Saturday, September 24, 2011

Saturday Morning Coffee II

Not long ago, after the long story about the massage parlor busts, there was a notice in the Sun-News asking any patrons of the place to call a certain number if they wanted to talk to police about their experiences there.
The notice sounded like something a stand-up comic would come up with. First of all, most guys who went there probably knew exactly why there were going and took along money to pay for it. If a few men went there uncertain about how far the massage might go, when the masseuse invited them to go further they probably didn’t object. Even legitimate masseuses in airports and farmers’ markets who offer no sexual services whatsoever but get leered at by half the men who pass.
What the men did was illegal, and many cities do arrest johns. Somehow I’m doubting they’re in a big rush to make a full report to the police. Or their wives and kids).

A candidate for city councilor here, who had touted his law-enforcement experience and his two years in the Navy, was arrested for drunken driving early one evening. Turned out (according to the authorities in Mesilla) that his law enforcement experience included (and perhaps was limited to) his brief stint as a trainee in the reserve Sheriff’s Department there. That ended after he was thrown out of El Patio after some sort of incident in which, again according to the authorities in Mesilla, he was inebriated. Probably not helpful to his campaign. He’d also talked up his Navy experience – and it then turned out that he’d had a liquor-and-automobile incident there too. Not an auspicious start to a campaign.

Some fellow complained in the newspaper recently that he can’t dirt-bike the way he used to because of preservationists. I dirt-biked all around Las Cruces as much as anyone in the 1970's. I loved the desert solitude – and the physical challenge. So when I read his comment, I thought, yo, man, haven’t you noticed they’ve built about six thousand houses (including mine) in what used to be beautiful empty desert? I can’t dirt bike the way I used to because of all the ugly houses, not because someone’s trying to protect what’s left! I figured he was a little confused. Then I read that he’s only lived here about five years! He just doesn’t know better – and probably doesn’t own a dirt bike anyway.

After Clemson upset Auburn in football last Saturday, the Clemson coach (who had played and coached at Alabama, Auburn’s chief rival) said, "All praise goes to God." We’re used to that. (People who lose sports contests rarely mention God, somehow.) And we’ve wondered whether God might not have better things to do than determine winners in college football games. This coach, though, added. "He has quite a sense of humor, to make sure an Alabama grad was coaching the team that ended Auburn’s winning streak." Now he’s got me really wondering. He makes God sound like a 14-year-old nerd who can’t play sports too well but keeps track of all the obscure facts and stats. I think God has quite a sense of humor, too – he keeps sending us people who say things like that.

Mayoral candidate Michael Huerta told a funny story about a gentleman who approached him at the Farmers’ Market, where Michael spends a lot of time talking to vendors and customers about his political aspirations.
"Are you the fella running for mayor?" asked the gentleman, who wore a cowboy hat and a Tea Party pin. Huerta acknowledged that he was. According to him, the man said he’d heard a lot of good things about Huerta from the vendors, but also something that worried him.
"Are you a homosexual?"
Michael acknowledged that too.
"Well, I have one question. If you get elected, are you going to run this city like a homosexual?"
Michael says he has no idea where his answer came from, but he replied, "If you mean am I going to attend city council meetings in high heels, no."
He also says that as they talked, it became clear that the man had never, to his knowledge, really talked to anyone gay – and that after they talked for an hour or so the man said he’d vote for Michael, despite their differences.
I believe it, too.  Michael's a pretty engaging guy.

An elderly friend of mine, on his way in town to see the doctor Monday, managed to run over his dog and then get bitten by it, which was sad. And bloody. That news elicited a story from another old friend, who’d been about to take a pregnant dog to the doctor, many years ago; but when she went back into the house to get something, the dog jumped out of the car, unnoticed, and my friend backed over it. Immediately realizing what was happening, she also recalled something she’d read, that she should keep on rolling rather than jam on the brakes, and she did so, and the dog survived. But as she and her husband knelt looking at the dog and tried to check her out, their other dog, a male pit bull, walked over and peed on her. "He’d never done anything like that before, and was looking right at me the whole time, and all I could think was that he was saying, ‘You idiot,’ and I completely agreed."

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