Leaving hotel calafornix

We spent our spare time water skiing, pioneering the wake board, and barefooting. We traded runs on what we called “the barefoot canal” which was actually the treated shit filled ditch next to the sewage treatment plant, with the then barefoot waterskiing world champion, Mr. Fox. This is why if anyone ever insults me and asks when I’m going to walk on water, I easily tell them I learned how from the world champion himself, and mean it. My dad allowed us to use his boat. As he was dropping me off at the boat ramp one day he told me not to pull skiers under the bridge, as this was dangerous. I didn’t listen, as we were skiing down the canals we passed a dead guy floating in the water. Someone else had just discovered him, he’d apparently gone sleepwalking the night before and fallen in. He still had his pajamas on. An hour or so later I crashed the boat into the last piling of a bridge, fortunately, all aboard were spared great injury. We didn’t water ski under the bridges anymore. The next few years of water skiing were less eventful and my friends and I became pretty good at it. I called myself “rubber band man” for my ability to cartwheel into a full yard sale while crashing and remain uninjured.

At our high school they used to have “open campus”. The seniors were allowed to leave for lunch driving around having a good time. The underclassmen invariably hid in the cars and left too. This all ended with an alcohol related car accident, of course, and they closed campus a year or two before I got there. Although I’d never known what open campus was like, when I got there, the older students who’d had a taste for it assured me that it was better on the outside than in. I could get an “A” on the test without studying or going to class, the material covered was the same as in fifth grade, so I opted to quit spending so much time in class and see the world.

A typical day started after first period roll call. I’d ask for a hall pass to the restroom or library, and as I was a know it all who took control of the classroom and steered it in the direction I wanted, the teacher was only too happy to excuse me. At which point in time I’d head to the doughnut shop skirting the deans, picking up accomplice’s, running the maze, picking the unguarded exit, and jumping the fence to “freedom”. Light up a smoke, get some doughnuts, and reverse the procedure sneaking back on and getting back to class without getting caught. Then convince the second period teacher to enter me in the role as tardy. I’d repeat this scenario several times a day. I never got caught. This was a big ordeal for nothing and I’d probably been better off in class, but I was learning something they didn’t teach in class. I knew that material anyway. I was learning how to get around a problem, slip through cracks in the system.

It was the end of my junior year when a woman I’d never seen before on campus set up a meeting between me and the Valedictorian. She said I needed to talk to him. The kids called him “Jesus” because he had long hair, a beard, wore sandals, and light colored clothing. We met each other in the hallway and after a few words just kind of looked at each other for a while. There really wasn’t much to say, we kinda saw eye to eye. I used to be in the international baccuaralette program, too, before I dropped out, and knew him. We might have been the two “smartest” guys on campus. He certainly looked like he was, and he had straight A’s in the most difficult classes to prove it. I pretty much showed up on test day, quickly got a 100%, traded 90% of the answers to the others in class, got a pass to the bathroom and skipped off campus. The problem was the pop quizzes and homework I never did. I ended up with B’s and C’s. I kinda straightened out a little my senior year. I mastered the one handed matchbook ignition technique as demonstrated in Tom Cruise’s Cocktails and Dreams. This worked great at the bars with the ladies.

The “House on the Hill” was what everyone called the place I lived in 1990, and 91. The retired fire chief lived next door and he had a radio antenna and wasn’t afraid to call the police if someone threw a beer can in his yard. I continued to throw keg parties but got up before the sun came up and cleaned up the neighborhood of trash, what a disaster it was every time. I often tell people that of the 15 or so people who lived there only me and Amy Allard (named her daughter, Sunshine) made it out alive which is mostly true. We had a flat liner and a no breather in the hallway, as we were close to the hospital, they both lived a little longer. Practically all of the eventual deaths were pharmaceutical pill related.

One character I’d nicknamed “Cornnut”, was dating a nurse and she gave him a gallon sized ziplock of valiums. I asked him what he was doing in addition to drinking a 12 pack of beer every day. He didn’t eat much. He said “I take ten valiums every morning”. I explained to him that valiums, along with most stuff, had a half life. The half life of valium was supposedly 24 hours. If he took 10 valiums this morning and woke up the next morning he’d still have 5 valiums in his system. If he took 10 more he’d have 15 total. The next morning he’d wake up with 7.5 valiums in his blood and take 10 more for a total of 17.5 pills, the next morning close to 9 + 10 = 19. Eventually, if he did the math he’d have10 valiums in him when he woke up in the morning and take 10 more for 20 all day. Jackson. “What?” he said. I asked him whose picture was on the front of the twenty dollar bill. Jack Son and tried to explain a larger mathematical e idea usually explained around compounding interest. He was dead within 20 days.

The wild bikers, journeymen, strippers, and musicians who lived here showed me a lot, mostly what not to do. I did however learn how to assume another identity or get a fake ID. I never did it, but they were experts and said, “The first thing you do is disconnect the city water, then call a water delivery service”. The water delivery service was lax about ID. Now one had a water bill with an address and a fake name… off to the library for a card, just keep fishing for cards until one gets the social security #. Another way to do it was to go through the obituaries, find a dead guy, and hurry to the Department of Motor Vehicles and get a replacement DL before the death was electronically passed to the DMV. Mr. Stankard taught me all this and he was also Mike Star (you can see why he would want to change his name). Michael Stankard played Stevie Ray Vaughn better than Stevie and just kept playing “Texas Flood” to me for a year or so. I’m always trying to get people to know who I actually am though.

We had a water department key as well at the place, so we could easily keep turning the water valve on if we wanted some in addition. I also learned how easy it was to steal power, with insulated gloves and tool one only needed to cut a hacksaw blade in two and slide em’ in the opened box’s vacant key slots. To do it properly one had to have someone (me) standing by with a 2” x 4” to break one’s arms off if one got “stuck” while putting in the rigged key. I put one of the roof line downspouts in the unused pool and got water with a 5 gallon bucket to flush the toilet. Periodically, the house would get “raided” and the police would throw us out even though we paid rent. I’d hold the fort down and study by kerosene lamp.

This period pretty much rounded out my 4 keg’s of beer party throwing days. Considering what I was to discover later this huge beer drinking party thing could be viewed as regrettable or just plain dumb, but I took notes and learned a lot. In addition to learning how to drink 20 or 30 beers and still operate (exercise, metabolizing the alcohol, and stay up into the wee hours of the morning drinking water for a few hours before sleeping). In today’s world to really operate and exchange ideas it’s important if you do drink, which I don’t necessarily recommend, to be able to handle it.

The characters I hung out with and I also set up a beer drinking scheme where we hunted for, trapped, and humiliated anyone who wasted the beer, this was a big part of what we were doing. My crew possessed several different old taps for the kegs. The newer taps that the shopkeepers gave out with a keg rental upon deposit were increasingly flawed, and would hamper or stop the full emptying of the keg. This was a big deal, and there were many nights where at about midnight I’d have to replace the rental tap with one of our own. Often, I’d take the faulty tap back to the store immediately, along with all the older functional taps we had. Of course the beer was still flowing at my place, one of the 4 kegs was just tapped with one of our antique taps. It was pretty easy to see why they might have started making less functional or cheaper taps, we had acquired the better ones. The potential for wasted beer was so great that we’d make a big deal of it. This was about the time when the Pakistani’s were taking over the convenience store operations, and it gave me a chance to infiltrate their culture as they took over ours through a middle man scheme.

During the last of the my big keg party throwing days I wouldn’t even go to sleep after the party and would walk around my neighborhood between 4 A.M. and sunrise, picking up all the trash the party goer’s had thrown out the car window as they left. I’d head out with a dozen or so jumbo trash bags and fill them all up and then some. It was a disaster. I did learn that if one offered practically unlimited cheap beer, everybody would love you. They’d say, “Yes” or agree to practically anything.

My buddies and I decided to do a summer road trip. The four of us jumped in a pickup with a top over the bed and headed north out of Florida. We went to Boston and stayed with a girl we knew, Whitney Rand. After catching a baseball game at Fenway and sitting on top of the monster wall, we were having a few drinks at the Venus nightclub. One of my friends, Tom, decided to cut out early and took a cab back to the pad. James McNulty and I decided to continue trying our luck at the Venus, just below the green monster wall. Mr. McNulty is distinguished by the fact that he survived a Cuban necktie attempt in NYC. We got lucky and picked up two young women that were sporting a rich gothic look. We strolled, and ended up at a huge rectangular concrete reflecting pond. I sat down next to the pond with my girl, who I conversed with. My buddy was doing likewise with his gal fifty feet away. Everything was cool until McNulty screamed and came running over with blood leaking out of a couple holes in his neck. “The bitch is a fu@$ing vampire!” It appeared so. I’d never seen anyone so hot to leave. He was convinced, you could see it in his eyes and on his neck.

I lived with a guy named Billy Burns, he asked me, “Jolley, what do think is the most powerful force in the world?” Gravity? “Nope. !REVENGE!” Billy went on to become a multimillionaire Hotlanta broker and married a Penthouse Pet. Mr. Burns was a blonde Italian about 5’8”, 155lbs. Mr. Burns was operating an unusual scheme. I never witnessed it but heard all about it and saw the injuries he took, mostly to his hands as a result. Basically, Billy Burns would walk into a different bar every night and one of three things would occur. He’d walk up to the biggest, toughest, baddest beer drinking sucker at the bar, and beat the crap out of them, breaking em bad and quick, and then clear out. The second scenario was exactly like the first except he’d call you outside to administer the treatment. The third option was he’d go in the bathroom and wait for ya to show up, perhaps unsealing the pores of the head with a hop head. He was brutal. Nowadays, when I walk into a men’s restroom and there’s a really big guy in there, especially if they’re seated in the stall (I judge how big they are by their shoes) I tell them this story. The bigger the character I tell it to the better the effect/affect.

I took an art appreciation course, I wanted to be an artist, with a Professor who went on and on about Moby Dick, and a one legged man chasing a white whale around the world. A Cherokee Indian Irish man taught American history. He had a different version of history than I’d been taught over the last 20 years. He would be Florida’s “college teacher of the year”. I was fortunate to be there. He taught us that the Civil War was not fought to end slavery. Slavery was already dead because the “ringmasters” running the show had figured out that if you sold the slaves the land, the houses, and horses they would work ten times as hard (thinking they were free). Then the “ringmasters” would simply tax them 30% and make 3 times as much money. Wow! I thought, those “ringmaster” guys and gals are slick. Of course once you figure out this scheme your left wondering why we had the war in the first place.

The professor knew why. He had a mystery solving technique I’d never even heard of. I’d been taught to examine what preceded an event when reasoning why. This professor taught me to look at what happened after an event when reasoning why. After the Civil War corporations were given all the rights of a person in the 14 amendment. It is quite obvious now that this is “what happened” after the Civil War or the most significant thing that occurred as a result. This is actually what keeps us from stopping the corporations. It would be discrimination. Nowadays after paying a 30% tax a live persons remaining 70% goes mostly to the corporations. I researched this idea even further and discovered after the civil war American Corporations solicited investors and the Europeans (largely the English) stepped in and invested (took over), which is why I call the Civil War, which wasn’t civil at all, the “Counter Revolution”.

I dated a young Jewish woman, Miss. Alexa Rachel Sherr (pronounced share or sure), for almost four years, she was a sucker for barbecue pork and lobsters. I fell in love with this girl. She was extremely beautiful, even more intelligent, had a real heart and her parents were wealthy. My kind of girl. We had an interesting relationship, and called each other once or twice a day. Often the phone would ring as I was picking it up to call her and it was she. This happened the other way around too, and sometimes the phone was busy. We thought this was funny.

One night, I rode my 700 (Club) Honda Interceptor to her dad’s humble castle to pick her up, she was drying her hair or something, and I was waiting. Her dad, Mr. Sherr, was a Rhodes Scholar, and we got along pretty well. We were talking out in front of his place when he asked me something. I can’t remember if he asked me if I believed in god or if he asked me what it was that I believed in, but I replied that I believed in myself. He ran me through some of the pitfalls I’d encounter with this idea, believing in my self, and finished off by telling me about King Midas. This fellow gets the “gift” of being able turn everything to gold, and ends up looking like an ass. He told me if I ever ran into King Midas not to believe it, and to believe in one god. This was interesting to hear and I never forgot it. This Mr. Sure knew something, as if he had some experience in the area.

One night he was entertaining guests at a large party including politrickons. He explained to me that while he was extremely rich and made a lot of money in property law, he was willing to share his fortune with those less able to acquire it. The government taxed him almost 50%, and he was having a gathering at his house to see if he could get the money put towards a good purpose. I kinda liked his idea, it just looked like the government (which operated like an antigovernment) was the worst bunch to give the money to.

Alexa went on a holocaust packaged tour in Europe. Many people say the Nazi’s attempted extermination of the Jews and Gypsies didn’t happen. I served a few older people in restaurants who had #’s tattooed on their arm that said it did for sure. It was a horror no doubt, but I often pointed out that more Russians died in WW II. She didn’t like this. The most noteworthy thing about the holocaust as how it relates to now is how the people who lived by the extermination facilities covered up and ignored it, “pretended” that it wasn’t happening. The people who lived next door, they watched the trains and trucks of people forced into the place. They saw the smoke coming out of the stacks, the only product. They either didn’t mention it or when they did decided never to mention it again. They just kept going with “their lieves” as if everything was normal. This is the true horror of the event and shows “how humans are”. They’re able to commit atrocities, attempted “genocide”, and act like it’s not happening. The dam shiddy problem (a complete ecocide attempt) is so much worse the two aren’t even comparable and the humans are trying to hide it even more so.

She ended up marrying a guy named Lovejoy or something, which I thought was funny cause I’m Jolley.

While attending PBCC, the old P.eanut B.utter and J.elly C.ollege, I could often be found working 3 jobs while attending school. I accomplished this by working the graveyard shift (midnight to 8 AM) for a G.E. subsidiary as a bridge tender, going to school till about noon, cutting grass in the afternoon, and parking cars in the evening and early night. For a while I valeted at “Rumbottoms” on the Intracoastal Waterway. The end of the cocaine 80’s and beginning of the parmoresuetokill 90’s. This is where I really learned to drive. The Ford Mustang 5.0L was the car of choice to learn on (preferably not your own). I liked the LX with the regular trunk, it was the lightest. There was a railroad crossing with a super steep approach between the main lot and the overflow lot. If I got the right car, and I was selective, off to the overflow… I liked to try and kinda launch at an angle with traction loss on all tires and lots of smoke. The closer one approached to sideways on takeoff the more exciting it was, especially on the landing which one wanted to be straight.

Don’t think that I didn’t take care of people who took care of me. One character came in a Corvette ZR1 on Saturdays and tipped 5 Jacksons, $100. I parked his car less than 20 feet away, slid four 20’s in my left rear pocket, got out, and put $20 in the kitty from my right back pocket. I’d watch for him to get in the LONG approach lines, smoke a cigarette just as he was getting close to the establishment, and with perfect timing, ditch the smoke, step in front of the head valet luetennanint (sucker), and open the door for the best guy. Pullin’ off the “step in front of the valet lieutenant” was tough every time cause he knew, too. Establish dominance from the first, never even let the chance of him ever getting the big cheese occur. That valet met me at the ZR1 a second or two late every time, boy was he pissed off. I countered the obvious threat to my continued employment by working or establishing a relationship with the house (a separate crew kinda), in particular the doormen. This seemed to intimidate the other valet, and it should have, considerin’ who ran the joint.

I wanted to be a rocket scientist, while taking calculus something unusual happened. It seemed like when test day came around the calculator that I’d been using for studying would quit working while I was taking the test. I got new batteries, it did it again on a quiz, this was madness. I finished with a pen. I got a new calculator and brought in a pencil just in case. It quit working again, I finished with the pencil. I brought a solar powered calculator and sat down on it and cracked it on the way in to the next test. I got the picture. I stopped trying to use a calculator. I solved the calculus problems with a pencil, it takes a lot of lead to prove this stuff.

It was funny to get up and sharpen my pencil over and over. The professor called me to his desk the day after a test. “I see you’re not using a calculator.” I swallowed and quickly explained my predicament, which was hard to do, cause it’s different. He thought about this for a second and then turned his attention to my answers. He flipped through the first few pages of work explaining that I had answered the first few questions correctly, but missed this one because of a subtraction error on the third page of the proof. He said it looked like I understood how to solve the problem better than the kids with the calculators. “Carry on”.

I did, doing the same thing in the physics classes and calc II. I loved the look on the other student’s faces as they watched me sharpen my pencil for the third or fourth time. They realized I was either solving or proving I knew how to solve problems designed for a calculator with a pencil. I also realized that sharpening the pencil was a distraction. It didn’t matter if it was on the wall with a hand crank or if it was a little plastic one that was used at the desk. Even the swooshing sound of the lead against the paper was a distraction so bringing in multiple presharpened pencils did nothing. This distraction may have lowered their marks and moved me further along the bell curve.

I had figured out that the rockets were made out of chemicals and I was trying to get into the number one chemistry program in the nation. All I had to do was get a “B” in Calculus II and I was in. I’d already gotten a “C” and ended up trying again, sitting in a pencil sharpener not included math class against the wall in the back left from the teacher’s viewpoint. In front of me sat a really hot chick. Next to me sat a big guy who couldn’t stand distractions. He said that the sound of the lead on the paper was driving him crazy. I had developed a certain cadence (for me the solution was in a sense musical), and it did look like there was a hornet’s nest in his head. He pounded on his calculator buttons in retaliation. About this time I decided that chemical rocket scientology was not the solution to my problem.

Michael John Abbruzzie Sr. was a Mensa, an Emory Riddle graduate, the father of the guy I hung out with the most, and the most knowledgeable person I knew. He was an amateur pilot and mechanic that owned and operated a reservoir cleaning service. When I look back at my life, knowing what I know about who I am, I find it extremely pertinent that my best buddies dad, who removed vegetation from the mud fall out zone in the reservoirs of Iraq’s fertile crescent, was the character who shared more valuable information with me than any other single person. He knew a lot about history, the way things worked and the way things were. One of my best learning experiences was sitting at a table with this man and enjoying a meal of pasta, red sauce and a glass of wine while talking about how things came to be the way they were and who was responsible for the dam shiddy mess specifically. He knew all about the World Bank, the IMF, the Billbergia’s, the Trilateral Commission, who was in the train car in the Ardennes forest at the close of WWI, the whole bit.

He basically invented what he called the “cookie cutter”, which was a machine capable of clearing the vegetation from the sediment fallout, agriculture fertilizer runoff fed swamps of the dam reservoirs. He’d tell how it was for the benefit of the waterfowl, there was no place to land he would say. I always questioned the environmental benefit of this, in particular how productive it was. What do you do with the vegetation? He said he just piled it up on the side of the reservoir. Eventually he let on that the real reason the Iraqi’s paid him to clear out the swamp was so they could shoot the Iranians that were running across the swamp on the way to cut down the date palms and other mayhem.

But the main idea he left one with about the whole dam reservoir waterfoul war was the Mockofsin, the snake attacks he endured while getting it done. Moccasins are extremely aggressive poisons water snakes and from what he said they lived in nests and when he was clearing the swamp and disturbed a moccasin nest the snakes would attack him. He really went on about the Mockasin when talking about the dam reservoir killing field he was working on. The double entendre, and how one could talk about an idea with multiple meanings, Abbruzzie Sr. was the master of this without hardly letting on that he was perhaps talking about more than just Moccasins, nests, dams, reservoirs, choking vegetation, waterfowl and else. Mr. Abbruzzie was a cornucopia of ideas that I use to solve the dam shetty dilemma.

Be aware of that which lies under one’s nose. Literally and figuratively how this was the weakest spot for a human because they couldn’t see what lied beneath their nose, because of where their eyes were situated on their face and how their nose was in the way of transmitted or reflected light. For instance a person could deliver an uppercut punch and dislodge the jaw, pinching a nerve, and knocking one out. Best defense, tilt or bow one’s head down and clench ones jaw. Also, the thing that lies beneath ones nose is their mouth, my best tool for attacking the problem and it seemed as if humans had crippled themselves with a finicky olfactory sense, plus the obvious complete unawareness (whether real or feigned), of the dam shetty problem. Another thing he said was that when trying to answer a question or determine a solution to a problem or diagnose the cause of a problem, think about it, often times the first thing one thinks of is the answer, for sure.

Mr. Abbruzzie told a tale of how while working and witnessing a bunch of waterfouling mockofsinners he’d made a deal with a young boy who would dig up clay container shards, most likely broken shitpots, from the midden pile along the Wall of Babylon for a few dollars. These broken shit part shards had designs or images on them and Mr. Abbruzzie arranged them into a display that he framed. To me this was a message from the Wall of Babylon collected by Michael John Abbruzzie Sr. and another young man and displayed for me in particular. I interpret it to say when attacking the dam shiddy problem the boneheads (those deliberately destroying life) and pumpkinheads (those with not much in their skull that follow the boneheads) are the target, or watch out for the boneheads and pumpkin heads, attack with a double chevron style motif, arrive at the target with back up or a one two punch, reappear or return, grain, bread, food for thought. It was one of the most powerful messages I’ve ever taken, and I use it as my main M.O.

I’d decided to purchase some indoor horticultural equipment including a 1000 watt high pressure sodium bulb, hood, reflector, and ballast. The ballast stepped up the 120 volt current coming out of the typical wall outlet and was very heavy. Abbruzzie Jr. and I decided to fly the equipment from the Lantana airport up to the Inverness airport where Sr. lived. When we were loading the grow room equipment on the plane, a twin engine propeller Sr. equated to a flying pickup truck, Sr. decided the very heavy small box should go up in the nose of the airplane to better balance the load. He was very curious as to what I and his son Jr. were up to, and in particular wanted to know what the heavy thing was up in the nose compartment. I told him it was a ballast. “No seriously tell me what it is.” It’s the ballast.

I got to copilot the trip, adding to my flying experience. It was a partly cloudy day and as we flew over the former Everglades turned dam and ditch sugarcane disaster I asked how come we were flying around the clouds. Sr. said it was because there might be something in them that we could fly into causing a crash. I told him I really wanted to fly into a cloud. He let me. I approached one from the bottom and flew up into it. “Now what are you going to do?” Get out, I can’t see where I’m going. “Yep.” I pushed the stick forward with the idea to begin to descend back to where I was. He told me not to do that. How come? “That’s where the ground is. Can you see it?” Nope. “Me neither.” I pulled back on the stick and we got out the safest way, up. This is a valuable lesson to learn. “What’s in the nose of the plane?” It’s the ballast.

We landed at Inverness, taxied the plane over and parked it right next to the Sheriff’s plane with an infrared sensor that they use to detect the heat emanating from illegal grow rooms attached under the nose of the airplane. Of course we made mention of this. Sr. was pulling the light ballast out of the nose. “What is this thing?” It’s a ballast.

I couldn’t decide what to major in. I knew what I wanted to do, find out what the problems were on the planet and solve the problems. Which major would be the best for this? I didn’t know. On a rainy day in Gainesville, FL I stepped outside with the curriculum book or the book of possible majors and sat down on the front porch step with my feet in the rain. I decided I would put the book on my thigh, hold both covers and let it fall open, whatever gravity decided, I would pursue. The book opened up to Environmental Horticulture.

Often times, I’d carouse the campus late night. Kinda roll around real slow on my bike or just stroll looking for girls, hitting the ATM machine, and I’d run into a character. I couldn’t tell if they were tripping on LSD or eating mushrooms or just thinking outside the box, but they’d say, “There’s a nuclear reactor under the physics department lab and campus could take off like a spaceship”. The first time I heard this I was like, yeah whatever buddy, but after I’d heard a few different versions of it I started seriously thinking about it. When one really thought about it humans had all the technology already created. We didn’t have to invent anything, there was no missing piece to the puzzle, we had it all, and instead of taking off and seeing the universe what were we doing?

The sewage treatment plant was open to visitors. My roommate, an engineer, Jason Bultman told me, “