Coffee? Check. Gas station breakfast pocket sandwich of some sort? Check. Facebook Messenger open and active? Check. A quick opportunity to judge others disguised as a round-up of yesterday's news? Let us complete you.
Public Service Announcement regarding mating manatees: Look, I know when some of you see that massive ball of multiple 650-pound marine mammals grouped together, you're gonna wanna go poke it or swim with it or try to walk across it or bump it with your boat or stop your car in the middle of the Courtney Campbell Bridge to gawk at it, or something. I'm not sure why anyone would want to disturb, harass or otherwise inject themselves into a close-quarters situation with multiple horned-up, pheromone-juiced wild animals that weigh as much as four people each. (I do know why people voluntarily stop their cars in the middle of a long, busy freeway span; it's because those people are idiots.) But please refrain from attempting to interact with the mating manatees, OK? Try to think of them as a pile of clones of your parents having group sex at a public beach, if that helps. (If that doesn't help, seek help.)
The Citrus County Courthouse was evacuated and investigated by a hazmat team after a white powdery substance was found in an envelope. The substance was eventually identified as… envelope paper dust. Wouldn't it be great if we lived in a world in which someone at a government office could open an envelope, see some white powdery substance, and safely assume "oh, it's just envelope paper dust"? Also, what the hell is envelope paper dust?
A Holiday woman working as a caregiver was charged with stealing money from her 83-year-old legally blind client. You probably assumed I was going to make a joke about the poor woman not being able to see it coming, because we're both pretty terrible people. But you know what? We're not as terrible as somebody who steals from an elderly blind woman.
And finally, video of a trio of burglars that broke into an Odessa McDonalds early Wednesday morning and made off with an ATM machine seems to show that a low-rent version of Donnie Darko's sidekick was one of the culprits. What's up, dick?
This article appears in Aug 24-31, 2017.