Animal Tales and One Stupid Human Trick Next time Bubba and Billy Bob go fishing, they might discover that the fish more or less moseys onto the hook, languishes on the line, and then pa.s.sively lays there in the cooler smoothing its scales instead of flailing.

Why come?

Because scientists have just discovered that estrogen in the water is making fish, particularly large-mouthed ba.s.s in the South, a whole lot less aggressive. In other words: Our Southern fish are "gender confused." Is it something in the water? Mayhaps. Because, among other reasons, Bobbie Jean has decided to pitch her birth control pills into the commode and all that estrogen gets into our waterways.

Further study has determined that most of the afflicted Southern ba.s.s have both male and female s.e.x characteristics, so it's understandable that they're confused. Most of the time they don't know whether to pound beers with the guys at Buffalo Wild Wings or check out the semiannual shoe sale at Dillard's.

The only good news to come from this is that it could result in a recall of that horrid wall plaque with the singing ba.s.s on it. You know the one. Instead of Take Me to the River, perhaps some lilting show tunes would be in order.

It can't just be about Bobbie Jean, though, because it's not happening in other parts of the country. In Alaska, for instance, fish are completely free of this inters.e.x condition. Alaskan fish have no gender confusion, preferring lumberjack plaid for the boys and something slightly s.l.u.tty from Forever 21 for the girls.

Scientists say that this gender bending may keep fish from reproducing because, with so many in s.e.xual limbo, there's just no real push to procreate.

Oh, if only deer, squirrels, and Kardashians would acquire this particular affliction. I'm just kidding. I don't really have anything against deer. Or squirrels.

If you're anything like me (and G.o.d help you if you are), you're probably already wondering how this is going to impact ... your Friday night at Red Lobster. What? You thought I was going to say the environment?

The good news is that inters.e.x fish, while perhaps emotionally conflicted, are perfectly safe to eat, scientists say. The absolute worst thing that would happen is that, if you're a boy, your bidness will fall off. What? Is that a problem?

I grew up fishing for ba.s.s so this is bad news for me. The fun is in the fight! If the fish simply yawns in my direction and suggests a light breading of panko crumbs with a modest pinot on the side, there's no real sport in that.

Of course, this is serious environmental business and a few of you who care about this sort of thing pa.s.sionately will probably argue that this could be the start of an ecological nightmare and they wish my business would fall off, too, for making light of it all.

While I'm plenty worried about the fish never getting their groove back, there's an even bigger ecological threat to my beloved Southland than gender-confused fish, and it's slithering its way up the coast from Florida. According to a report released by the U.S. Geological Survey (motto: "Beer Makes Us Awesome!"), Floridians, whom I previously regarded as a peaceful people, have been releasing killer snakes into the wild w.i.l.l.y-nilly.

Snakes being snakes, they aren't happy to hang out in Florida and they're heading north, where it's not so humid and there are better drivers.

News reports make it sound as if they're slithering along I-95, perhaps getting "stuck on Stuckey's" along the way and snake-giggling at the billboards for South of the Border. Because snakes don't have a GPS or even MapQuest, I'm not sure how they know the route but I guess it's instinctual. Kind of the same way that we humans have instinct that tells us how to care for our newborns and, even more important, to never let the skinny b.i.t.c.h in the group pick the restaurant. Instinct is very powerful stuff and snakes are up to their slitty little eyes with it.

So what are we to do about all these snakes heading up the coast? Well, I could give you a long, fancy-pants National Public Radio-induced answer, but the short version is, "Bend over and kiss your a.s.s good-bye."

No, seriously. That's all any of us can do.

There's no stopping this army of big snakes because, scientists say, they can produce one hundred baby snake eggs at a time. I will pause now for y'all to go throw up.

Florida, what did we do to deserve this?

Turns out that owning that cute little Burmese python outlived its fun factor once BP grew up and wound his way around the lanai. What to do? You take the former pet for a ride and dump him out. Done!

No! Not done! When asked by a reporter if there were actually, honestly, giant snakes in metropolitan areas like Miami, a scientist responded, and this is a di-rect quote, "Yes."

Dude. Let us down easy. You don't just tell somebody that giant pythons are slithering around South Beach. Sure, the vapid movie stars and reality TV stars who tend to lounge about down there probably just think of a boa constrictor as uber Spanx, but the rest of us have enough sense to be scared.

Scientists are, technically speaking, "completely freaked out in the head" about this march of the giant snakes northward, squeezing and/or consuming everything in their path.

One scientist said since the snake march began, he's had the chance to peer into the stomachs of literally hundreds of dead pythons (and you thought your job sucked) and found basically everything except a Barcalounger in there.

While plenty of the killer snakes have been dumped by bored owners who are, if you ask me, nuttier than squirrel s.h.i.t to even own these varmints in the first place, others are the descendants of snakes that escaped from pet shops back in '92, when Hurricane Andrew came calling. Said one scientist, "They escaped and have been reproducing ever since." Snakes, like the technology-starved Duggars, have to find themselves something interesting to do, I guess.

Scientists say these house-sized snakes can climb trees and take out entire species of birds, "akin to the situation with brown tree snakes on Guam."

Oh, holy Lord! Not the brown tree snakes of Guam! Wait a minute. What?

Scientists say the giant Burmese python in particular could be heading north. I looked up the giant Burmese python because knowledge, along with a working shotgun, is power. Turns out its favorite hobbies are "eating everything in its path, reproducing with abandon, and traveling long distances." Sounds like all of my old boyfriends once they dumped me.

Maybe I shouldn't be so paranoid about snakes, or so worried about the fish population. The human animal is the one we should all worry about the most because it's the stupidest.

A quick ill.u.s.tration: Redneck cousins Joe and Jacky Ray were out hunting big snakes one day when they happened upon a huge hole in the ground.

The closer they got to the hole, the more they were amazed by the sheer size of it. Like any good rednecks, they immediately decided that the best idea in the world would be to figure out exactly how deep it was.

"Let's chunk something down in there," said Jacky Ray, the brains of the two. "We could throw it down and then listen hard to see how long it takes to hit the bottom."

Joe thought this was a pretty great idea because, yes, he did just eat a bowl of stupid for breakfast.

Jacky Ray glanced over behind him and saw a rusty old car transmission sitting off to the side.

"Gimme a hand," he said to Joe. "We'll take this here transmission and throw it in that hole and see how long it takes 'fore it hits bottom."

So the two of 'em picked up the transmission and hauled it over to the big hole. They counted one-two-three and heaved the transmission into the hole, then stood close to the edge listening for it to hit bottom. All of a sudden, they heard a rustling sound in the brush behind them. Jacky Ray and Joe turned around and saw a wild-eyed goat come crashing through the brush, run up to the hole and, with not so much as a second's hesitation, jump into that big hole, headfirst.

Jacky Ray and Joe had never seen anything like this kind of animal behavior so they just stood there, slack jawed, looking at each other and looking back into the hole, trying to figure out what the h.e.l.l just happened.

An old farmer walked up right about then and asked them, "You fellows didn't happen to see my goat around here anywhere, did you?"

And Joe said, "Well, that's funny you should ask that, mister. We were just standing here a minute ago and a goat came running out of the bushes doin' I'd say a hunnert miles an hour and just jumped headfirst into this hole here!"

The old farmer shook his head and said, "Why that's impossible. I had him chained to a transmission."

26.

Lost in s.p.a.ce While it's awfully tempting to sneer at girl-astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper for losing a $100,000 tool kit during a s.p.a.ce walk, I just say: You. Go. Girl.

It was brilliant really. There's poor HSP working with a (ick!) grease gun and, while she's cleaning up, the bag "slips" out of her grip, the tools tumble into the final frontier, and back at NASA Mission Control, they hear her mumble, "Oh, great."

Yes, great! Great way to make sure that from now on, maybe they'll let you stay inside the cute capsule thingy and make m.u.f.fins for the rest of the crew. Crazy like a fox, you!

I'm only slightly worried that one day in the next few years, some poor kid growing up in an Oklahoma trailer park is going to get hit in the head by that thing falling from outer s.p.a.ce.

"Son, I bet that's the grease gun that girl astronaut lost a few years back," his daddy will say. "Whoa. That's gonna leave a mark."

I decided HSP did it on purpose to get out of work because, like I said, she wasn't nearly as contrite as she should've been after losing the expensive tools used to maintain the s.p.a.cecraft. Her explanation: "Despite my little hiccup, I think we did a great job out there!"

This would appear to be a slammin' new version of the old chestnut, "But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?" A little hiccup?

NASA, once again finding itself with powdered egg in a tube on its collective face, didn't have the reaction I would've predicted.

I was expecting NASA to issue a stern rebuke of such carelessness. Perhaps even something along the lines of "Are you a freakin' moron? It's not like y'all can head on over to Home Depot and pick up some new tools? That b.a.s.t.a.r.d costs one hundred thousand dollars!"

But, no. NASA took a kinder, gentler approach with the loss of the taxpayer-funded tool bag, issuing a statement praising HSP and saying, "she showed real character and great discipline" by continuing on and doing a fine job for the rest of the s.p.a.cewalk. Not to belabor the point, but where did they think she could've gone? She's in s.p.a.ce. It's not like she can say, "Screw all of y'all, there's a sale at Pier 1 and I am so outta here, a.s.shats. Uhhhh. Which way was Earth again?"

Because NASA isn't completely stupid and apparently never misses a BOGO on tool bags, our girl was told that she could continue her ch.o.r.e by sharing her fellow astronaut's tool bag, which I'm sure pleased him no end. ("You think you can hold onto that caulking gun? It belonged to my granddaddy ... .") NASA did say it was a trifle odd that she "lost" the tool kit because normally it's tethered to a much larger bag. Maybe she just thought they didn't go together. Tandem bags are just so 1998, y'all.

The spin doctors at Mission Control managed to make it seem almost laudable that there's a bag of expensive-a.s.s s.p.a.ceship parts floating out there.

"We appreciate how hard you all are working," they said in a peppy little post-goof message to the crew. Which makes me just wonder if NASA is, well, high.

The next goal for the s.p.a.ce team is to build a $154 million machine that will convert urine to drinking water. Which means HSP's m.u.f.fins may taste kinda funny, at least on the first couple of tries. It's like when you make pancakes and you always have to throw out the first two or three 'cause the griddle isn't hot enough yet and you've used too much urine, er, water.

Why am I so cranky about my astro-sistah? Because she sets us all backward when she does dumb s.h.i.t like that. She, of all people, should know that women still have to work twice as hard in male-dominated professions just to be taken seriously. That's not fair, of course, but it's true. So when you, oopsie, lose a tool kit, it causes heartless humor writers everywhere to unveil snarky, personal attacks on all of womankind. Thank G.o.d she didn't whine that the orange s.p.a.cesuit didn't do a thing for her complexion.

To be fair (which, incidentally, I just hate) HSP has been a good, occasionally outstanding, astronaut for more than a decade, so that does make me think the whole losing-the-tool-kit thing was planned. I mean, it did happen while she was cleaning up a greasy mess. Maybe she got fed up with always being the one who had to clean up the guys' mess. Maybe she was all "Right stuff, this, b.i.t.c.hes!" Or, maybe not.

In any case, it's important to remember that anybody can make a mistake, especially when you're the only girl living with a bunch of men whose only core belief is that bacon makes everything better. Stuck in s.p.a.ce without so much as a Jersey Sh.o.r.e rerun, their main job was to add a couple of rooms to your "house." Only in this case, the house is a s.p.a.ce station, and they're transforming it to a five-bedroom, two-bath home with a kitchen.

I imagine astrogirl may have grown a little tired of being surrounded by all that testosterone. If you've ever experienced a major renovation project with a member of the opposite s.e.x, you understand that tensions can run high.

I bet they hooted her down when she wanted to talk paint chips and fabric swatches.

Yes, the more I think about it, it's entirely likely that I'm being way too hard on HSP. I can't say that I could've survived more than a single day living with a bunch of guys, wearing that unflattering-a.s.s color, and knowing that when they did finally get that urine-to-water gizmo hooked up and working right, they'd just nag her to try to figure out a way to turn urine into beer.

Things haven't been easy for NASA lately. The moon program had such a bad case of been-there-done-that that its funding's been killed. But, no matter, they're rebounding with a plan to work with private companies to develop s.p.a.ce taxis. In theory, this sounds pretty cool, but then you have to think how sometimes it's hard to even get a cab across town.

The plan is for NASA to pay private s.p.a.ce taxis to take their astronauts up to the s.p.a.ce station for about $20 million per pa.s.senger. So I guess the astronauts will need to stand out on the curb holding up giant pillowcases with dollar signs on them to get the attention of the cabbie.

Of course, regular folks can pay for a ride, too, using these s.p.a.ce taxis that, with any luck at all, will be operated by drivers who won't be talking on their d.a.m.n cell phones the entire time. Which wouldn't be bad, because I love to eavesdrop, if they didn't mumble so much that the only thing you can hear is, like, every tenth word, which sometimes sounds like " ... terrorist ... explosion ... jihad ... meatless patties ..."-all of which are equally scary in my paranoid brain.

At the end of the trip to the s.p.a.ce station, will the s.p.a.ce taxi driver press that little b.u.t.ton on the right and make the fare miraculously jump by 20 percent for no apparent reason? Will he then explain that it's because of some bulls.h.i.t "time-of-day surcharge"? Will you then get all p.i.s.sy and make him take you back to Earth so you can go to an ATM and with-draw enough cash to pay his greedy b.u.t.t?

And wouldn't it be fun if these new s.p.a.ce taxis would occasionally have a Cash Cab driver? (On second thought, Cash Cab wouldn't be a great fit because if you fail to answer all the questions right on the show, you're ejected without prize money. It would be hard to pull over near what used to be Pluto and dump the riders just because they didn't know the capital of North Dakota.) Interestingly, one of the major backers of the new s.p.a.ce taxi business is the founder of Amazon.

And because of this, I worry that if duh-hubby and I buy our s.p.a.ce taxi tickets one day, he'll go first in a separate "shipment" for no apparent reason while I may arrive, inexplicably, days to weeks later.

Another s.p.a.ce taxi playa is the founder of a California company that has already built a rocket called Falcon and a capsule called Dragon. Which reminds me, his mommy said it was time for his lunch and not to forget to drink all his milk.

NASA says that in the future, there will be multiple s.p.a.ceships carrying crews, pushing costs down and safety up. Hmmm. Perhaps they will follow the successful route of traditional airline transportation. Only this way, instead of paying $99 for your one-way flight to Albuquerque and getting your flight canceled or delayed so you can spend more time perusing the offerings at Jamba Juice and watching the hair grow on your legs, you will be able to pay $20 million to be b.u.mped or otherwise inconvenienced.

Once you finally board your s.p.a.ce taxi, because it's a taxi, I'm guessing the food offerings will be more in keeping with that kind of ambiance, say a bag of Funyuns and some formerly urine turned water.

Of course, this is many years away, partly because the technology isn't completely in place and there are still many seed grants to divvy up between competing companies. Not only that, it's going to take a long time to round up a sufficient number of religious icons to place on the dashboard.

Y'all know I'm right.

27.

She Drives Me Crazy (Shaving Time Off the Commute) My friend Randy is 'bout to lose his religion over his new car.

A good Southern boy, Randy was tickled with his car at first because it (a) has plenty of leg room (b) dual sunroofs and (c) isn't a Toyota.

Randy's car is awesome in many regards but it was the state-of-the-art navigation system that sold him.

Who that, you ask? Well, it's a fab little device that lets you keep your eye on the road while you "talk" to your car. Randy likes to use the system to call people, hands free, or, more often, to command it to play music.

Unfortunately, his car can't understand Randy's melodious Southern drawl.

"I don't know what I'm gonna do," Randy told me. "I tell it, as plain as I know how, to 'Play artist Hall and Oates' and it will come back with this hateful Yankee voice that snaps at me, 'I didn't understand you.' So then I say, 'I said Hall and Oates, por favor' because I'm feeling just a little bit hateful and I might as well be speaking in a furrin language.

"So I say again to the machine, 'Play Rich Girl.' It's one of my favorites. I remember the first time I heard it I was in high school and it had been out for a long time but I really liked it because I was actually dating a kinda rich girl at the time and what was her name? ... She was really cute but a little taller than my usual girlfriends, 'cause you know I'm cursed in the height department. All the Wagram men are. My Uncle Elvin was short, but he never had any trouble with the women. He liked 'em young with old money. I'll never forget when his mama, who was a real piece of work, got introduced to his newest woman friend and she was way different from his usual teenyboppers. She must've been at least forty-five which was perfect because Elvin was close to fifty. Anyway, Aunt Berle had been sipping c.o.c.ktails for a couple of hours, and when he introduced his new grown-up woman friend to Berle and explained how she owned a highly successful chain of lawn furniture stores, Aunt Berle said, 'Well how 'bout that! Usually Elvin goes for young poontang and old money, not old poontang and new money. That boy's just full of surprises, I reckon.' Anywho, I loved that song Rich Girl and had just developed a real hankerin' to hear it and so I was talking about old times and that Yankee b.i.t.c.h just cut me off!"

Well, as a typical Southerner, Randy may go on just a bit. And it's possible that he even forgot for a second that he was talking to a machine. You know those people that you describe as "he never met a stranger"? That's Randy. Except sometimes I want to say a stranger what.

Randy says that his car's navigation system's inability to understand his Southern accent means that he arrives everywhere just a little p.i.s.sed off.

"That crazy Yankee b.i.t.c.h inside my car hears Derek and the Dominos as Death Cab for Cutie," he said morosely. "I haven't been this upset since they put me on the prayer chain at church for foot fungus. You know, I just hate when everybody has to know my business. That prayer chain is something to be scared of. The Baptists print the reason for the prayers right there in the bulletin, you know, so I was embarra.s.sed to wear sandals for a very long time."

Oh, yes, well ...

Randy says he gets so upset sometimes that he just pulls over to the shoulder of the interstate and takes a few minutes to cuss out his car.

I told Randy that I was completely sympathetic. And as a member of the pseudojournalistic profession, I plan to investigate this thoroughly and get back to him with the results of my in-depth research and extensive interviews.

Kidding! I haven't got time for that s.h.i.t. But I do get it. I told Randy that I have the same problem every time I "tawk" to a phone tree.

I don't think I've ever used directory a.s.sistance without a real human having to come on the line to figure out what the h.e.l.l I'm trying to say.

The computer says, "What listing?" in that clipped tone that indicates you better get it right the first time.

So I say something perfectly normal, taking care to enunciate perfectly: "Ah'd lock da numbah for Bream Baituh's Worms and Cawfee Shop, puleeeeez," which any moron should be able to understand, but no!

This is followed by that hateful pause and "Please hold for an operator."

Randy will, I'm afraid, just have to get used to the fact that the rest of the country tawks funny. They can't hep they-selves.