~ MEME for Dana ~

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What were three of the stupidest things you have done in your life?

1. Well, I once strung a heavy bungi cord from one side of a helecopter to the other and hung underneath the thing with a M-60 taking potshots at whoever would come out to gawk at me while our semi-nuts pilot tried to skim me through the treetops of VietNam. That was pretty stupid. Somehow, the pilot got nicked instead of me. Shot in the rear end... through the wafer thin skin of an Iriquois gunship, through the Marine issue pilots seat, through his greenies. The sucker couldn't hardly walk for a week after they dug the slug out of him.

2. My friend Stan and I once went up to kill some guys in Ocala who had stolen Stan's Sportster. We went up to the trailer door and used the 12 ga. door removal system, only to discover that we had the wrong trailer. Duh. Some old lady came out of the back of the trailer, her hair up in curlers and a cigarette dangling from her mouth, gave us a surley look, and asked "What the fuck do you idiots want?". What can you say? We beat feet out of the mangled trailer and headed north. Never did find that damned scooter. Yeah... that was pretty stupid.

3. When I was a budding young college student at the venerable U of F (uh... loooong go), I had a job working at a meat packing plant there in Center Hill. I'd work on the loading dock all night, packing trailer trucks full of meat, and then I'd drive up to Gainesville for classes all day. My system was to sleep on weekends. Of course, things never work out as planned. I would take upppers to keep my eyes open. Mostly bennies. Anyhow, on one auspicious occasion I had a paper to write for one of my favorite teachers, Dr. Dzubian (one of those rare math teachers who actually spoke English). My typewriter was on the fritz (typewriter? Yeah, before indoor plumbing. You knew I was ooooold, right?) so I borrowed my father's IBM Selectric. Remember those things? Anyhow, it had an odd keyboard, and besides my old man used it for doing spreadsheets so it was laid out oddly. I got all set up without really paying too much attention to what I was doing... I'd been running for about six or seven days on coffee and benzedrine, and slammed out this paper... didn't bother to proofread the damned thing, just turned it in and went on my merry way. A few days later Dzubian returned the papers to the class. Mine had a note saying "See me" on the ungraded paper. Huh? I looked and realized that I had got my fingers on the wrong keys of the typewriter occasionally, so the text sort of faded back and forth in and out of sanity. Just every once in a while the workasdrudn lkae formbwerk loobercrum ai? Needless to say, Dzubian became convinced that I was on some sort of serious drugs. Now... some of you may know that I am a retired college professor who used to work at UCF in Orlando... sister institution of UF in Gainesville... faculty member at both schools. And for ten years I shared an office with Chuck Dzubian. Hell of a guy. But on several occasions I have caught him telling a story about how he "saved me from drugs" back in those good old days. Yup... that was pretty stupid.

4. Since I suspect that it was the VMan who put you up to this Dana... I'll let him tell you about our mutual Gainesville friend Harry Crews and the chicken fights in Yalaha. Powerful stuff that corn liquor.

If you were given a time machine that functioned, and you were allowed to only pick up to five people to dine with, who would you pick?

1. Machiavelli. I once stood on the exact spot in Florence where they burned Savaranola and realized that you can see Machiavelli's office window from there.

2. The unnamed captain of the fleet of the Chinese junks that circumnavigated the earth 500 years before Columbus set sail and discovered America. There's a stone road still there in the Bahamas where he careened his ships to refit for the journey home. Amazing.

3. Ernest Hemingway. Just because my dad loved the son of a bitch.

4. Norma Jean. The most beautiful, and vulnerable, woman who has ever lived. What a babe!

5. Nicholas Tesla. The inventor of direct current. Can you "discover" something like that? Tesla loved to built huge coils, thus creating huge magnetic fields. Then he would invite people to stand inside the coils. Just for laughs. Your hair would stand on end and then.. and then... He once invited Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) over to his apartment in New York for a demonstration of a Tesla Coil... and didn't tell him that one of the side effects of being immersed in an intense magnetic field was that it would cause your bowels to loosen. Remember the pictures of Clemens you've seen? He wore white linen suits. Hehehe. Just a joke Sam. Come on.

If you had three wishes that were not supernatural, what would they be?

1. I wish that Bill Gates would leave it all to me. Hey... it's my wish dammit!

2. I wish that I spoke Spanish. If you only knew how hard it is to get fed in Cuban restaurants. Same in Brazil... no.... that's Portugese. Well, shit!

3. I wish that I could meet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Name two things you regret your city not having, and two things people should avoid.

1. WiFi. How do you expect to stay ahead of things when you're constantly tied to the damned phone? Free yourself from MaBell! We are entitled... I said ENTITLED!... to unlimited access. Ahem. Sorry.

2. Regret? I have no regrets. Well, maybe a couple. But we won't talk about those sorrows. It's better to keep that between ourselves. You understand. Don't you?

3. Avoid? Well, I've always thought that it would be a good idea to avoid shooting semi-automatic handguns. Those damned things have a slide that leaps back when it fires and will bite the webbing between your thumb and pointing finger. Damn that hurts!

Name one thing that has changed your life.

A woman who was very very close to me used to change my diapers. Unfortunately, she's no longer with us. I have a redhead now who does that job (boy, will I be punished for that.)

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