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The Mile High Club at ground level: The Love Bugs do the horizontal bop

Sex is everywhere you turn on the highways of Southeast Texas. Yes, I am talking about the Love Bug swarm is here again, the skies above are black and orange again …

I had to take the G-mobile in to get it cleaned by professionals after traveling around Cow Bayou in Orange County this afternoon. I mean those f**king bugs are literally everywhere. It is like a ground-level version of the Mile High Club.

If you don’t know what Love Bugs are then here’s the scoop. They are also known as Plecia nearctica Hardy. These are, according to Texas AgriLife Extension: ” … about 1/2-inch long, black with an reddish-orange area on the top of the thorax, and a pair of smoky colored wings. They are all weak fliers.”

Aggie Extension service goes on to say: “Large numbers of adults emerge primarily in the spring (May) and fall (September). Males and females fly and couple in open areas along roadways, appearing to swarm in weak flight.”

The high numbers of bugs are quite aptly described by TAMU as “annoying.” The bugs can cause obscured vision from its splatter on the windshields of cars and the bugs committing hari-kari on radiators can lead to overheating. Likewise, the bugs can cause severe, permanent damage to a car’s paint job if not washed off in reasonably quick order. How quick is quick? Every two miles. Yes, get out of your car with a pail of warm, soapy water every two miles and give the front of your car a good washing. Just joking. But seriously, I don’t see how it would hurt to wash the bugs off at the end of every day you drive, if possible.

There are tons of ways to protect your auto from these horny little insects, everything from a car bra to spraying the front of your car with Pam or swabbing the car with baby oil. My local county extension office told me this afternoon that warm, soapy water is good to wash the bugs off. Newsprint is a great way to dry and rub down the windshield and grill. Why newsprint? Beats me. A friend in the fire department showed me when we washed fire trucks how great it works and even though I was in the newspaper business a lot longer than being in the fire suppression business, I never thought to ask about it.

Call your local county consumer or agriculture agent for more information and they might, most likely will, have some better information. I am not liable for anything that happens to your car if you follow my suggestions. I am not liable for anything, period. I am liable to eat something bad for me, but that is about as far as it goes. GIT OUT OF HERE! I was talking to those love bugs

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Big money my a**

“Hey Big Money,” the aging black man said to me outside the store. “How ’bout a quarter?”

“I don’t know five people with a nickle” I replied, wondering what in the hell he wanted with a quarter. Why didn’t he ask for a dollar? Or $2,500, like a dude in a wheelchair asked me for, in jest no doubt, outside a Houston convenience store awhile back.

People are always coming up to me asking me for money. Usually it’s the same story: “I am from out-of-town/Houston/Louisiana and I need just a dollar or two to buy some gas so I can get to wherever.”

Look, I realize these are hard times but the outside the grocery store or convenience ambush wears a little thin sometimes.

Also, why is it that I look like I would have any money? I drive a 12-year-old Toyota Tacoma with a few bruises and scratches and a cracked windshield, luckily, trending toward the passenger side from the middle. I say luckily because it doesn’t require replacement to get an inspection sticker each year.

I don’t know, maybe I am just a walking liberal. Maybe it’s the cheap clothes I wear. If I drove a late model Beemer or a BMW or Caddy and was wearing nice threads perhaps people would be reluctant to hit me up because they figure that the reason I have money is that I don’t give it away to pan-handlers. ¿Comprende?

Look, I know some people need help. But some want to squander what they have on some crack or some meth or some Christ in a Can, preferably 40-ounce.

I don’t carry a lot of cash on me, as in hardly any. If I carry any cash it usually for an emergency or to buy something with the exact change.

It isn’t that I am a tightwad. It’s just I don’t have a whole lot of money, the why of which isn’t important in this context.

Maybe it’s that I have a kind face that people want to bum money off me. Yes, a kind face. I don’t know what kind.

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For perfect irony, shouldn’t Michaele Salahi have run off with Mott the Hoople?

Here it is late Friday afternoon and I am falling down on the job. What job, you may ask? Good question. I don’t really get paid, or paid next to less than nothing, at least, for writing this. I am not really falling down either. Not yet. I might be later. I made another quick trip to and from Houston. This 160-180-mile roundtrip didn’t take me as long as the last one on Wednesday. And all I got was a stinkin’ ID card. But who cares, right?

Actually I have been trying to pitch a story or find a place to pitch a story since getting home from work. My long-time, big-city customer has become uber-local and it is much more difficult to sell that paper a story as a stringer as it used to be. I don’t take it personally though. The publication has long been a good customer and whenever they do need something, so far away from their readership base, in my area, they know they can count on me.

I hope folks have a great weekend and stay safe and don’t do anything stupid. I mean, I’m not saying anyone who reads this would do anything stupid, except, perhaps me.

Don’t run off with any rock stars either. Hey Tareq Salahi, seems like yo’ woman was “All the way to Memphis.“

 

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Mug of New England triple-homicide suspect gives Manson pics a run for its money

My friend Sally sent me a link to her local Massachusetts newspaper the other day with a story about a Hell’s Angel member who was arrested with two others in connection with the triple murder of three men who went missing in late August.

Caius Veiovis, one scary-looking mope, is thankfully being held without bond on multiple murder, kidnapping and witness intimidation charges. Photo courtesy of Berkshire County DA

It wasn’t so much the story that was compelling, being an alleged gang-related witness retaliation-type thing with three murders it would be interesting about anywhere in the U.S. What put the story off the charts and has given Sally’s city of Pittsfield worldwide attention is the mugshot of the Hell’s Angel member and suspect, Caius Veiovis, seen here.

Horn implants on the face of the 31-year-old gang member along with his “666” and other facial tats as well as painful-looking nasal piercings make Veiovis the face of evil perhaps not seen since the wild-eyed pictures of Charles Manson back in 1969. The daily newspaper The Berkshire Eagle reported that the mug has drawn worldwide attention. I guess going “viral” is an appropriate term for photos of someone who looks like this being spread around.

Berkshire County District Attorney David F. Capeless said Veiovis — who for God knows why changed his name from Roy Gutfinski — along with Adam Lee Hall, 34, and David Chalue, 41, were each charged with three counts of murder, kidnapping and witness intimidation. Capeless said in a press release that the remains of three victims, 44-year-old David Glasser, 58-year-old Edward Frampton and 47-year-old Robert Chadwell, all of Pittsfield, were found on Saturday and continued to be uncovered on Sunday.  Just to be fair I have decided to also run the mugs of his co-defendants since all three booking photos were provided by the Berkshire DA’s office.

David Chalue. In great company. Locked up with no bail. Photo courtesy of Berkshire County DA
Adam Lee Hall. No prize either. Photo courtesy of Berkshire County DA

The Boston Globe reported that Veiovis-Gutfinski had a criminal history which goes back to at least 1999 when he was arrested “after he and his teenage girlfriend allegedly slashed a 16-year-old’s back with a razor and drank the girl’s blood while they kissed one another.”

Can you spell “sociopath?” Sure you can. I’m sure many a person around the Berkshires share my friend Sally’s sentiment: “Sure glad he’s not walking the streets of Pittsfield anymore.”

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Bridges to nowhere fast

A quick trip to Houston today that I would just as soon forget — except for the fact I have to return for the same thing Friday — brought at least one pleasant surprise.

The reconstructed Interstate 10 bridge spanning the Trinity River, between Beaumont and Houston, has finally been completed after four years. Or perhaps, make that after 50 years as that is how old the bridge was. The structure arcs 75 feet above the river which along with the two lanes it had for so many years made it a little close quarters for my taste. I have long had this love-hate relationship with bridges which has eased somewhat over the years. Narrow bridges were never really my cup o’ soup so this fully-functional six-lane bridge, three lanes in either direction, makes traveling a bit more mentally comforting.

I think I was listening to Fred and A.J. on The Blitz, an early afternoon show on Houston’s sports-talk ESPN 97.5, and by the time I got to Anahuac on the return trip I realized I had already crossed the bridge a second time. I guess that’s the hallmark of a good road job. Or maybe it was the degenerate discussion Fred and A.J. were having which made me space out however many miles I had traveled. The Blitz discussion centered around an alleged one-night stand Sarah Palin had with NBA player Glen Rice in the late 1980s when she was a local TV sports reporter in Alaska. Rice was playing college hoops and was in Alaska for a tournament. Now, I admit that you are likely to hear anything on The Blitz, even some sports. That is why I tune in while driving during that time of day, it being such a well-rounded bastion of broadcasting that you just don’t see much of anymore.

As for Sarah’s supposed one-night stand. I say right here that I make no judgment of it on its face. But actually this alleged revelation comes via, where else but, the National Enquirer in the new Joe McGinnis book about Palin. This is the book that was being written while McGinnis moved in next door to the once almost 2/3-term (check my math) governor of Alaska.

The story, if you really want to know the nuts and bolts, is right here. Personally, like the old song says:

“Candy is dandy and liquor is quicker/You can drink all the liquor down in Costa Rica/Ain’t nobody’s business but my own.”

Now if she tries or has tried to be all hypocritical and sanctimonious about the subject, that might be a different matter. But to my knowledge, and that is just to my knowledge and that of no one else, I don’t know if she has either fessed up to the alleged affair or has been a hypocrite regarding this supposed happening. I speak of that particular subject. She has definitely been a hypocrite on other topics.

Nevertheless, this is surely one of those subjects that gets you off of talking about bridge construction in a hurry. Maybe that’s the Republican plan to prevent the president from talking about his jobs plans and getting millions of construction workers back to work. Of course, Palin was known as being for the “Bridge to Nowhere” before she was against it.

Wow, back to solid Democratic footing through all of that. I’m not sure how that happened.