The Phatwater on the Natchez gauge, 83 days from this year’s race, is at 39.78′ and drifting down, though still silty.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about human anatomy and sock manufacturing.  I figure there’s twice as many feet in the world as uvulas. Unlike feet, uvulas don’t have to tread through the cold, wet mud, or get  rubbed into blisters.  You don’t need socks for your uvula.  The same is true for navels.  One navel, per person, but two feet.  Your feet get you where you want to be, so they need socks, for protection, and people have to pay money for socks, while the navel just gets a free ride.

Speaking of  navels, here’s a Naval story we came across recently.  It’s your typical superficial news resporting, with few of the actual “facts”.  I like to dig a little deeper, though, so I included some “facts” about the story in a sidebar I picked up from one of the underground wireless chat museums.  Some of you may have already encountered it on “MississippiGreetings”.  And some of you may not have.

Now, here’s what we found at wingledingle.gov

Dear Gertrude,

My neighbor, a retired Navy Chaplain, rank of Captain, by the name of Lance Chapman (Chaplain Captain Chapman) is real big on the ‘Eye For An Eye’ line of thinking.  Well, wouldn’t you know it, the UPS man/woman (he-she is at the midway point of trans-gender rendition) who was delivering my new Nikkor 200-400 AF-S f/4G IF-ED Zoom Lens

made the uncommonly unintentional error of brushing his-her tire against the curb of Chaplain Captain Chapman’s driveway (we live at the end of a Cul-De-Sac) when he-she pulled up to deliver my lens. Chaplain Captain Chapman was in his front yard at the time, watering his begonias.  Well, the UPS tire made a screech, and left a black smudge on the edge of the curb in front of Chaplain Captain Chapman’s house.  I think  the curb belongs to the city, technically speaking, since it’s part of the right-of-way, but Chaplain Captain Chapman seems to think it is part of his property, and when he saw that black rubber streak, he just lost it.  He started screaming “General Quarters, General Quarters, Man Your Stations, Full Alert”, and flew into a rage.  Next thing I know, he pulls out a Bo’sun’s whistle, and starts squalling on it.  Every dog in the neighborhood began to howl, and Mrs. Daphne Dillinger’s tabby cat, Renfro, ran up the sycamore tree in the middle of the little island that sits in the center of the cul-de-sac.  It was about this time that Chaplain Captain Chapman began spraying the UPS driver with the high pressure nozzel.  But that was nothing compared to what happened when the UPS driver’s shirt got soaked. You could see his-her silicone breasts, all pumped out there like twin haystacks.  It was late in the day by now.  And even though the UPS driver had this huge rack, wearing shorts, shaved leges, sporting a pony-tail out the back of his-her UPS ball cap, and even though the UPS driver had been undergoing a lot of estrogen injections and was wearing plenty of makeup, as late in the day as it was, he-she was sporting a pretty good five O’clock shadow (kinda like Richard Nixon), and in bad need of a nudge from a Norelco.

Well, this sent Chaplain Captain Chapman into orbit.  ”What in God’s Name ARE YOU?” Chaplain Captain Chapman began screaming, over and over.  He grabbed that UPS driver by the shirt and snatched it open.  ”Go, and sin no more!” he shouted, then threw that UPS driver onto his-her hands and knees. Next thing you know, the Captain-Chaplain jumped on the UPS driver’s back, like he-she was some sort of beast of burden, and began whipping him-her on the buttocks with the garden hose, shouting, “Repent, repent!”

Well, that was all  Daphne Dillinger was going to take.  She called 911, and by the time four or five other people in the neighborhood had got their call through to the dispatcher they’d mobilized the SWAT Team and the Bomb Squad, and called Channel 9 news.

The ambulance got there ahead of everybody.  They slapped the UPS driver on a stretcher and headed to the emergency room, with the keys to the van still in his-her pocket, so when the firetruck got there to fetch Refro out of the tree, they had to get a tow truck to move the UPS van first and they hauled it, packages and all, out to the county impoundment.  Once they got the fire department’s ladder truck into the cul-de-sac,  Renfro’d  got about as high as a cat could get in that sycamore.  I say it’s a sycamore, but a local arborculture attorney, Lars Cockspur, says it’s a cottonwood.  Whatever it is, when they put that ladder up against it, Renfro bailed, and knocked the fireman’s helmet into the gathering crowd below.  Cockspur was handing out business cards to all those present, hoping for a case of cat-scratch fever or concussion from a falling hardhat.  I don’t know when I’ll get my lens.  It could be months.  This is the sort of thing my MamMaw used to refer to as, “The Divine Perversity Of Inanimate Objects”.

Yours,

Jerome