Photoshop?

That’s not Keanu’s body….

Are these Facebook advertisements made by computers or Indian call centers?

Captain of Industry.

Don’t get drunk at a trade show and then flirt with one of the girls running it.  You end up of proof of your stupidity on the website of the show.

Thanks American trade show circuit.  You don’t even feel like reality.

Fake friends you see every once an awhile, the same people, all living in this carnival of commerce.  It’s America alright, the real America.  The real capitalist America.

(insert something deep that resolves all this.)

I’m in the Bahamas today, probably going to get stabbed.

The greatest Disney movie is Lion King.

I’m sure we all agree.

That being said, I always wondered something about the Nala and Simba relationship.

“The pride consists of five or six related females, their cubs of both sexes, and one or two males who mate with the adult females.”

So we had Mustafa, King of the Pride etc, and we have Scar, villian and Mustafa’s brother (cough, Hamlet, cough.)

So chances are…  that Mustafa was the one who knocked up Nala’s mom, either that or it could have been Scar, but I think that subject would have been broached if that was the case…

Which explains why Simba was so awkward.

Listen to this NOW.

The Orwells - Feels Better to Fall

“the only time I feel fine, is when I’m dreaming.”

Well written lyrics and a fear of the real world.  Feels like something stolen out of my own head.

My little brothers, signed by Autumn Tone Records.

http://www.autumntone.com/

Everyone have an amazing weekend, I’ll be at SpeakFriday’s in Miami drinking some tea and performing some stand-up comedy tonight.

I have a funny Etta James story that’s 100% true.

I buy Pavilion tickets at Rivinia for my Cuban ex-girlfriend, reap the full benefits for about six weeks. Morning of, we pack lunches, get a blanket, plan a really romantic evening.

She was excited, to put it into context, she bought me a commitment ring that says “At Last” and the date we started dating.

Made out for the first time to “At Last.” Especially meaningful.
Drive an hour to Rivinia, listen to Etta the entire time. Life could not have been better.

We get to Rivinia,

I had forgotten the motherfucking tickets.

Thank you Etta James for CLEARLY exemplifying my abilities as a lover and provider.

I figured out the Dexter twist more than a month ago.

Be prepared for the death of six and a half billion people.

“Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”

It was past midnight and I my GPS suddenly lost signal.  I was somewhere on the outskirts of Atlanta.  I saw no city signs, just a long empty highway.

The two lane road got smaller and smaller, and it began to rain.  I pondered postponing my trip to Elberton, GA to visit some clients.  A simple email apology would suffice and I could make my way back to Miami.

An hour earlier, I had gotten another speeding ticket.  Another in a trail of much maligned reckless pedal pushing.  My ticket notified me that I was in South Carolina.  A “Georgia is on Your Mind” sign had brought me into the Peach State.  Augusta had to be near. 

Human society hit me again.  A Wal-mart was on my right side, and a main road penetrated a small city.

This was Elberton.

Elberton is the “Granite Capital of the United States,” but very little granite is quarried in our fine country anymore, and only for grave headstones.  I lost any hope for a nice hotel and drove into an Econolodge, the first hotel I had seen in hours.

It was locked, I stood with my briefcase and gym bag.  Sleep was slowly falling upon me.  I leaned up against the glass door and drifted away for a moment, almost content to sleep in a doorway of a shitty hotel.

A tiny Indian man, not much taller, and bearing a striking resemblance to the Oompa Loompa in Johnny Depp’s destruction of Willy Wonka, pressed a loud buzzer releasing the door’s lock.  I had been leaning on the door and almost fell to the floor in front of him.

Recovering, I greeted him with a bright smile and requested a room.  A large sign behind him read “Granite City.”

He wanted to charge me $129 for the night.  It was a 2-Star Econolodge.

I wondered where the nearest hotel would be.

“You can do much better than that.”  I sternly remarked.

His nametag said, Shalai.

He began to book the room without telling me my rate.  I asked him about the granite quarries in town, mostly to make small talk.

“Yes sir, we are the biggest granite town in America.  Over 200 quarries!”

I tell him I’m in the granite business, that I import granite from Brazil, and that no one quarries in the United States very much for kitchen slabs, only tombstones.

A brochure is sitting on the counter with a strange stone monument on the cover.  I had seen it before.

“Where is this?” I asked.

“About fifteen miles away, just take Elberton Rd left out of the hotel, take a right at the Walgreens and go straight for eleven miles.”

“I’ve seen this before,” I remarked trying to catch his gray dead eyes.

“It’s the Georgia Guidestones sir, a very important monument.”

A conspiracy nut friend of mine from Hawaii had made me watch an Alex Jones documentary that did a small segment of the Guidestones.

I asked Shalai who had built it and why.

“Mr. RC Christian built the stones sir.  But if you promise not to ever tell anyone, I will let you know the secret.”

I was skeptical.

“The person who built it is Tanner.

I had no idea who he was talking about, the Playstation game “Driver”s protagonist?

“The owner of CNN.”

“Ted Turner!” I blurted out.

“Yes sir, Mr. Ted Tanner.”

Grabbing my key, I rushed out the door, he had charged me $99 for the room.  His information was worth him overcharging me, it was nearly 1 a.m. and I needed to see these Guidstones. 

I hoped to catch a satanic ritual in the act.  I jumped into my rented Ford Fusion and hit Elberton Rd. towards the Walgreens.

To my right was a Walmart and a little farther down the road was a quaint main street that proclaimed Elberton the Granite City.  Nobody had informed them that over the last four years, Miami has become the Granite City, but little towns need their silly slogans.

As I turned right at the Walgreens, civilization quickly disappeared.  The road shortened to two lanes again and it began to thunderstorm.  My GPS still had no signal.

Two miles down the road, a large deer jumped out in front of my car.  The reflection in the eyes and my need to suddenly break startled me.  His satanic eyes stared into my soul.  He appeared to walk away, but as soon as I begin to accelerate it crossed back over my path and stood in my way.  This animal appeared to be purposely blocking me.  I veered into the oncoming lane and made another attempt to pass.  The deer walked again to block me, but I quickly swung my car back to the right and left the large guardian animal in the dust.

My heart was racing, I had killed a deer once with my vehicle and I didn’t want to relive that moment in the middle of nowhere in Georgia with a rental car that I was driving because a truck had smashed the side of my BMW.

I kept driving, but where were these fucking stones?

My GPS wasn’t working and it felt like I was approaching twenty miles out of town.  An abandoned gas station was on the right, I decided to turn into the parking lot to regain my bearings.  It was well past 1 a.m. I was driving all day, Dark Side of the Moon was blasting through my car, it was thunderstorming, and a deer had just attempted to murder me.

How could it get worse?

As soon as I pulled into the abandoned gas station, a man was sitting there in the parking lot alone, when suddenly a women who was obviously performing some decent oral on him popped up and pointed right at me.

His engine started and he frantically pulled out of the parking lot.

The last thing I wanted was to ruin anybody’s good time.

This whole area was giving me the creeps.  I figured I’d go down a few more miles and turn around.  Their probably wasn’t any satanic shit going on anyway.

Less than a mile down the road, I saw the Guidestones on my right side.  I had made it.

As I began to slow, I noticed a car at the side-road entrance to the Guidestones.  It was a Georgia State Trooper.  He saw me slow down and turned his lights on.  He was still in front of me.  I pulled my car up next to his and rolled down my passenger window.  Eclipse off of Dark Side of the Moon was playing loudly in the rental car.

“I want to see the stones.”  I said as I pointed in the general direction of the stones.

He was a middle aged guy with a mustache, which could effectively describe seventy-five percent of Georgia State Troopers.

“Not allowed to look at night.”

I lied and told him I was a journalist studying ancient Pagan rituals, and I needed to see where the stones are placed at night.

He asked me if I had any spray paint in my car.

Apparently he was there to make sure nobody defaced the monument.  Kind of a weird way to spend Georgia Taxpayer money. 

I had already been cited for a $250 ticket less than four hours earlier and my loud playing of Dark Side of the Moon had made the trooper suspect that I was high so I drove off, pulled a U-Turn and went back to my hotel.

I hit the bed and cracked open my laptop.  Instead of pornography, I did some late night research.

Part 2.

Why Did I Want to See Some Silly Stones?

Carved into the large stones, in eight different languages, allegedly is the ten commandments and goals for the Illuminati.  The following is written:

  1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

  2. Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity.

  3. Unite humanity with a living new language.

  4. Rule passion - faith - tradition - and all things with tempered reason.

  5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.

  6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.

  7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.

  8. Balance personal rights with social duties.

  9. Prize truth - beauty - love - seeking harmony with the infinite.

10. Be not a cancer on the earth - Leave room for nature - Leave room for nature.

At first glance, these all seem like pretty good things.

Everyone’s favorite Beatle, Yoko Ono had the following to say,

““I want people to know about the stones … We’re headed toward a world where we might blow ourselves up and maybe the globe will not exist … it’s a nice time to reaffirm ourselves, knowing all the beautiful things that are in this country and the Georgia Stones symbolize that.”

Yoko Ono supports it.  Okay, now I’m scared.

The world eclipsed seven billion people last week.  As much as we talk about oil, and fresh water, and Mayan calendars ending, overpopulation will be our downfall. 

Apparently a group of wealthy people thirty-one years ago understood that problem.  They understood it enough to make it the first issue on some new 10 commandments they placed out in the wilderness of Georgia.

Overpopulation.

A noble cause.

But who has been a champion of overpopulation?  Maybe someone with clear ties to Georgia?

Mr. Turner himself.

“We’re too many people; that’s why we have global warming,”

“Too many people are using too much stuff.”

“On a voluntary basis, everybody in the world’s got to pledge to themselves that one or two children is it,” (Ted Turner on Charlie Rose in 2008)

In a 1996 magazine interview, Ted Turner stated the following:

“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”

We’re all screwed.  This feels like some Lex Luthor maniacal plan unraveling if you ask me.  The man used to own the Atlanta Braves!

In September of 1997, Turner pledged 1 billion dollars to UN programs.  I’m sure somebody sold him on some population control measures in there. 

Ted Turner has always been someone I have a deep respect for.

Are his views correct?

Are we kidding ourselves?

 My favorite book in the universe starts with the phrase,

“Don’t Panic.”

But take a look at this chart.

It’s very hard for me to see the human race as a cancer, spreading throughout the world uncontrollably.  Are our own sexual urges plunging us further and further down a road of unsustainable excess and living conditions? 

Will it be living in constant fear that forces us into living in monitored boxes where we are made to be sterile and are only allowed to consume a certain amount of food?

Has it already begun to happen?

Who has the correct answers to these questions, and will it be the person who has no personal vested interest or greed that he will enslave us?

Is Ted Turner that person?

And how the hell did he train the deer to stop me from getting there?

These questions eventually will need to be answered.

Part 3

Everybody Must Get Stoned.

The next morning, I woke up early and visited my clients.  I smiled and shook hands.  We all made small talk about the Atlanta Falcons.

Every single client was asked about The Guidestones.  All of them would laugh and tell me how weird it was.  Nobody would confirm or deny anything about Ted Turner.  Most claimed it was a tourist trap, and that I had fallen right into R.C. Christian’s plan.

On my way out of town, I finally stopped and saw the monolith up close, in the flesh.  An elderly couple were posing and taking pictures with it.  I slowly approached and said hello.

They lived and worked in Elberton, but moved to Ft. Worth, Texas, it struck me odd that they visited the Guidestones, “once a year or so.”

They had been there when it was built.

I was taken aback.  I told them I’m scared what these stones represent.

I explained I’m not sure how I can get behind a One World Government, because it’ll no doubt represent a loss to my current freedoms. 

The woman smiled and said, “one world government is already happening sweety, these things are thirty years old.”

She didn’t know who R.C. Christian was.  She didn’t think it was Ted Turner.  She didn’t seem to want to talk to me anymore, which coincidentally happens all the time when I talk about politics and religion.

The last thing I had wanted was to creep a couple old people out.  I thanked them for talking to me and politely left.  I came off like a leftist right wing weirdo, if that’s even possible.

They told me they thought Herman Cain was going to be the next president, if they really are part of a secret society that is ruling Western Culture, then we’re in for a weird couple of years. 

(Written before all those nice white blonde ladies came forward with all those dirty allegations.)

I laid down in the grass in front of the stones and took in the atmosphere.  It was a beautiful Georgia day.  The area surrounding the monument was peaceful and lush with plants and trees.

 I felt calm and closer with nature.  I began to imagine a world with no currency, and jealousy and constant competition to be richer, smarter, sexier body.

A world without having to pay the state for your vehicle sticker, or have to listen to idiots constantly stating their opinions as fact.

I thought of a quieter world, without the billions of demagogues and special interests, and people telling us how to think and live…

then I thought,

Maybe these illuminati people know what they’re talking about.

Please message or email me any and all answers or experiences you’ve had or opinions of the Georgia Guidestones.  I’m really just a truth seeker like you.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Neldeezycom/218652544824256

or Neldeezy@gmail.com

The world lost a giant of a man yesterday. A man who came to this country with nothing and built a beautiful family and a legacy that will live on forever. He’s somewhere in the universe now, experiencing the amazing phase shifts and turns of a universe devoid of things like hate and jealousy and fear. Someday I hope I have the opportunity to surf the cosmic planes with him.

Her hands brush the space under my knees.  I’m still quite ticklish in my rarely touched areas.

I begin to wish their was an afterlife for the first time since I was a child, mostly so whichever of my deadbeat asshole of a family chose to move my semi-sentient body to a hospital twenty miles away from the beach can hear my unearthly bitching and complaining for a portion of an eternity.

Thank god for CraigsList.

My breathing was more labored by the minute and at this point.

I had given my erotic worker the instruction to fill a kiddie pool somewhere private as close to the hospital as possible.

(what I want to die in, as a last resort)

She thought I had an aqua fetish and needed to be back at the hospital before six o’clock, which wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.  I asked her to fill the child’s pool with lukewarm water.

This was going to cost more than I’d thought, considering recent inflation, but it’d be less than my wedding, and absolutely more important.

No nurses were around.  You really can’t find good healthcare anymore.  I peered from my window to see her pimp’s suped up Acura.  I began to wonder if he was Asian too.

I reach underneath my left arm and rip my pic line out.  It’s a weird feeling that a tiny string had been inside me.  I wonder if the prostitute could relate.

I slide my ass off the side of the bed and my feet hit the ice cold floor.  Why anybody would die in this cold death machine continues to baffle me.

Sneaking into bars, concerts, and strip clubs whilst underage and not wanting to pay cover, had trained me in looking completely and utterly that I belong.  This will mean no one will stop me from getting into that god damn Acura.

As the sliding doors opened, the warm Florida breeze bounced off my face.  It was a hot breeze.  This was a perfect day to go. 

She wasn’t Asian, but she wore enough mascara to seem like it.

He wasn’t Asian, but he drove a suped up Acura.

(generally what pimps drive)

The pimp apparently wasn’t exactly briefed thoroughly of what was going on.

I began to wonder if they were just going to rob me and dump me on the side of the highway.

Even in my frail state, I was the most dangerous person in the car.  No matter what I did, I was going to die today.

A man who’s going to return to the universal ether has no problem jamming a pen into some twenty year old eastern European pimp’s neck or use my last few ounces of strength to kick a prostitute out of a moving vehicle.

At this point, I don’t really need to give a fuck anymore.

But I had a mission, and I’d prefer everybody be cool and let me die how I wanna die.  God knows my ungrateful family couldn’t focus for one fucking second about anyone but themselves to let me die my own way.

In minutes, we were in the backyard of some shitty house somewhere in Broward.  I probably could have made it to the beach.

If only I would have set my “Fast Withdrawal Preferences” on my Bank of America ATM card, I would have had time to fucking rent an umbrella and stop at Wet Willies.

So it goes.

As I entered the house, EuroPimp immediately began to count my money.  No manners. 

The Prositute led me to the backyard where the pool I requested had been waiting for me.  I wouldn’t have been around long enough to watch her inflate and fill it.  I respect people that come prepared.

I remove my hospital gown and the pair of stained white underwear briefs riding up on my asshole.  I look down on my wrinkled frail body and one of my final memories flow into my brain.

It was with a girl named Jenny who had lived near me.  We were fourteen years old and in my backyard.  In front, a block party loudly crashed through the early September night.  It was just a kiss, but it somehow seemed more important than the vast number of sexual partners and the following decades of sexual exploration.

It must have been the kiddie pool.

Completely nude now, I fall back, hands pointing in opposite directions, it startles the prostitute.  The water splashes back at her.  She bends forward in a failed attempt to cushion my landing.

Her hands rubs over the scars on my left kneecap and then under the knee itself.  It tickles and I wonder if their is an afterlife.

Their are more questions that enter my head.  The Prostitute and EuroPimp will probably bury me in this backyard.

Warm water is how we were brought here.  Why wouldn’t it be the way we go out.  As breathing becomes harder, I start wondering when the DMT was going to flood my brain.  I’d figure it start by now.

I start to go, waiving the prostitute off.  This is the first time I clued her in that this isn’t just another deviant fetish of mine. 

You could say that this was my final joke.  One more prank for the road.

“Tricked you!  Now I’m going to die and you’re responsible for disposing of a body!  Ha Ha!”

Petty prejudices and conceptions are gone, as well as most of the memories I chose to never let go.  All things suddenly become illuminated.

I’m getting more and more emails like this every single day lately.

He’s not alone in his despair.

I wish I could just reach out and tell him that brighter days are ahead, but I honestly don’t really know.

Together we must find a way to harness the power of every twenty-something with nothing to look forward to and nothing to live for, we must not be the wasted air, but the fresh air this whole world needs.

To anyone who ever requests a valuation of my company in hopes of buying it.

If you pull up to my door with two perfect ten blondes and a dump truck full of thousand dollar bills, I will tell you to pick up all your fucking money and take your blondes back.

I prefer brunettes.

This little investment opportunity came across my desk.  At first I felt it was a little morbid, but now I’m warming to the idea.

I’ll let you guys decide.

Should I do it?

Until the age of seven, the only music I would independently listen to was Queen and Weird Al Yankovic.

While viewing a new VHS tape (ancient history) of Weird Al videos my uncle brought over for me, an amazing guitar riff changed my world.

The song was “Smells Like Nirvana.”

It prompted me to buy the first album I’d ever bought.

Nirvana’s “Nevermind” was so beautifully different than anything I’d ever heard up to that point. 

In 1993, I was a shy chubby kid who knew the lyrics to every Carpenters song. 

Cobain, Grohl and Novacelik’s masterpeice was the powerful expression of anti-hope and change that closed the casket on Karen Carpenter’s anorexic crooning (god rest her soul, I’m still secretly a fan.)

The album spurred a change so deep inside my being that the very concept of who I was began to appear. 

I started a band (with Billy Raff, currently bassist of the very popular Prom Band) to play Nirvana and Black Sabbath covers.  I began to listen to Q101 (which in Chicago at the time was the greatest radio station in the known universe) and I began to idolize Kurt Cobain.

My social anxiety crumbled around me and I began to make jokes with my classmates/classmatrons (leading up to a victorious yearbook victory of “Most Fun to Be With” my eight grade year).  Suddenly I could talk to anybody confidently and firmly.  Alternative music began to grip me. 

The music encircled me and turned me into something so beautifully different.

It made me like the person I was for the first time in my short life.

On a trip to Italy when I was nine years old, I left Chicago burdened with the news that Kurt had checked himself into rehab. 

Laying in the Avella mayor’s mansion a week later (my aunt happens to be married to him) I saw an Italian news story featuring video and interviews with Kurt.

I excitedly turned to my mother, “It looks like Kurt checked himself out of rehab.”

“Yes,” she replied,

“But it looks like he’s being checked into the morgue.”

My mother has a very weird sense of humor.

I can’t remember if I cried, when I heard about his widowed bride.

Two years later, I was playing and singing “All Apologies” with my band at the River Grove School Talent Show.  I didn’t know the microphone was on as the curtain was rising and I blurted out,

“I can’t do this.”

I went on to play to a fairly good reception (we were eleven years old.)

It doesn’t feel like 17 years ago today that Kurt died, and now that I’m older and listening again to his music, it just doesn’t hit me the same way.  What I hear now is his stomach ulcers, his insecurity, and his constant pain.

Nevertheless, Kurt Cobain will always personally serve as a marker in my life when I decided to start living it.

p.s.  Courtney definitely did it…

Happy Birthday to one of the best guys in the world.  My friend Miguel Ramos died on February 27th, 2005 and it feels like only yesterday.

Lots of things in life, and in business, give me strength to go on, but nothing made me turn my life around like coming to grips with him dying and mortality in general.

I really owe him everything, because he gave me the urgency that I know will breed the greatness of my company and future to come. 

Every single day I think about his life and it gives me strength.

It’s very sad, but here is something that happened to me a few months ago that freaks me out, considering it could’ve been me.

Also, I’m back from London, but here’s my story:

The Atlantic Ocean tried to fucking kill me.

Sundays, I lay on the beach and ponder the joy and ecstasy that is our human lives. Sit back and enjoy the warm embrace of the sun while smiling and joking with scantily clad beach beauties of which whose lives and worldly gifts rival my own.

Humans are afraid of the ocean; you fear a Great White Shark fin and rows of razor sharp teeth. To these concerns, I’ve always scoffed and explain more people die of almost anything else than shark attacks. The ocean itself is far more likely to end up killing you.

Most Sundays I find my spot (on 3rd street, right behind Nikki Beach, if you wanted to join me next Sunday) and I swim out to where I can barely touch ground and allow the waves to crash over me. In this time, I find myself able to ponder the upcoming weeks.

This Sunday’s wave break was unbelievable, for the first time in Miami I saw waves rivaling my time in the surf of Oahu. These conditions are not new to me, as a kid I remember scary moments wind surfing the southeastern coasts in Italy. Besides, recently I’ve done a fair share of swimming so my assumption was no immediate danger.

But through this, I’m still such a dumbass. I just kept daydreaming and floating and crashing up against waves for a few minutes when I realized I had been pulled out far into the distance and could barely see the shore. In that moment, I also realized I heard a whistle screeching from the beach and the swimmers were also turned into that direction.

My first thought, “I hope ________ knows I’m out here.” My companion this Sunday had swam back early because she complained that the tide was kind of pulling her out and that high tide was coming.

I need to start listening when women speak.

At this moment, my friend, who is a certified lifeguard, was laying on our beach towel slathering sun tan lotion onto her body and wondering where I had run off to.

The waves had me furiously swimming as fast as I could toward shore barely making any distance. Any progress I’d make on a wave would suddenly and furiously be taken away from me by the countering riptide. I was out of breath almost immediately, at the moment I began wondering how girls put up with my sexual effort anymore, just kidding, I started trying to remember what I knew about drowning.

Most people died of panic and exhaustion, I couldn’t fall into shock. So I started trying to take my mind off of the situation. First thing I did was start humming Frank Zappa’s “White Port and Lemon Juice” song (check out “Hot Rats”). Not sure why that stuck in my head first, but it calmed me down. Then I changed my swim method of a breast stroke to a calm backstroke on the surface of the water. I began to laugh internally because I now had to sense how close I was instead of having a clear view of shore. I also began fantasizing that a gorgeous and voluptuous lifeguard would just sweep me up and pull me in.

Whenever I’d get my breath back I’d swing around and see that I was making progress, I didn’t need to fear death but I was still exhausted. A few minutes more of my backstroke and I could touch the ground. As soon as I did though, I realized it was a mistake.

I immediately lost about eight feet of progress being thrown back towards the ocean. The levity of the situation hit me; this ocean will quite easily kill me if I give it a chance. I could see the lifeguard screeching a whistle to me on the shore. She was sort of cute. This would make it even more embarrassing if I were to need her help. I had to press on.

Getting back to work, I progressed the final way, breathing heavily, with my lungs burning and my adrenaline to full blast. When I was in safe waters I still felt the pulling riptide. Part of me wanted to just chill in the mid-length water and analyze what just happened.

As I began to wonder exactly how close to death I was, I heard the screeching whistle I had gotten to know so well as what was the siren call of my unmomentous looming death. The lifeguard was pointing at me menacingly and then pointing at the ground in front of her. She was not the gorgeous voluptuous lifeguard I had imagined in my fantasy but she was definitely in the “cool group” of her high school and I can’t resist a women with a dominating personality so I flashed the biggest grin I could muster in my current situation, flexed my pecs and trapezius muscles, and sauntered over to her as though we were in Mansion and I was about to grind on her without asking.

This is what I should’ve done since I was in no immediate danger.

Our dialogue went something like this:

Semi-Hot Lifeguard: You didn’t respond to my whistle!! I was calling everybody in.
Me: Oh
Semi-Hot Lifeguard: You might not know this, but there is an emergency riptide warning right where you were swimming.
Me: Oh, I’m sorry. I kind of felt it.
Semi-Hot Lifeguard: Well, I was just about to go in and get you! You don’t know how dangerous it is, riptides kill over 100 people a year in Florida.
Me: Damn, thanks.

At this point I unflexed my muscles for the first time since my predicament and I felt as though someone injected acid into my chest and my thighs. My friend was laid out with her bug eyed dolce sunglasses. I collapsed down next to her.

Friend: Where were you?
Me: I almost died in a riptide.
Friend: Is that why you’re breathing so hard.
Me: Yeah, that and I just talked to this hot lifeguard. But for real, I thought I was going to die.
Friend: Oh, wow, you should’ve just swum sideways. You want to go get some margheritas and a fish taco?

I laid there catching my breath and promising myself to never be at the whims of the unrelenting sea, but more importantly I began thinking about how great fish tacos are.