The thing about me being in Florida and utilizing a motor vehicle is this: if you have a straw hat placed in the back dash, then you will be passed. If you have a collection of stuffed dogs and or cats and or The Villages teddy bears stacked around your rear window, then you will be passed. If you continue to hunch over your steering wheel like it’s your final resting place, you will be passed. If the wrinkles in your forehead overlap your eyes and therefore prevent you from the task of seeing and comprehending the road, then you will be passed. If your car is the size of an ocean liner and the road is the size of a mud puddle, you will be passed. If you are in deep conversation about the precautionary measures of dementia (which you should no doubt be your sole concern) then you should continue this conversation in the comfort of your magic numbers bed and will thusly be passed. If you must live in and around The Villages in land of the double yellow and you refuse to go the required number of miles per hour, you will be passed.

I will pass you. Passing will occur.

Brief update: I work at Flamingo Bay tanning salon now, owned by my step-mother as Bob Evans has burned down. By burning down I mean I do not work there anymore. I have these thoughts:

If you continue to come into the tanning salon and refuse to wear protective goggles, you will be scorned. If you do not comply to FL law and accept my polite offering of eyewear, you will be noted in the TanTrack system as a fool and receiver of lobotomies. If you continue to lecture me about the tanning bed in your home, I will label you a tanorexic and report you to the tanning rehab center located in Las Vegas, NV. If you keep coming in a half hour before close to singe your skin while I vacuum, you will be turned away. If you insist upon placing a towel over your head as protection from harmful UVB rays, you will become blind. If you do not adhere to the rules about keeping your children outside of the room in which you crispify yourself, I will feed them to the The Villages bison. Might as well. If you fail to understand the control factor of one tan in twenty-four hours, I will deny you access to the fake sun you covet. If you insist upon commenting on all the jungle furniture and where it was begot, I will not tell you because I do not know nor do I care. If you retaliate to my “hello, how are you” with a grimace and half cross eyed tan-induced gaze, I will judge you and reaffirm silently to myself that you will die cooked, scared and alone.

Tanners of central Florida, beware. I am going to stage a coup. You grill yourselves like fresh caught fish and your skin bubbles up like potato chips. You have a problem and a worry, that worry being your intestines are close to being served as a delicacy to Mongolian cannibals. If you continue this sort of cookery, then you are no better than a chicken leg or a boiled egg. You are one in the same . You are food. You are preparing your insides for assault inside a coffin of 80 bulbs encased in plexi glass. Control your urges. Continue to be human. Do not submit to becoming a serving of blistering and blackened flesh.

furthermore:

In my midst, there is an overweight yellow lab. He was discovered on the road by my family all tangled in barbed wire and skinned up by road devils. He has since healed, progressed and constantly steals food from the other animals thereby rendering him a fatass. His name is Hunter. Hunter and my brother Christian share a special bond. That bond is called hunting.

Hunter must understand that everything, absolutely everything must be hunted up. All the trees and the bushes, the flower beds and the beetles must be hunted up. All things that are huntable and hunted in the fashion of extreme huntage must not exist. No fence no cage no sticks no chain link fence no diving board no gazebo; nothing. All things must be hunted. Everything, everything must be hunted. I’m talking nuclear apocalypse. Every blade of grass must be ground into dust. The maximum huntage must occur.

Hunter continues to surprise me when I wake up in the morning and not everything in the immediate vicinity has been hunted. No hunting has occurred when Hunter is supposed to make sure that all things have been wasted. There should be no other dogs, cats or other creatures because they have been hunted away. The wasteland should result from absolute huntedness that Hunter can muster. His life is to hunt things up in a way that is final, enduring and ultimate. Maximum hunting will render a yard to desert and strip all trees of their living bark and Spanish moss. Cockroaches must not roam the sand, earth worms must be extracted from their homes because Hunter has hunted them. All things, all things must be hunted up.

Day after day Christian and I are disappointed in Hunter because he fails to understand his duty. His duty is to hunt in the rain and the lightning. His duty is to fearlessly jump inside the pool and or canal to overcome all necessary obstacles for the complete amount of huntery. Hunting must come out of all his orifices and explode into the face of all who witness his hunting fury. When we wake in the morning and expect to see a radioactive minefield because the Bedouins have taken our yard for a deserted war zone fit for battle and defeation, we do not, because Hunter does not compute that all of these things must be hunted. If there is in fact, a war zone fit for grenade throwing and mine fielding, then those things must be hunted also. All of it, everything leave no traces, no scent, no solid objects, all must and will be hunted up by Hunter.

These things have crossed my mind a couple-few times.

That is all. Tanning and hunting and driving. Hunt tanners that drive. Driving hunters that tan. That is all and everything that exists in this land of skeletal snowbirds and tanorexians.