People are strange. The things they do are strange, puzzling, amazing, and sometimes truly stupid. Today is just a day of musings and questions.  There doesn’t seem to be logical answers for some of the things I see and hear every day.

I was shopping recently and discovered something odd and surprising.  I found a rack of "duct tape" for sale in many and varied colors and patterns.  There was some with  tiger stripes and another covered with green shamrocks. Cool right? What’s the effing point?

My first reaction was why fancy duct tape?, and is it really "duct tape" or it is just "duck tape". I was always sure it was "duct tape" until I saw a recent TV commercial selling "Duck Tape".  It looked the same as the good old standby stuff  but it had a flashy and cool cartoon duck as it’s logo.  So what do  I ask for at Home Deport?  Where do I find the Duck Tape? I’m then forced to deal with that stupid blank stare you get when one of their employees has no clue. Most people love duct tape and use it for damn near everything.  But why? That leads me into my next unanswered question.

Have you ever skydived?  Everyone knows that it’s one of those things that’s just so damn exciting and dangerous that everyone says they’d like to try it.  I thought that at one time years ago and set out to try it myself.  I spent a portion part of a day being trained on how to jump out of a plane.  Stand in the door, look down, pee your pants , and jump . . . asshole.  It wasn’t a college course but it was required by our local politicians and insurance companies before you do something stupid. That way everyone is protected if and when you hit the ground at full speed. I went up, jumped, came back down and rode an adrenaline high for hours.  Just guess what the two things my memory has retained about that entire experience. The first thing was something I noticed as I climbed into one of the worst looking aircraft on earth. The entire interior surface of the plane was covered in duct tape (not duck tape).  It looked like the pilot preferred using duct tape instead of doing regular maintenance.  I thought at the time this was done specifically to help motivate idiots like me to jump out of that freaking death trap.  It was apparently done so you didn’t snag anything like your chute as you moved to the open door to jump. Silly me.

The second thing that stuck with me was the young blond Scandinavian women with the tight purple skydiving outfit who was hanging around the airfield that day.  After my extensive two hours of training she approached me with a business proposition.  She offered to skydive with me wearing a camera helmet and to tape my entire jump from start to finish for only $150.00.  She was extremely hot and I wanted to appear courageous so I signed up and gave her the cash.  She slithered into the plane with us and sat across from me all smiles and moist hotness.  During the flight to 14,0000 feet I fantasized about first doing the jump, surviving, and then possibly jumping her later. I knew I’d need help  to drain away all of  that excess adrenaline and she could certainly take care of that. That fantasy ended rather quickly when she cut the loudest and most disgusting fart I’ve ever heard, looked at me and smiled.  Even the pilot of the little two seater turned around to see what all the noise was about.  It took a few hours to get that stench out of my nostrils and it was just the additional motivation I needed to get the hell out that plane.  She took a pretty good video of me on the way down and strutted away from the landing never to be seen again. Those are my two main memories of that day, duct tape (not duck tape) and blond bombshell farts. What a life.

My last inquiry into people calls into question their ability to recognize and identify when someone is feeding them a line of BS.  As I’ve mentioned in the past, in another lifetime I was a state police officer in Pennsylvania.  One of the downsides to being a rookie cop is being stuck with all of the crap traffic details the more senior officers don’t want to do.  There’s a state park called Moraine Lake near Butler, Pennsylvania that is a huge tourist draw during the summer months.  Unfortunately the only entrance and exit to the public beaches is from a nearby interstate highway.  It became so congested at times on Saturdays that the backed up traffic would become a public hazard.  This required a few of us rookies to spend our day standing in the hot sun telling citizens to keep moving because the beaches were full and there was no place to park. This required them to drive five additional miles to the next exit just so they could turn around and drive back for another try.  There weren’t  many happy folks after that and on a normal Saturday the station would receive hundreds of complaint calls from pissed off beach goers.

On one specific Saturday I was sent out to the park in mid afternoon after traffic had already been rerouted for hours. There was a veteran cop there which was unusual and he seemed to be in charge. I found out later he was there on a punishment detail for some infraction he’d committed a few days before.  For the first time in history there were almost no complaint calls being received at the station.  I found out why just after my arrival  at the park. That veteran officer was telling each and every car that came by that "there were sharks found in the lake and the beaches were closed, keep moving please."  Not one person questioned him or called the station  to verify his story. The funniest thing was the rumor about lake sharks being mentioned in a local newspaper the next day. I was amazed then and still am. 

That’s it….I just had to ask these question and I honestly never expected a reasonable answer to any of them.