Nuclear Jellyfish
by Tim Dorsey.
Money doesn’t talk-it swears. -BOB DYLAN
SOMEWHERE IN CYBERSPACE
Serge’s Blog. Star date 485.328.
First off, fuck the word blog. I hate it and all who use it. “Lol,” “imo,” “Today’s mood: Introspective yet spunky.” Shut up. The Internet was supposed to become the ultimate democratic forum. It did: Now everyone can be a porn star. Then there are those retarded blogs. It’s been said that inside every life is a fascinating book, or at least a chapter. Wrong. Some people don’t have a freakin’ semicolon, like that woman in Delray who blogs everything her cat does, and her cat even has a blog and every word is meow. But you have to play the hand you’re dealt, and I can’t exactly stand on street corners with a megaphone sharing Big Answers on Everything. That was my first choice, but a monkey wrench hit the works: a few itsy-bitsy little incidents. Murder is such a charged word. You know how some people fixate and won’t let things go? They’re called cops.
So I guess I should be thankful for the Internet. Especially since my newly launched travel advisory service demands the latest cutting-edge communication technology! Who better to guide you around my fine state? Right, I know what you’re thinking: “Serge, without delay, give me an example chocked with more value than I could expect to find elsewhere!” Okay, if you’re staying at a budget motel that has mandatory daily maid service, they have a meth lab problem. Or I can tell you how to extract yourself from the wrong bar with only a paper clip and a ballpoint pen. And if you’ve ever seen a motel room scanned with one of those ultraviolet semen cams, your head would never hit another pillow. Does William Shatner provide this kind of biting insight? I think we both know the answer. Before I debuted this blog, I applied to all the big established Internet travel sites, but they said they didn’t think their clients were interested in how to choose hookers who wouldn’t take all their credit cards. I said, “Look, you can spend the rest of your days shuffling through the website ghetto, or you can make the roaming gnome your bitch.” I think there’s something wrong with my phone because the line keeps going dead. So until I get proper sponsorship, I’m forced to put up my own wildcat site. Did I mention it’s totally free? What a bargain! Let’s get to it!
Serge’s definition of total happiness: Florida, a full tank of gas and no appointments.
Except all the jerks down here keep making appointments with me. What are you gonna do? Someone has to instruct them. But as I always say, if you love your work, it’s not really work. My psychiatrist disagrees of course, because she wants to medicate my ADD and OCD. I said, but those are the most important selling points on a travel writer’s resume. We notice everything: bridge weight limits, discarded rolls of carpet padding, bleached livestock skulls, plywood signs for pond demolition, bus stop benches advertising discount vasectomies, billboards for laser hair removal featuring chicks with mustaches, witty country church marquees where Jesus battles Satan with puns, dilapidated rural homes with a baffling number of disabled schoolbuses in the backyard, and malfunctioning brake lights on the car up ahead where the hostage in the trunk ripped out wiring. Then my shrink asks about manic depression. I say I’m never depressed. She says, what about when you beat up jerks? I say I’m happy then, too.
I decided to start this service because everyone is always coming up to me and saying, “Serge, you should start a travel service.” They actually say, “What the fuck’s your problem?” But I can read between the lines. I’m constantly seeing clueless Europeans with pasty legs stumbling around the wrong motels, and I shake my head. Yep, they’re going to get robbed. So I run up to them and say they’re going to get robbed. Then I say, not by me, put your hands down. Now they’re not thinking straight and don’t listen when I explain how to cut their homicide rate in half. But they’d already know that if they subscribed to Serge’s Florida Experience! (Free!)
From the Mailbag: “Hey, Serge, how did Florida become Dirtbag Central?” Because if you pass out in the snow, you die.
Hold the phone. Speaking of passing out, Coleman wants to give a travel tip. “Don’t buy any coke from Rico. It’s stomped on.” Coleman, that’s not a travel tip … No, it’s not… No, I won’t help you get your money back … Anyhoo, where was I? Weirdness. Florida has such a rarefied per capita concentration that CNN might as well be the local news. Some guy shoots a Wendy’s manager over their three sauce-packet limit; alligator attacks naked guy on crack doing backstrokes in retention culvert; driver falls out of car at forty-five miles an hour opening door to spit; smuggler makes it through airport security with monkey under his hat. And if something does happen in another state, it’s just a matter of time for the Florida shoe to drop. You say some criminal Rhodes scholar stole Crystal Gayle’s tour bus in Tennessee? Gee, where on earth might he head next?
Today’s Tip: A three sauce-packet limit is wrong. But pulling a gun is just as wrong. Go to Arby’s instead. They understand packet dynamics.
Back to the Mailbag! … Uh-oh. It’s Agent Mahoney. “I’m going to get you.” What a broken record. Mahoney blames me for everything, especially the stuff I’ve done. To compound it, there’s been a recent spike in businessmen mugged at hotels by highly organized crews. And now someone’s going after the robbers. So Mahoney naturally thinks it’s me, just because I happened to be at all the same places at the same time. I wish it was me (lol).
Mahoney, Mahoney, Mahoney … maybe that explains this nagging sensation I’ve been having lately, like something really bad’s about to happen. Can’t quite put my finger on it. And I’m not the superstitious type, which is why I don’t like superstitious people. They’re bad luck. But everyone’s number eventually comes up, and I’ve already skated through more than my share of tough jams. So just block it out. Enough negative thoughts! I hate them. They suck. They piss me off. If they were people, I’d get a Chainsaw and … You’re still doing it. Have to bear down. Concentrate: Appreciate God’s gift of this beautiful day where the Florida sun is shining and my gas tank’s full. Now I’m so happy I could burst! Off we go!
JACKSONVILLE
Midnight
Two young men walked along the bank of the St. Johns River, sporting shaved heads, sleeveless T-shirts and bituminous eyes that proudly announced: MINIMUM WAGE 4 LIFE. They gripped baseball bats halfway up the barrels.
“I hate fuckin’ bums.”
“So where are they?”
“Supposed to be a bunch of them right around here.”
“Just like fuckin’ bums.”
There had been a light rain, and warm mist rose from the road. Work boots slapped across glistening tar and splashed through moonlit puddles. They approached the underpass of the Fuller Warren Bridge.
“Where the hell are those damn bums?”
“Hold up.”
“What is it?”
“Over there.”
“Where?”
“Shhhhh. Get your camcorder ready …”
A two-tone 1971 AMC Javelin with split upholstery sat in darkness and trash beneath a downtown bridge over the St. Johns River.
“Theories abound concerning the phenomenon of the nation’s trash elite inexorably percolating down to Florida like industrial toxins reaching our aquifers …”
A beer can popped. “You’re doing it again.”
Serge wrote furiously in his notebook. “Doing what?”
“Talking to yourself.”
“No I wasn’t.” More writing. “… This travel writer places his money on time-release scumbag DNA …”
Coleman burped. “You always talk to yourself and then say you’re not.”