Many years ago, I did a ride-along with a Baltimore County cop who was also moonshining a night or two a week as a pizza guy. He told me that he never ticketed elderly drivers. “They freed the world,” he said, a reference to the Second World War. “It’s the least I can do to show my gratitude.”

Yesterday in New London, Connecticut,

An 89-year-old man driving through a crowd at a summer festival panicked after striking one pedestrian and lurched his station wagon through the throng, injuring 27 people, city officials and witnesses said.

My dad and uncle took my grandfather’s license away from him when he blew a stop. This was just a year or two before he died, he was probably eighty-nine or thereabouts (he died at ninety-one, if memory serves). He could no longer operate a motor vehicle safetly (then again, I play with diecast toys in the car, so who am I to speak?), and it was time to give up driving.

I don’t think madatory driving tests every year for drivers over the age of seventy-five or eighty is all that outrageous of a proposal. For that matter, I don’t think the current system bringing new drivers onto the road is all that wonderful either — I favor cannings for running stop signs, and executions for tailgating.

I want to go see the new Superman movie. I’ll probably wait until it comes out on DVD. I’d also like to go see the sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean, but again, I’ll probably wait for DVD.

Last night, I watched — at bumfuck early in the morning — a two hour special on the history of Superman in television and film. I saw a clip of George Reeves on “I Love Lucy” as himself showing up as Superman to the kids’ party then pulling her off the balcony. I saw a Superman broadway clip where he’s singing about beating the shit out of bad guys while loudly proclaiming “Bam!” and “Biff!” when he beats ‘em up. I never knew that Leslie Ann Warren (Mrs. Scarlet from Clue) once played Lois Lane, or that the producers of Smallville didn’t know that Annette O’Toole was in Superman III when they auditioned her for the role of Mrs. Kent.

Anyway, it’s been years since I’ve seen the Chris Reeves in Superman: The Movie, so when I got out of work, I swung by Target to pick up a copy. I’d remembered seeing tons of copies there earlier in the week, but I hadn’t picked one up because apparently I needed to see the two-hour sales pitch (on A&E, I think) to install that desire in me.

I scoured the DVD section of Target to no avail. They had no copies of Superman! Red shirted fascists! I checked the DVD endcaps at the registers, but again, no Superman! I checked the DVD endcap in the toy section — still no Superman! I’d remembered dozens of copies of the film, but I guess everyone got cape fever and cleaned the shelves, well, clean.

Having spent more time in Target than I wished, I made for the door. As I was walking past the second endcap, I turned my head and came to a complete and sudden stop.

As you might imagine, I was promptly run over by the cart behind me.

Anyway, on the endcap were several copies of Superman. I hadn’t looked directly at the endcap — instead, I’d stood several feet away at an angle, and hadn’t seen the DVD I was looking for because my sight was blocked by the stack of DVDs next to Superman.

Anyway, the point is, I’m either blind or an idiot. Whichever.

Apparently someone called the trash-people about the dumpster full of rotting seafood, because quite thankfully, the smell was not present at work today. Even if it had been, however, it seems the slowness we experienced because of the holiday mid-week imploded and we were busy — I had twenty deliveries and was steadily on the road for most of the day, a welcome change of pace from usual Sunday sit-around-and-read.

I did make a bit further progress into the William Manchester biography of last century’s most important political leader, Winston S. Churchill, The Last Lion: Visions of Glory. (Of additional interest, the fact that William Manchester was once a reporter for local paper The Baltimore Sun). This book is really fascinating, I can’t describe it beyond that word (but “amazing”, “incredible”, “unbelievable”, “exciting”, and “gripping” come to mind were I to try), and I’m learning lots of new stuff — for one, I now know what the British Boer War was, and where and why it was fought, and how it shattered the illusions of an invincible British military, I learned about British military engagements in Afghanistan, and I learned the role a young cavalry officer/journalist named Winston Churchill played in both.

I also learned how a certain word came into the vernacular.

From pg. 253:

In describing the enemy’s practice of hiding in the hills and firing down at the moving British column, Churchill introduced his readers to a new world. Such a rifleman, he wrote, was “a ’sniper’, as they are called in the Anglo-Indian army.”

So, whenever you hear or read anything about snipers, remember that in addition to leading the charge against Adolf Hitler, and providing the moral support for the long and bloodied fight when Britain stood alone against that evil, remember also that without Churchill, you’d've been hearing about the “marksman” who terrorized the greater DC area several years ago.

Yeah, it’s not quite the same legacy.

The Franchise is located next to a seafood deli. The management of the seafood deli apparently thought they would have a bigger July 4th salesday than they actually did. The odor tipped us off a few days ago, actually — they threw all their expired seafood into the dumpster, a scent very noticeable even in the parking lot out front, but very very noticeable even in our own shop, even with the door closed.

The smell isn’t detectable at the front of the Franchise, in the lobby, kitchen, walk-in, or store office. Step into the back, however, where the box-cubby, the sinks, the bathroom, Greg’s office, the laundry room and the storage room are, and the scent is ridiculously present.

Have you ever smelled seafood rotting in the hot sun? This is how I can describe it in words:

Imagine half a dozen men walk into an enclosed room, whip out their penises, and piss all over the floor. They piss and piss and piss. Mustard yellow urine, running and pooling and congealing. And then they leave. And that’s the smell of rotting seafood — urine. A big pool of yellow fucking urine. Same thing, really. It’s disgusting and its nasty and it is what I get to smell for many hours today at what will almost certainly be a very very very slow day.

I should get hazzard pay!

The Unofficial Battlestar Galactica blog has it on good authority that Sci-Fi will kick off Battlestar Galactica’s third season on October 6th, at the same Friday night 10pm timeslot it has held for the previous two seasons. I’m thinking about live-blogging the season premiere. Who is a bigger geek than me … ? NO ONE!

I’m rethinking my concept for Zeus. I won’t lie — I want something that looks like a WWII destroyer. I’ve been reading a lot of fiction, and histories, and biographies lately about the people and the events that shaped this modern world, and it’s hard to escape the romantacism of the naval aspect of that war. I’m smart enough to know that there is nothing romantic about war, but a paragraph from CS Forrester’s “Sink the Bismarck!” comes to mind, but not enough for me to do aught but remember the bare outline — a British task force is ordered to sail from Gibraltar, despite the stormy seas, the imagery is that of an aircraft carrier and half a dozen destroyers rising and falling and swaying side to side against the powerful waves.

So I’m going to take a notebook to work tomorrow — er, today — and sketch out some ideas for a redesign. I want something bristling and prickly and looking like a spaceized-WWII destroyer. I mean, as much as possible, what with space engines and all. I’ll have to scrap the hull that I’ve got so far — joy!

I was lying on my bed talking on the phone to Z., dangling my feet off the end. I call it a bed, but really, it’s a futon that I use exclusively as a bed. Anyway, Z. is drunk and called me and she’s telling me about all her drunk exploits, when something furry and sharp lodges in my left big toe. I jump, and notice Tippy’s furry face through the slats that support what would be the arm-rest (if I used my bed as a sofa), and a paw raised in attack. Tippy hasn’t attacked my dangling feet in years, which is, incidently, why I dangle my feet at all. Realizing I was on to her plan of attack, she ducked out of sight, but no sooner did I recommence dangling then she recommenced her attack.