November 4, 2006

           Oh, we got out of town alright. Just not where and when planned. JZ squelched Marco Island for a reason I would never have thunk. I mentioned my reluctance to leave the city limits without cash to return. I admit, I never thought someone in JZ’s financial situation might feel the same, yet he did not want to leave even for a day trip without a lot of money. I was over there by 9:00 but we did not get out of town for another 3-1/2 hours. JZ was not ready and the bike was still in the shop.

           After less than a minutes discussion, we decided to go to Key Largo, somewhat more than half the distance to Marco Island. Absolute perfect biking weather, overcast with a 9 mile per hour wind from the east. JP was slow to get up and move, but once things got underway he could not praise the bike riding enough. Here's the cannon at Pennekamp, not easy to find.

           I see they are widening the road to the Keys. Don’t get your hopes up, it will probably progress at the same rate as other Florida things. As in maybe in your lifetime. It may only reach to Key Largo and revert to two lanes thereafter. That amounts to pushing the traffic jams another twenty miles further south.
           We biked a total of sixteen miles through the area. I’ve got some great video but still no way to convert the files [some whacko format called ASF]. There is not much else to say except that it was a great ride. JZ ran into a Winn/Dixie and got us a box of fried chicken. Next thing, we sat down and had a curb picnic. A blonde lady came by and chatted us up, but it was too obvious she was the island white trash. JZ left but I wound up talking for nearly a half hour, it is so nice to again just chat with a white woman with blond hair and blue eyes. Not my type, but still, a real blond is not to be ignored in this part of the world.

           Of all things, there were some teenagers playing with skateboards nearby. Another teenager walked up, tore one of the skateboards out of some skinny kid’s hands and propped it up on the curb. He then proceeded to karate stomp the board in half and walk away. The kid was practically in tears over this $45 board but nobody would help him. The perp was a black and it was obvious he was not the least concerned with being arrested or that anybody would get involved.

           At first we could not find Pennekamp park. This is the state park I visited in early 2004 while I was recuperating. I mis-remembered the location, a single fact that should tell you how ill I was back then. At the park entrance I chatted up the lady at the gate. This often shocks JZ [as it is to most people that see it]. Not the fact that I have the ability to engage any woman into a light-hearted but direct conversation about sex, but the fact that there is such a huge difference between the way I treat the tiny minority of women which I find superbly attractive and all the rest. It is indeed like night and day.
           Inside, we biked around the entire area, including a ride down the walkway, which I knew to be a quarter mile long. We eventually had to get around a dozen tourists but hey, they only found the entrance after they saw me bike in there and could have waited for us to return before walking in there. Great scenery, a close-up of the mangrove swamps. I won’t elaborate because I remind you the primary purpose was the bike ride, not the scenery.

           I could not resist hitting on the tall blond lady ranger. There is something about a woman in uniform? Nice and would be nicer if she was not outside for the reason of smoking a cigarette. Find a map of the place nearby, we went up and down every road and path except the camping area. The water was choppy and the wind right on the beaches was blasting inshore at 40 mph. All the boat charters had been canceled for the day or we would have been most tempted.
           Just as we entered the park, I get a call from the G. He tells the tale of nine weeks in the slammer and having to make a false guilty plea to get out. He is home under house arrest and apparently will only get four years for possession of a restricted weapon. (Remind yourself that what the G says is not usually the complete version.)

           Woman-wise, JP and I left empty-handed. We rented a strange movie with Donald Sutherland, named “Land of the Blind” or something like that. Do not bother with this movie, it will be just as boring when it hits TV. It is a predictable chronicle of how one dictator is just as bad as another. I found the parallels to American law interesting and noted that many of the scenes are outright plagiarism. Example, blinking “Torture” in Morse Code during a faked interview. The dictator was obviously Mussolini.
           Bike riding also gives opportunity to discuss light philosophy, it is far cheaper than sitting around a coffeehouse to achieve the same effect and I guarantee you there are no third-rate poets riding around out there who only say interesting things by accident. I just know you are dying to hear what kind of political intrigues are being hatched by bicycle activists on the Keys. Sure, here goes.
           Outside of the existing restrictions on telemarketing, I would enact the following legislation, not to outlaw telemarketing, but to remove anonymous or unsolicited telephone contact as a profitable business. Nothing would stop you by advertising by other means [although that needs work also]. In addition to using computerization to bring the telemarketing industry into the new era of privacy, I would compel the following:

           1. All calls must begin with the clearly audible sentence “This is a telemarketing call” and if you hang up within 5 seconds, your number will be automatically removed from the database. If a human caller, they must offer to remove you from the calling list before any sales pitch.
           2. Before you receive telemarketing calls, each telemarketing agency must send you a written letter which identifies the source from which they acquired your phone number, and this source must be true and the original live human person who supplied your number by any means. (This is meant to enable people to control dissemination.)
           3. Bait and switch law is to be strictly enforced with the presumption that a complaint of such activity against any telemarketing company has merit. (This is aimed at BellSouth and their trick “confirmation” calls.) Far more strictly enforced than regular bait and switch has been.
           4. Telemarketing agencies may not block caller ID, use pseudo-numbers or zero-aliases and must display [where possible] a number that is answered by a human person within 90 seconds of connection, and further, it would be illegal for the telephone company to supply, in ant form, anonymity to telemarketers.
           5. Telemarket agencies may not transfer or receive a removed number, it must be permanently deleted and the said agency may not re-acquire the same number for five years. As it stands, the a related telemarket outfit calls you the next day and claims your number has not been taken off "their" list, lah-dee-dah. (The contradiction there is, of course, that how would they know this if they delete your number. Don’t play stupid, it works with the same central registry as the existing no-call list.)

           [Author's note 2023: these early posts can be confunded since JP and JZ are interchangeble tags. His real initials are not here, what you see is just the alphabet letters from opposite "corners" of the qwerty keyboard. ]