Seriously! While out with the dogs this morning I passed the time pulling the dead stuff off the various plants… as one does. Including the sugarcane, part of my ‘survival garden’. Afterward it felt like pins were sticking out of my fingers and arms… and they were!

The full monty:

I had to take macros to finally find which component held the tiny filaments. Got them out of my fingers, but they blend in so well with my blonde arm hair those will have to fall out on their own. Geez, not even safe from sugar!

It’s always an adventure in Florida. Have you seen Writersblock’s snake in the fence? If there is a graphical metaphor for this state, that may well be it.

Turns out I did have some help, in the form of a cuban anole. Tail-free, courtesy a predator. He was especially coy with me as I stalked him from one side of the tree to the other, usually allowing only one eye to show.

Click to embiggen.

Rick “let’s get to work” Scott won the Republican primary for governor of Florida last night.

I did not vote for him. I’d vowed ‘no career politicians’ this year but even flip-flopping career pol Bill McCollum looked better than Scott. But it’s like Russian roulette; you know you’re going to get screwed any way you play…

I didn’t vote for Scott for a number of reasons, including his obvious lying about Columbia/HCA’s fraud. I heard an interview in which he vehemently denied that he’d even been questioned about the matter. Add at least two robo-calls a day for weeks. Oh, and there were fliers in the mail every day as well. Big, glossy bitches that really didn’t say anything.

The best we can hope for with Scott is that he carries his money moxie over from the private sector. Floridians can use it; the market value of our house was just cut in half, according to the county tax assessor.

This was my job right out of high school:

That led to jobs bussing and waiting tables while I went to college, until construction is what I settled on and started the process of climbing up the ladder, at 20-something all over again by doing this initially:

I dug my ass off until I could convince those around me to let me try my hand at carpentry. I made noise until I was sent to work with the trim carpenters where I worked at the time, and I eventually was able to hone the skills necessary to do this kind of work:

Stay with me, folks, because I’m not just posting some self-congratulatory and egotistical claptrap. I’m trying to make a point.

The work I do, pictured here, is the rule, not the exception, of the type of work in which I have been involved since I began my construction career. In spite of that, my small business, a single-owner operation, went down in flames last year. Now I can’t get a job washing dishes*. I am hoping that will change soon.

I promised a point, here it is:

In my youth I ascribed to the canard that “illegals are doing the work we won’t”, in spite of how I came up through not one, but TWO industries as a white American and the son of fairly affluent parents. I don’t think I am any different than most people in this country that have the drive to want to excel and be the master, to a great extent, of their own destiny. But now, we are being invaded by illegals who will do all sorts of tasks that they are not skilled or qualified to perform, for a hell of a lot less than I can because I, like other Americans, am not willing to lower my standard of living. The irony is that, in wanting a better life by coming here illegally and working for slave wages, undocumented workers are destroying the way of life we, and they, CHERISH. If we continue to let illegals flood this country, we are doomed.

Call me a racist, but I hope this legislation passes, as I am poised to move to Florida in hopes that I can once again find an opportunity to do what I do best.

*Hyperbole: An extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally…

I’ll see your puny little banana spider lookalike and raise you this hairy mofo… it’s almost as big as my hand.

Big ass spider

Doncha just love Florida?? Went out to check the gate after the yard guys left and met this charming native on the path. Oh, it must die.

Not if they’re free to move about the rest of the country, like, say, PENNSYLVANIA:

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Nicaraguan mother Lorena Aguilar hawks a television set and a few clothes on the baking sidewalk outside her west Phoenix apartment block.

A few paces up the street, her undocumented Mexican neighbor Wendi Villasenor touts a kitchen table, some chairs and a few dishes as her family scrambles to get out of Arizona ahead of a looming crackdown on illegal immigrants.

“Everyone is selling up the little they have and leaving,” said Villasenor, 31, who is headed for Pennsylvania. “We have no alternative. They have us cornered.”

I’m sorry, I have little sympathy since we are offering up all of OUR crap in garage sales in anticipation of moving to the Keys to live with a relative until we can hopefully peddle our LEGAL asses around and find jobs, something that is not forthcoming here (or California, for that matter) in spite of my considerable talents as a construction worker.

It sounds to me as if the law, not even in effect, is working splendidly.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist called a special session to consider placing an amendment on the November ballot banning off shore oil drilling.

It went badly for the man now seeking a U.S. Senate seat. Or did it? Why play out such a political game of chess unless he sought to gain votes by being seen as a ‘man of the people’?
It’s a win-win for Crist, who supports a drilling ban.

A showdown between the Republican-led Legislature and Gov. Charlie Crist that has been building up for months exploded on Tuesday as state legislators soundly rejected Crist’s push for a constitutional ban on near-shore oil drilling.

The special session lasted a little more than two hours, but it had plenty of political theater as House leaders blamed Crist for calling them to town, and Senate leaders blamed both Crist and House Republicans for not doing anything to help people and businesses hurt by the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ultimately, the aborted meeting will likely be remembered less for its purpose than for the stamp it put on Florida politics.

Crist, running as an independent for U.S. Senate, burned what few bridges remained with the party he once led by forcing Republicans to push for a ban on an industry that many have strongly supported.

But with a new poll showing 70 percent of Floridians in favor of seeing the amendment on the ballot, Crist may have helped his Senate campaign by appearing to be on the popular side of an emotional issue.

Gainesville Sun

I support Marco Rubio for U.S. Senate.

Four freaking plugins and several tufts of hair later, my cool little video of rain is not posted here.

Walked out to the front porch this morning because it was ‘monsooning’ -that’s what we call it, anyway. What made it all really lovely, aside from the noise of the downpour and the fact that I wouldn’t have to water the grass today, was the rainwater streaming down the trunk of this one palm tree. It was incredibly relaxing to watch and I wanted to capture that. Unfortunately my camera is not a worthwhile video cam and though the little movies look fine on my pc they look like dreck when exported in pretty much any format that I can embed. Especially flash. And the water cascading down the trunk is so subtle… it just didn’t work. And that’s why there’s really no post here. Ack!

HAPPIER NEWS -

Someone is stealing our mail -oh, joy- but they didn’t get my postcard from Writersblock postmarked from Hogsmeade!!!!! I can’t make out the date, but it could be opening day, as she and her hubby stood in line for several hours to get into the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal… and they’ve already been back!

That’s one of the things I miss about living in Orlando… the parks.

Anyway, that perked me up; thanks, WB!