The fast-growing phenomenon is the creation of 27-year-old Russian software developer, Dmitry Chestnykh, who, ironically, speaks English as a second language. So I entered the word “Irony” 30 times and got the deceased, weird fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft.

The Huffington Post had this to say about the writing analyzer: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/17/i-write-like-website-goes_n_650037.html

It uses keyword recognition to track down your inner author. I spent about 20 minutes analyzing several of my stories. According to “I Write Like,” I write like:

• Stephen King (at least 20 times)
• David Foster Wallace (18 times)
• Kurt Vonegut (12 times)
• Ernest Hemingway (a lot)
• Mario Puzo (4 times)
• Chuck Palachniuk (twice)
• William Gibson (say what?)

I pasted in the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For the Devil.” I got Ian Fleming.

The Beatles “A Day In the Life” conjured up Raymond Chandler.

Cory Doctorow came up after typing a series of repetitive profanity.

Okay, I spent more than 20 minutes doing this. I spent far too much time. But it is addictive. One hit leads to another and soon you want to analyze everything from Michael Jackson songs to the ingredients on the back of a Pop Tart box. It went on and on. Check it out: http://iwl.me
By the way, I just analyzed this blog post and it is written like Cory Doctorow. You’ll get Cory Doctorow about every 8 tries. Everyone writes like him, I guess. Perhaps his blog: http://boingboing.net is running in the background of our brainwaves as we write other stuff and it comes out about every eighth time. (this single paragraph was analyzed as writing like Cory Doctorow, so there, it’s the eighth paragraph in this post. Point proven.)

Thanks, Jeff (who also writes like Cory Doctorow). Damn. Is Dmitry Chestnykh the president of Doctorow’s fan club?

Having grown up in the Deep South, I’d be willing to bet a few river water-soaked Andrew Jacksons that most of those injuries ended up in Southern emergency rooms. I am not biased or prejudiced. I just grew up in LA (Lower Alabama) and I know what Southerners do with fireworks, beer and a bulletproof mentality fostered by a lot of SEC football wins. We all start to think we’re George W. Bush on a WaveRunner or Lyndon B. Johnson squirting lighter fluid on a lit grill or Richard Petty driving a big Merc through chocolate water too close to the cypress roots. We get dangerous real quick down here.

“It ain’t funny ‘til somebody gets hurt,” says people who don’t mean it literally. “Maybe just a little hurt,” they add when pressed for clarification. “Not killed or nothing like that.”

10,00 people were not laughing on July 6th.

If the 4^th of July festivities involve a 911 call and an ambulance, somebody has turned dumb and gotten reckless and probably near a car sitting on blocks. Then comes bandages and maybe Vicodin for the pain later that night. Unfortunately, the Vicodin is often followed by more beer and fireworks – later that night. It is like an aerial bomb strapped to an F-150’s gas tank. Remember the old Southernism, “What are the last words a redneck will ever say? ‘Hey y’all, watch this!’ ” I have both watched it and said it, and that’s why I’m writing this.

I still have a few Black Cats and bottle rockets left. I can smell the gunpowder already. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go outside with a lighter and yell, “Hey y’all, watch this!”

One chimp sat hunched, as chimps tend to do, just inside a large window into their captive, monkey world. A dozen small children and young mothers, some with strollers, stood in awe, rubbing their hands on the glass as the chimp rubbed its side of the pane, mirroring the children’s motions.

Another chimp approached and began poking a finger into the shoulder of the first chimp. The first chimp shook its head as if saying, “no.” Another poke. Another no. A shove was followed by a look of “okay, what?”

The “what” was not suitable for small eyes.

Under-the-breath cursing followed gasps. Mother’s grabbed their children and ran. Some mothers’ shielded their kids’ faces. One boy yelled, “Look! They’re fighting!” It was just the opposite.

For almost two minutes, monkey porn played as if on a 72-inch, 3-D, high-def screen. My family stood frozen. Words caught in our throats. Moms screamed. Kids laughed, not really sure what was going on, but pretty sure it was not a part of the tour. Like a horrible accident on the freeway, we could not look away. It was so weirdly human – so creepily close. And the sounds, the freaky sounds; I can still hear them. Thoughts of fuzzy Ron Jeremy fluttered through my mind from a bad 1970’s image I saw in a place I did not want to be. The male’s chimps face said it all. I will not repeat it here.

As a teenager, I was a fried chicken junkie. I could eat more chicken than any man alive, including Jim Morrison (check out The Doors “Back Door Man). I looked at the meat itself as a necessary evil. It was the wrinkled crust that twisted my tongue, shifted my gears and fortified my loins. Ophelia delivered.

Damn; she understand the delicate intricacies of fried chicken crust to the point where men would drive a hundred miles to touch their tongues to her goodies. She had a talent and a skill and a wicked obsession. What Colonel Saunders did with eleven herbs and spices, Ophelia did with far less.

I tried to get her to lay the secret on me but she just smiled and shook a crooked finger, saying, “Honey, if I give that up, I ain’t got nothing left in this world but a few gold teeth and a 1968 LTD.”

She worked alone in her kitchen and no health department official dared question her preparation techniques for fear she would cut them off. Her place was open when she felt like cooking and was filled with the rich, poor, famous and criminal.

Ophelia could do things to a chicken wing that would make Bill Clinton actually have sex with Hillary and convince George Bush to admit that Dick Cheney had his hand up his ass the whole time moving his lips like a puppet. I can’t even remember the side orders at Ophelia’s place, which wasn’t really a place at all, but a few tables under a bent grove of loblolly pines next to a ditch of a creek nudged beside a small wooden kitchen no bigger than a walk-in closet.

She served collards cooked in pork fat, yams swimming in cinnamon butter and cathead biscuits the size of a coffee saucer. I do remember her saying that mac ‘n cheese was for wimps, however, and if you ordered it, you could kiss her ass (she said that phrase with only her eyes). Unlike Burger King, if you wanted it your way, you would not get the damned thing. She served what she wanted and you, by god, loved it, or left. I never saw anyone leave except after their shirts and belts were tighter.

Ophelia is long dead now. A part of me died with her – a few inches of artery at a time. And I am not alone.

It’s a rare thing. Of course it should be. Drinking something that fell out of a cat’s butt would be rare beyond ever happening at my house. When something has passes through an animal’s digestive tract it needs to be called fertilize, not caffe latte.

Why just the civet’s droppings? Why not a Doberman’s droppings? Load that bad boy up on some green coffee beans and wait for the cash to start dropping. How different can a civet’s colon be than a Golden Reteriver? Or a Bobcat? Hell, I could quit my job if I could convince Rudy to scarf down a pound of so a day of beanery. I would be happy to follow him around with a plastic glove for $227 a pound.

Even better, I have a cousin who weighs about 400 pounds. This guy could easily put down ten pounds of beans a day, no prob. He would be a one-man gourmet coffee crap factory. Just set up ESPN on a nice screen, a recliner and bring on the beans. He’d take care of the manufacturing process while you wait. It’s a win win.

People all over the world are beginning to buy civets and do this full time. When you go to a nice restaurant and say, “This coffee tastes like crap,” there’s probably a good reason for it.

Here and there across America, retirement homes will set you back upwards of $6,000 to $9,000 a month. I am not talking about a full-on nursing home, I am talking about an assisted living situation where people who can’t cook or clean for themselves get a little daily help. In most other ways, these seniors are pretty self-sufficient. $9,000 is a boatload of money. And in that statement is the answer to this unpleasant time of life.

A cruise can be purchased for about $1,000 a week. No, it is not cheap. But still, think about that for a moment – a nice room with a view that is always more exciting than looking at a parking lot and a gazebo no one ever uses.

The housekeeping on a cruise is better than you can get at many 5-star hotels. If you leave for breakfast, when you get back an hour later, your room is perfect. The cruise also offers all you can eat from a buffet that is usually pretty impressive (elephant and whale-shaped ice sculptures surrounded by radishes carved to look like flowers). And your unstable gait won’t be noticed because half the people on onboard may be drunk at any given time.

You can hang out at the pool and see half-naked women (or men, if that is your fancy) for free. You can gamble in the casino. They have bingo. We all know retirement homes have bingo. So do cruises.

You can visit exotic locales almost every day. And, if you choose the Caribbean, it is even warmer than Florida, so those blood thinners will be no problem unless you get cut playing shuffleboard. All of this can be yours for about $4,000 a month – that is four smackers versus nine chumps. It this looking genius yet?

It doesn’t take a CPA to grasp the concept that this is a hell of a lot cheaper option than one of those retirement places where they treat you like you have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. The crew on a cruise will treat you like a king or queen, whichever you prefer. They have a doctor and a little hospital on board. And the staff at Adios Acres Retirement Village damned sure won’t fold your towels into animal shapes while you are out for a stroll.

Should you not wake up one morning, your friends can wheel you over to starboard and treat you like a pirate, slipping your leftovers over the rail and into the arms of Neptune – which is a pretty awesome way to exit this world if you have seen pirate movies. Actually, I suppose you have already exited, so this is just a disposal formality. It is, however, far cheaper than a $9,000 funeral. Okay, it is free. Your survivors can buy a lot of fruity, umbrella-topped drinks with nine grand, and think fondly of you with each sip. Or they can buy a good, used Honda Civic at Car Max. Or pay for nine more weeks of cruising. The options are endless.

Thank you, Ricardo, for this awesome idea. I hear there are even bigger discounts if you book early. I’m booking 20 years early. See you all in Grand Cayman.

Rudy, our Jack Russell, has had to become the Bodie Miller of dogs just to make it down. It takes practice and talent to navigate the frozen treachery, even on four legs. Rudy has mastered 4/5ths of it.

A few minutes ago he skated out the back door across the deck and perched at the top of the steps. He squatted in preparation before launching himself down the bumpy incline. He grunted on each 90º drop as step after step thudded under his 18-pounds.

If dogs have knees, Rudy’s are shock absorbers. At the bottom of the stairs, he leaned into the hard snow, downhill racer-style, stretching his four legs far to his right as his head and body curved left into the white, slanted yard. He moon-walked in a canine crouch, the pads of his paws gliding over custard frost in a diagonal until he was at the bottom of the backyard fence. Rudy’s grace and athletic ability ended in a skidding, violent, flailing stop. He has hit the fence or caromed off the trunk of a tree several times this winter, ass upturned, legs akimbo, gripping desperately at air and bark with teeth and toenails.

Once at his destination, he moved methodically and sniffed the area before dropping a steaming poopcicle. As it landed, he ran from it as if an alien has escaped from his puckering rear. More slipping and sliding followed. It was tricky. There are previous frozen brown deposits around and he slalomed an ugly course to avoid his previous meals that are splayed like shotgun shells across the corner that he considers his toilet.

The long climb back up to the steps pained him, his snout grooved into a rictus of determination. John Krakauer could write a novel about Rudy’s 6-minute journey. To a dog, this is Everest.

At the bottom of the steps, he clawed his way up the slickest surface I have seen since Apolo Ohno beat those two Koreans the other night in speed skating. He also knows how the Koreans felt because four minutes earlier he had hit the fence like they had hit the wall in Vancouver. Finally on the deck, his ordeal ended and he struggled through the door, collapsing on the carpet next to the fireplace, licking his paw pads.

To reward him, I filled his bowl with food. He ignored me. He knew if he ate it, the horrid decent to Poo Corner would happen sooner than later. He closed his eyes. I think he is dreaming of July sun.

I usually wait until the end of the day to read it, just to see how incorrect it is. Often it is vague. It could anyone’s future, especially by the end of the day, when it is, essentially, the past. About three months ago, I started reading it in the morning. Different wad of lint altogether. I am no closer to believing in such things, but I have discovered something just as interesting: the horoscope writer hates Sags.

Day after day I have been reading:

“You will fail.”

“Not a good day to go anywhere.”

“You should find another occupation.

“Something bad is going to happen.”

“Someone is screwing with you.”

“Hey dude, can’t you take a hint? Your life sucks.”

Okay, the last one is just my interpretation of a continued string of gloom and damn. Ah, yeah, because the horoscope writer is screwing with me and every other Tradgittarian. It is like I am being stalked by a palm reader with an axe to grind – or a keyboard to plant in my back. Some Sag somewhere pissed off this horo-writer, guaranteed, and it is Zodiac payback every day.

Here is the strange thing: Sagittarian horoscopes are different in every daily source. One is cheerful, on is surly. How the hell can that be if it is supposed to be the fate of everyone under that sign for that day?

I have decided to start reading several horoscopes and just pick the one I like. If I have a choice between:

“You will experience great pain today.”

Or

“Your CPA made a mistake and you will get back all of the taxes you’ve ever paid. The check will be there Friday.”

Not too hard to figure out which Sag I want to be that day.

I grew up near the Gulf Coast. I had a Southern accent. I know a drawl when I hear one. I can tell the difference between a Birmingham and Lower Alabama. I hear the peculiars of the accents north of Atlanta and those in southern Georgia. I know what Mississippi sounds like 100 yards away. Nashville too. Louisiana has it’s own flavor as well. But this new thing coming out of Southerner’s mouths is difficult to peel from the English language.

Besides the typical Southern syllable stretching, this new version combines short, choppy odd sounds that may not be words at all. It sounds like lazy words mixed with hiccupping and burping and mumbling. Sometimes the speaker’s mouth doesn’t even move. These people would be amazing ventriloquists, but no one would ever understand their dummy. It it like Larry the Cable Guy drunk on cheap hooch. I was not sure whether to nod in agreement, laugh or just knock the hell out of the person for insulting me.

An angry woman castigated me on the phone for some perceived injustice and I was not sure whether she was choking or trying to start a malfunctioning Weedeater. Hitting someone in the tongue with a hammer might produce such an accent. Even some of my deeply Southern friends were confused by it. 

I know one of these people will read this blog and write me a nasty comment. It will read like follows:

“Hardar yu riiiiit summmmensumeeeaaaann anhuurrrrtless abut yerpeppeplle hic, click, swallow, glup, burp mutheerrfarker ulll kiiiiiiicyerasss nextumiseeyeee.”

And I will respond: “Suriuhrothayyyytabutthaeeeuwayyysumpepltawk.”

Seems like I have picked up the accent now. Daaaaaaaamn.