I might be Speedy Gonzales

 I guess I need to define that title for clarity and levity. “Speedy Gonzales is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies series of cartoons. He is portrayed as The Fastest Mouse in all Mexico with his major traits being the ability to run extremely fast, speaking with an exaggerated Mexican accent and also speaking Spanish.”

I might just be the fastest mouse in Baytown. I guess I should be apologetic for stating this, but shaking my haid, I simply can’t. If I were to be asked why I appear to be so confidant, I would have to admit, “Because it is reinforced on a daily basis by the slower and sluggish masses.”

At the behest of my youthful Bride, I have tried to reign in my status as “Speedy Gonzales”, but “No va a pasar.” For some bizarre reason, she claims “You are just high-strung, honey!”, but we both know it is not me, but everyone around me... except her, of course. We both understand that my Bride of 41 years is skating along in my wave of speedy activity and sometimes objects to my special abilities.

I do my best to relay the simple fact that everyone around me is moving and thinking slower than me, but she is not really onboard. My observations when in traffic fail to bring her over to my way of thinking… for some inexplicable reason.

On the surface, it appears I am jumpy when it comes to a traffic light turning green, but the truth of the matter is, I am simply watching the light and when it turns green… I go. I also habitually come to a complete stop before turning right on red, which slaps me directly in the minority. No rolling stops for me. I habitually use my blinker also and usually put it on far in advance to my actual turn.

Yes, maybe I do jack rabbit from the line and often will get up the speed limit (where I stay) only to open a gap of an eighth mile between me and the cars behind me. Now here’s the weird thing. By the time I get to a quarter mile from the light, the cars that were with me at the light will all blow past me. Now who then is jack rabbiting? They were lento to go when the light turned green (cell phone alert), but after they get going, they usually blow past me 10 miles an hour over the speed limit.

If you are a driver who actually is applying the rules we were taught when we sought getting a drivers license, then you know exactly what I experience. If you fall into the sluggish group, you most likely don’t know I am talking about you. I tell folks we are living out the Walking Dead when it comes to a good number of our driving society.

Add in the other bizarre things zombie drivers do and it’s a wonder more people aren’t killed or injured on our streets. No too many moons ago I was about 50 yards behind a car when they suddenly stopped. I mean they put on the brakes and stopped in the lane. I hit my brakes and went past them at maybe 20 mph. Guess what they were doing. You guessed it; they were staring at their phone. I shook my head in confusion and muttered something along the lines of, “Que estúpido idiota.”

Like my padre before me, I have never caused or been the reason someone wrecked an automobile or truck. Maybe its because when we drove, we actually paid attention to the road in front and back of us and not everything else. Call me Speedy Gonzales if you like and I won’t be offended, but if you don’t get going at a red light and are in front of me… You’re going to get the horn.

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Zombies and the 70 virgin delusion

This is Baytown Bert in Baytown, Texas and this is Podcast 016  

I have a romantic fascination with the end times and when I say romantic, I do not mean I like the prospect.  In fact, I do not want to live in a post-apocalyptic world.  Only a delusional fool would want to.   

October 16^th, season 5 of the Walking Dead premiers and I will be glued to the tube to watch what Rick does to prove that they “Don’t know who they are fooling with!”  I have a very personal interest in this series, as I went to school for 2 plus years just north of where the story takes place in Atlanta, Georgia, land of kudzu and red clay.  It brings back a lot of memories, except the zombie part, of course.

The end times… the Biblical term associated with Christians vanishing, the aftermath, and the Book of Revelation.   Not to ruffle feathers, or get into a war of what is going to actually happen, I swerve hard and go into the world of fiction – which incidentally can be manipulated at will or speculated to – to death.  This is the world I fantasize over and the one I am directing this column towards, so relax.   There’s even a little levity thrown in.

I want to go on record and state firmly that I like my conditioned air, my electricity, my fast Internet connection, etcetera, etcetera.   I prepare for anarchy, but never want to actually live it.  I like to sweat at the gym and the hiking trails, but I abhor sleeping, well, sticky.  I did that for 2 years in Southeast Asia. I like eating when I want to, but learned after Hurricane Ike that MRE’s can be quite tasty.

Living minute by minute and watching your back with a loaded AR-15 is really exciting on TV, but in real life?  Nightmarish.  Can you imagine pulling into the Donut Wheel on Garth Road to get your morning boudin kolaches and seeing a bombed out store front?  Horrors!  Not to mention, the kind and friendly proprietor would most likely be, well, he would be absent or even ghoulish in appearance?

One reason I love watching the Walking Dead is the zombie arch villain could be replaced with anything from the weather to an alien attack and it would still depict anarchy and be an accurate depiction of how it would be if the government could not maintain law and order.  It could even be an Ebola outbreak…

However, the criminal element is always involved regardless and the one I fear the most likely antagonist we will encounter in a time of anarchy. 

Regardless of who the booger man is, the criminal element will always prey upon society.  It happened in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit the city and this element was portrayed as victims for the most part.  Most could have left, but stayed to exploit vacant city.  It happened in Ferguson, Missouri also.  The criminal element turned a peaceful rally into something the local police could not contain.

We live in a real world where actual fanatics believe they will be welcomed into the bosom of Abraham for killing people who do not believe or practice their peculiar brand of twisted and perverse dogma.  They erroneously believe they will be rewarded with 70 very dead, but chaste young girls if they die in battle with the name of their god on their lips.  It sounds like something from an Stephen King novel and just as preposterous.  70 dead girls; now that is some reward.  It doesn’t add up any more than a dead zombie walking around biting a living human for a hot meal.  It’s impure horror/fantasy fiction.  This 70 virgin reward is the greatest lie and astoundingly more people are signing on every day. 

In a country where we believe in tolerating other religions, this particular one for the most part is lying low and to many of us, this is a clear sign of complicity.  I would love – love to see a mass movement in this country of said religion openly condemning these fanatics.  I’m not holding my breath though.  According to some “experts” at least one third of the practitioners in this country actually agree with the radicals.  They choose to remain quiet, much like the mutants in the Walking Dead.  This causes many of us to watch them with suspicion.

To me and many other Americans, they are nothing more than flesh-eating zombies, at least until they come alive and condemn this aberrant and devilish behavior toward other religions and the American way of life in particular.

Now after saying all that, I know that I will ruffle the feathers of one vitriolic and sanctimonious liberal neighbor, who will swear that somehow, I am calling Barack Hussein Obama a zombie, but I’m not.   I am however suspicious the President’s rabid walkers most likely are themselves mindless followers of his weak and flawed leadership.  Only the brain-dead could prop up the man’s actions as beneficial to we, the American people.  It’s as if he rolls the dice every day to find out what can be done “for the good of the people” and regardless of what he does, his people get all giddy over it.

No, I do not want to see America brought to its knees by religious zealots, Ebola, bad White House planning, or... yikes, zombies.  I want to see it prosper.  I want to wave at a cop knowing they have my back.  I want to eat at the local taqueria or juicy hamburg joint and sit in my air conditioned abode and watch make believe zombies get slain by desperate American fighters on the tube with my doggies curled up next to me, but there’s always that danged criminal element to watch for and thus, I will continue to prepare for the… end times.