In the Event I disappear in the Bermuda Triangle...

I’ll be on vacation next week, so you’ll have to get your weekly dose of juvenile humor, spiritual insight or political analysis somewhere else.


Surely there’s no shortage of internet writers who try to fit all of that under one banner, right? See, you probably won’t even notice I’m gone.

As for me, I’ll be on a cruise deep into the Bermuda Triangle, searching madly for a portal into another dimension. If I find it, I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. Assuming I don’t decide I like it better in Dimension X and decide to stay. (After all, there are probably no cicadas there).

In the event of my untimely demise while vacationing in Bermuda, my wife and I would like to put our affairs in order as follows:

The 23rd person to read this blog entry shall have custody over our cat, Sebastian. He is extraordinarily fluffy, so you also get the vacuum cleaner, as well as our remaining half a roll of paper towels, and floor cleaner to take care of those nasty hairballs he spits up. This might seem more like a punishment than a reward, but this blog was posted at the conclusion of lunch time, and that’s what you get for surfing the internet at work.

Our house shall be sold to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going to establish a charitable trust dedicated to ensuring recalcitrant neighbors clean their pools, to prevent the noisy intrusion of unwanted frogs into one’s neighborhood. I once thought this was an aggravation unique to me, but if one Googles “how to kill frogs” and “frog poison” there are literally thousands of search results addressing this problem, though none provide any answers that actually work. Trust me. Perhaps the charitable foundation can help.

My car I leave to our other cat, Trouble, in the hopes that she can learn to drive it and achieve stardom above and beyond that of Driving Cat Pioneer “Toonces,” who left us far too early, due to an unfortunate collision.

My other remaining possessions are dilapidated, disorganized and covered in cat vomit, and had very little value even before all of that. Thus, I leave them to that attorney who pissed me off last week, just to make him go through the hassle of sorting through them. Hopefully, while he’s going through my bookcase he’ll read through my diary and see what I really think of him.

In the event I am able to venture to Bermuda and back without mysteriously disappearing, being abducted by aliens or otherwise being transported outside of space and time as we know it, I hereby renounce all the above transactions.

Except that I still want that lawyer to know what I really think of him.

And come to think of it, Reader #23 can still have our cat.

Cicadas Attack!

That buzz you hear in the background isn't the onset of the end of the world--we're not so lucky. Judgment Day might have resulted in our collective eternal damnation, but at least it would have at least saved us from the Attack of the Killer Cicadas.

There are 1.5 million people in the greater Nashville area, but the Killer Attack Cicadas have us hopelessly outnumbered. Once upon a time, I thought the idea of strange-looking, locust-like bugs that emerge from the ground precisely every 13 summers was loveably eccentric, almost charming. Others thought the same.

We were horribly, horribly wrong.

We’ve woefully underestimated our opponent.

The cicadas are not only here, they are on the verge of becoming the Tyrannical Insect Overlords of Middle Tennessee. There is no escape. Cicadas are everywhere, and we are at their mercy. If you try to kill one, it laughs defiantly until five more instantly appear in its place. And they are just here; they are here to take over.

It wouldn’t be so bad if our conquerors weren’t so ugly. Words don’t exist to describe how disgusting these things are. If you picture a massive flying cockroach with gigantic, bulging, red eyes, and the legs of a gigantic fly, you get about half of the right mental image. Add in a pair of bright yellow wings and an exterior shell that they are constantly molting out of, and you have a rough idea of the terror cicadas present by their sheer presence.

Which is, of course, all part of their plan to take over.

The worst part is that as ugly as these things are, they are twice as loud. About noon, the male cicadas start their deafening, buzzing mating call and continue it until dusk. That their mating call doesn’t seem to work in those 8 hours is no surprise. A female cicada would have to be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy past drunk to ever agree to reproduce with something that looks that awful.

But that just means the males come back the next day, slightly louder and more, um, anxious, than they were the day before. So far, this has been going on for about two weeks. Two weeks from now, we’ll all have been driven insane.

Our current, human government has even warned citizens against cutting their grass during mating hours. This is because of the very real risk the amorous Female Attack Cicadas might hear the buzzing, notice that a lawnmower and its attached human look MUCH more attractive than their other mating options, and swarm the innocent bystander in a massive orgy.

It’s a disgusting thought, but really, who can blame them? Have you seen a male cicada?

The government tells us that the cicadas are harmless. They say that they (the cicadas) just want to mate and go back inside the ground for the next 13 years. I’m pretty sure the powers-that-be just don’t want us to panic because they realize resistance is futile. They are probably working out the terms of our unconditional surrender as we speak.

The cicadas are everywhere, too numerous to defeat.

Drive down the street, and a swarm of cicadas attack your windshield.

Sit in your house and they crawl at your window, plotting their advance into your home. Open your car door to enter, and they swarm in, leaving you trapped and at their mercy.

Walk down the sidewalk, they fly at your face. One can get a workout just walking 200 feet and dodging a swarming insect every two seconds. That is, if you can manage to get out of their way.

It’s like a plague out of Exodus, only God wasn’t nearly angry enough at the Egyptians to allow something like this. Instead, He went easy on them and took their firstborn sons.

Perhaps you think I’m overstating things.

Perhaps you are their next victim.

I don’t plan to be. Some claim that cicadas only buzz around for a month before the desperate female cicadas, noticing the bar is closing, give in to the advances of their obnoxious pursuers, allowing the cicadas go away for 13 more years. In a month, they say, the cicadas will be gone.

But why would they want to leave when their battle is already won?

Regardless of their intent, we can’t afford to wait it out. We must evacuate while we still can, flee Middle Tennessee and hope the cicadas will be content with controlling Nashville. Perhaps they’ll decide they like country music and be content to not to advance further.

But we must act now. If we don’t do something, a month from now a horde of gas powered lawnmower/cicada hybrids may well be mowing us down left and right.

Locked Out

Why no blog last week?   For once, it isn't my fault.  Due to technical difficulties, I've been locked out of blogger for the last week. 

Just like when you lock your keys in your car and can see inside but can't get in, the blog has been up, but I've haven't been able to get inside to post anything.

It's finally working again now.  I promise a full post within 24 hours (unless Blogger goes down again), but in the meantime:  thank you.

Despite my inability to post in the last week, the blog has gotten, by far, the most page hits in its history this month, and there's still a week left. 

Good job, audience. 

I'll meet you back here tonight. 

Shaun Alexander: the NFL MVP Who Saved my Behind

I promised not to use this space to shill for my (Smash Internet Hit!) sports column.  If you want to read that sort of thing, you know where to find it.  You clicked here, rather than there, for a reason.

As unfathomable as it is to a someone like me, I know some of you don't care about the Miami Dolphins or Alabama's football team, even when it relates to something important, like who will win the battle to be our back-up nosetackle the season after this one.

I get it. 

Well, actually I don't. 

But I will pretend like I do, so you don't break up with me as an audience. 

But this week's column is a rare exception, because it's about one of my favorite people ever.  The first and only NFL Most Valuable Player who was also one of my friends. 

Before he was a star with the Seattle Seahawks, Shaun Alexander was my college classmate.  We graduated in the same class.  I was the sports editor of my school paper, the Crimson White, so I got to spend a fair amount of time with him before he went on the become one of the greatest players in NFL history.

He was the only player I ever interviewed who answered questions as long as anyone would ask.  A few times, I kept asking until no one else was around, and we moved from talking about football to life, religion and whatever else.

Shaun and I shared a common faith, though his probably exceeded mine. 

Alabama is a party school like few on earth.  Coming from a sheltered conservative Christian background, I struggled with immensely with the alcoholic culture of my school, but the ability to have encouraging conversations with the star of the football team, who faced some of the same issues, made me feel a little less alone.  Maybe at some level he felt the same way, except considerably less in awe of his conversation partner.  

The first time I met Shaun remains my favorite encounter.  As a 19-year-old freshman, I had an short interview scheduled with Alabama’s entire stable of running backs on a hot summer day in Tuscaloosa.

It was my first high-profile article. Alexander was a rising sophomore with promise, but he was buried on the depth chart at that point. I had been assigned to write an article previewing Alabama’s running game for the upcoming season. Alexander who entered the season as the third string backup, was to be a mere sidenote to the story.

Until he was the only one who bothered to show up.

When the other players didn't show, I feared Shaun would leave too.  After all, he had showed up to an interview for a story that couldn't be completed, and his interviewer was a bumbling college kid who probably didn't inspire a lot of confidence or provide any obvious incentive to stay. 

But Shaun not only submitted to an interview, he talked for nearly an hour, providing enough material, even beyond the questions I asked, to bail out a desperate 19-year old rookie writer with enough material to make a good story. And then some.

I became a Shaun Alexander fan that day.  Had he not taken the time to show up and go above and beyond in helping out a kid who obviously didn't know what he was doing (or even successfully schedule an interview), I would have bombed my first big assignment and maybe never gotten another one. 

Shaun saved me that day.  So, I take today to pay him back with a tribute to his career, now that his place in Alabama lore has started to be overlooked (though it will never fade) in favor of more recent stars.  You can find it here.

I still owe him one, though.  We've lost touch over the years since college, but if I ever get a hold of him, I'll thank him again. 

Ironically, while the two other Alabama running backs I was supposed to have interviewed that day were too big-time to talk to me, neither one of them ever went on to accomplish anything professionally. 

Unlike Shaun Alexander.  The NFL MVP who once saved my behind.