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"I had thought — I had been told — that a 'funny' thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing itself. I grok it is a bravery... and a sharing... against pain and sorrow and defeat."
- Valentine Michael Smith
(Robert Heinlein,
Stranger in a Strange Land) |
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Greetings from sunny cloudy, rainy, windy Florida! Those of you who live in Florida know what I'm talking about - those of you who don't, well, it's not true, no matter what Disney and the Florida Department of Let's Lure Unsuspecting Tourists to Our State might want to tell you, that Florida is either sunny or hurricaney. Today, it's just kind of... depressing. Tropical depressing. Give the state some Prozac, already.
By the time you read this, I'll be back home in Virginia - or, the way things have been going, my luggage will be in Virginia and I'll be in Yakutsk. At least it's sunny and warm in Siberia this time of year.
Travel can make anyone crazy - unless, of course, you have a sense of humor about it. Between the hilarity of airport security, snickerworthy road signs, and guffaw-inducing motion sickness, among other things, travel presents an endless source of comedic moments.
Take that old standby alluded to above: lost luggage. Lost luggage is always funny as long as it doesn't happen to you - and it's even funny then, maybe, if the airline is on top of it enough to give it back to you before you start to smell funny. This happened to us last month, when we flew to New York City. I knew something was wrong when the person who checked our luggage - and happily accepted a five dollar bribetip - told us the plane was leaving out of Gate 5, while the departure screen inside the airport clearly said Gate 4. When we got to La Guardia, my bag was already there waiting for me. My wife, unfortunately for both of us, was not so lucky: hers was nowhere to be found.
This, of course, only became funny ten hours later when the bag finally showed up, having travelled from Richmond to New York via Columbus, Paris, Yakutsk and Nome.
Another source of potential amusement while travelling is the language barrier. While in New York, we stayed in a hotel in Flushing's Chinatown, where you don't really expect anyone to speak English. In fact, I don't recall anyone speaking English in New York. I suppose I should stop being an ugly American and start learning Mandarin, Spanish, Portugese and Tagalog, but I got by. Dollar is a universal language.
You expect to have language problems in foreign cities like New York or Miami, but I'm now in central Florida, about an hour north of Orlando, and I've been having trouble communicating with the natives. We went to this flea market, and the typical conversation went something like this:
"How much for this tchatchke?"
"Revero. Teneka nammu overflow."
"Excuse me?"
"Teneka! Nammu Oberon."
"Um... How about I give you five bucks?"
"Seven dollars!"
"Okay, seven it is. Thanks!"
"Regeri kamitable!"
The place where my father-in-law lives - for it is he whom we are visiting - is a golf cart community. This means that if you don't have a golf cart (he doesn't), you're a second class citizen. The people here are dead serious about their golf carts, too. Most of them have cars of some kind, but they're usually just ordinary, off the lot cars without fuzzy dice, spinning hubcaps, incongruous spoilers, or radios. But the golf carts... words cannot describe. The fashion here is to paint your name and your spouse's name on the front, above the little headlights. "Martha" and "Ralph" for instance. One of them read "Johnny" and "?" - like that's going to get Johnny any dates. That, and they run around everywhere with their golf clubs, usually with kitschy covers that look like dog heads. No one bothers to steal the golf clubs, even though they're not locked up, mostly because everyone HAS golf clubs, but also because everyone else's golf club cover is tackier than yours.
My father-in-law is in the community, but not OF the community. He continues to refer to the residents here as the Village People, which of course makes the song YMCA go through my head at inopportune moments. He calls winter-only residents "snow flakes." And when we go out, he's very neighborly and polite to all of them.
"Hi! How you doing?" he'd say.
"Regeri kamitable!"
"Great!" |
Let's take a little spin around the site and see the sights:
A North Carolina flight:
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#418743 by Not Available. |
An Adventure in a Model T:
A Visit to New York:
A Trip to the Country:
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Holiday in Spain:
And a Call of Nature on the Road:
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The opinions expressed in this section are NOT the opinions of Robert Waltz (just covering my butt here)
Problematic Content  : People just feel bad that Mia's newsletters are so craptacular, so they try to round them out with a plethora of comments. Basically they're pity comments, and you don't want any of those. I'd offer you GPs to post this in the next newsletter, but she probably won't read it anyway.
I'll take the GPs anyway, PC. Oh, and you might consider taking a vacation - elizm446 knows where you live.
billwilcox In my living room there is a box. On one side pictures appear and folks walk across it, and little minature cars drive by, and people move and talk to you indirectly as if they don't even know your name. What the hell is it, and why is it in my house?
Beats travelling, doesn't it?
dogfreek21:  WHAT??? The OVERLORD in "abject surrender"???? Alright fine, but I wanna see the flying pigs.
I believe My Loyal Minion, terryjroo, is fully stocked on airborne swine - go see her. You know why pigs don't fly? Because the airlines always lose their luggage.
Lornda  : Good job! I enjoyed reading this newsletter, is always informative. Thanks for highlighting one of my stories, made my day! Keep up the good work!
Lornda 
And thank YOU for your flattering comment! Your bribetip is on its way (if it doesn't get diverted to Yakutsk)!
Got any travel stories? Let's hear 'em! I'll award my favorite in the next newsletter! Email them to me or use the item highlight field below! |
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Comedy: June 06, 2007 Issue [#1752]
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