted as an "overlap" effort to include the state of New York within the Dominion of Canada -- such logic apparently based upon the similarity of the word 'Pennsylvania' with other Asian-area words such as 'Transylvania' and 'Spotsylvania' as mapped.

As weariness with the aggressive and well-trained presence of United Kingdom relocatees has been demonstrated with anti-harassment laws that oppose uses of 'harry' actions and methods to advance personal/family interests in the Americas, that offensive attitude traceable to the similarity between the U. S. flag and the U. K. flag might well be decidely eliminated with political referendum engaged to choose a different U. S. flag design.

Fast-acting

Website www.myfwc.com/marine provides a likeness and description of the so-called Goliath grouper, also known as the Jewfish. Other websites provide stories and personal accounts about giant-size fishing action from the striped fish, which also appear to sport mohawk-like top-fins.

The smaller ones, that is to say under a foot-long, appear to be friendly and surface in clusters near the casual day-packer carrying energy bars and nuts. Actually, the movements of other creatures in the area (i.e. retaining pond) such as tortoises, birds, snakes (some sub-merged) cause the staring fish variety to rise to the surface of the water, where they peek out and splash in circles, struggling to maintain their own finny volition.

At the present time, Jewfish are a protected fish variety in the state of Florida.

Post-hurricanes Martin County (2006 - 2008) -- Errata

Kingswood condominium complex and beyond in Stuart, FL, shows the effects of recent hurricanes and a population still in shock fending off further exploitation.

Trash fills the foliage-dense adjacent lot -- shiny aluminum cans, plastic bottles, styrofoam food containers, various types of wrappers, and broken glass that was strewn about during the intense tropical storms. Because much of the litter appears to be intentionally placed, the hurricane-weary owner of the preserve-type lot does not come over to pick it up, perhaps also leary of the Canadian "snowbird" and "wintering" condo-complex populations who have streamed in anyway after the two major wash-outs, plus those hard-working people who have planned and attained FL retirement; factor in a large population of Californians who have been lured/sent into South Florida to set up international cuisine businesses so as to foster a university atmosphere, and efforts to acquire and/or maintain the lot are clearly more heartache and the trash is a broad hint about land-grab actions.

Because the hurricanes destroyed a significant number of human lives in Martin County, FL, 'missing persons' websites contain a number of listings that indicate persons are yet lying around dead/skeletal in the region -- on land or underwater. A retaining pond behind this multiple condo-complex zone in Stuart, FL, was recently drained so as to search for additional people not yet located; the teeming wildlife population of insects, fish, reptiles and birds quickly returned after the water-pocket-type pond was restored as an influx of the Saint Lucie River mingling with water flow from ditches, canals and altered creek bed.

An e-mail sent to a big-city Florida FBI office was deemed necessary before a child's rusted blue bicycle could be safely removed from the foliage.

Memorial Park in "historic downtown Stuart" lists the names of deceased victims of the storms on a free-standing wall. Paperwork necessary to order work to repave and renovate area roadways has been uncommonly quick.

A group of tree branches overhanging and obstructing the sidewalk on Colorado Street near the intersection with Martin Luther King, Jr, Street have been found lush and rooted in the standing water of an altered creekbed beneath the small bridge that supports both roadway and sidewalks -- and perhaps were the reason that post-storms sudden deaths in the region are being carefully investigated, since a telephone call-demand network remains operational in the region. Can any actions be more cruel than work-demand calls directed at victims of major hurricanes?

Beech-nut...uh...beach-nut s' got 'em

The southern United States is home to such colorful creatures as red-and-black banded alligators, coral snakes, corn snakes and desertland gila monster lizards; moving northward, the woolly-bear caterpillar shuffles through northern hardwood forests, ultimately contacting the complementary red-and-black striped salamanders.

What to think about this cavalcade of red-and-black creatures, some clearly poisonous and others merely showy and attention-getting? A new set of labels offered from the many printing companies advertised within Sunday newspaper ad-sheet sections and Direct Marketing Association package fillers? A trip to the vintage record store to acquire a copy of theme 'The Blue Oyster Cult' song titled, 'The red and the black'? Many boxloads of screen-printed jersey shirts?

Almost no one thinks "Arson".