Tuesday, February 28, 2017

From Chosin to Memphis-a travelogue.

It was the summer of 1953 and I found myself in a cheap hotel room on the bad side of Memphis.

All I had was a cheap suit, slightly frayed at the cuffs, Hathaway shirt and silk tie in need of cleaning, half a pint of inexpensive bourbon, a Smith and Wesson Military and Police .38 revolver,  thirty bucks in my wallet-the last of my military separation money -and a hopped up Oldsmobile Rocket 88 parked out on the street.

My head hurt with a sort of kerblang like the sound of an anti tank round bouncing off the hull of a North Korean T34 tank. Maybe it was the booze, or the  fight I got into in a bar on Beale Street. I don't remember getting hit with a sap and how I got back to my hotel.

And there was the small matter of the dead bar girl parked in the double bed I'd crawled out of a few minutes ago. Pretty, petite, a little shopworn to be sure, I wasn't choosy.

One thing I knew for sure. Memphis in the summer was going to be tolerable in a way that winter up on the Chosin Reservoir made you dream of.

I'd heard about Elvis, Jerry Lee and the Perkins boys and this new thing they called rock and roll, and I knew there was money in it if I could get my hands on the safe, metaphorically speaking.

Somebody did not wish me well. I carefully removed all traces of my presence in the room, tore the register page out of the guest log at the clerk's desk and pocketed it, and called Lieutenant Ridley at Memphis Homicide.  I told him that there was a dead bar girl in room 307 of the Hotel Callaway and hung up the phone.

He'd find me soon enough but I needed a couple days to figure this thing out.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Horse Dick Smugglers Caught In the Act, or, You Can't Get Away With Anything Anymore.

It's another fun filled weekend for news if you've been eyeing the papers lately.

First there was the plot to do away with the male emerald ash borer by preying on his basest instincts-a taste for sex where he hasn't been properly introduced-and now even more fun filled facts.



How's that, you say? Why, read on.

The Washington Post-and other fine news services-report this week that on arriving on a passenger flight from Mongolia, the suitcases of a traveler were opened up to reveal 42 pounds of horse meat including 13 pounds of horse genitals.

You can find the story here.

That's right, folks. Right there in Dallas, Texas, horse dick smuggling is going on under our very noses. The customs folks were stunned. One inspector said "We opened up the suitcases and there it was."

The emphasis, of course is on "it" which tells you all you need to know about this story.

The Post goes on to relate that in another instance a traveler from Africa attempted to bring in not one, not two, but three smoked monkeys in his luggage. There they were with their little faces peeking out.

It gets worse.

The St. Neots Citizen-finest li'l ole satire sheet in Cambridgeshire in the U.K.-suggests that finding horese meat in burgers is because of too many interspecies parties in the pasture.

It just gets better and better. I can't wait for next week.

Horse laffs all around.





Saturday, February 18, 2017

Purple Passion Leads To Ruination: How The Emerald Ash Borer Met Its Match

Once again the pesky emerald ash borer is in the news but it is not what you think.

Just as a brief recap, the emerald ash borer is a parasite imported from China that has a weakness for ash trees. It burrows in and makes itself right at home in the cambium layer and pretty much eats the poor old ash tree out of house and home until it conks out for good. The emerald ash borer first showed itself in Michigan in 2002 and since then it has been spreading steadily westward until now, about half the counties in Iowa are playing unwilling hosts to the pesky bug. If you're east of the Missouri River your state is likely host to the critter.

But there's good news.

An international group of scientists has discovered that the male of the species' predilection for ...how do we say this politely...coitus, lots and lots of coitus... can be used to do the male of the species in and thereby quell the invasion.

How's it done, you say? Applied technology to the rescue.

A dead female was sprayed with nickel and a mold was made which can be used to stamp out thousands of copies of the female of the species out of plastic.

A snazzy paint job and a small power supply capable of delivering a 4,000 volt blast completes the decoy and it is then set out to strut its stuff to the male of the species, or so it seems.

The end is rather abrupt and unpleasant, so we suppose.

 It's a homily on popping a chubby in the wrong places under the misapprehension that a night of purple passion is soon to follow.

It thus plays off the basest instincts of males everywhere, and we cannot help but feel sympathetic toward the little fellers. We suppose that thousands of workshops in China, having turned out zillions of inflatable sex dolls of the human species will now bend their efforts to cranking out emerald ash borer analogues, and we here at the Dougloid Towers can only stand back in awe and wonder at the ingenuity of the Chinese workshop, if they pull this off.