National Excuse For Writing Month is just around the corner. Are you gonna do it? Use it to improve your writing skills. Use it to get into the good habit of journaling daily. Or just use it to find newfound fame and glory and attain riches beyond your wildest dreams. You know, aim low.

I've got a good story, but I'm not even going to attempt that NaNoWriMo business this time around. One first draft in five tries is not a good track record, y'all, and with a certain punkinhead on the verge of crawling I don't think I could sit down to pound out 1,667 daily words if I wanted to.

However, my NaBloPoMo success rate is still 100%. And there's no word count on this bad boy -- you can put up a thirty-three-word diatribe about Sandra Lee's cosmetic surgery and it counts. That's something I can stick with. Plus, it artificially increases my penis size hit count.

Remember when I asked if you were doing it? That was rhetorical. Go sign up. Or I'll slap you with my, er, hit count.

• Create an acoustic folk band with three or more members, at least one of whom should have a white-boy afro.
  
• Perform gentle, soothing covers of songs originally recorded by gangsta rap outfits, especially those by NWA and Ice-T.
  
• Call it "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Crime."

It's semi-annual plague season in Central Florida again. That's right -- the lovebugs are back with a vengeance.

In case you don't live in a disgusting swamp and don't know what I'm talking about, let me clue you in. Lovebugs are these little black flies with red heads that float around in the air, moving with little to no purpose other than to get in your way and possibly land in your hair. Oh, and the best part? When you see one flying in front of you, it's usually not one. It's two, conjoined at the sexual parts in post-coital bliss.

That's right. They call them "lovebugs" because it would be impolitic to make widespread the term "flying fuckers."

Today while Avery and I were at the store, we had to literally bat our way through swarms of the things, which were teeming across the sidewalk and parking lot. At one point I looked up and it was almost like a black cloud had covered part of the sky.

Lovebugs aren't nuisances in the usual ways -- they don't sting, they don't eat your food, they don't spin webs across doorways so that you walk into them and end up wiping your face for the next ten minutes. All they do is hump and float. But it's still pretty disgusting in terms of sheer numbers. During breeding season, I consider it a duty to ensure that as many lovebugs as possible die a horrific death upon meeting my windshield.

Then when we got home I saw two snakes in my backyard. Not one like usual. Two.

You know something, Florida? I don't like you either.

Me camera box has been actin' up a spell, me hearties. The flash weren't illuminatin' nothin' brighter'n you'd find in Davy Jones' locker, an' apace the whole contraption weren't movin' any faster'n a schooner on a sandbar. That's why two weeks hence, me an' the missus took the big jump offa the plank an' got us a new treasure.

It's a nice piece of equipment. We're happy with ... what? Did you think I was going to keep that up for the whole post? I appreciate International Talk Like a Pirate Day just as much as everyone, but that's hard to keep up when you're talking technology.

Anyway, since I was limited on how much we could spend (this being a single-income household, after all) I had to pass on the fancy digital SLRs this time around. I ended up with the same camera we had before -- a Kodak point-and-shoot -- with twice the megapixels (up from four to eight), triple the screen size, and half the bulk. Observe its majesty! (And see that in fact, I am still capable of taking pictures that don't have my daughter in them.)

My only issue is that graininess. What Ol' Not-So-Flashy lacked in sheer dimensions it made up for in sharpness. This looks like I'm blowing up a photograph in Microsoft Paint. I haven't figured out what settings I could change that might help. Any ideas?

Avery has found the octave key on her voice box.



I blame the Enchanted Tiki Room. If it weren't for all those birds singing words and the flowers blooming, it might have never come to pass that my daughter recognized in herself the capacity for screaming. But no -- we take her in among the blinking lights and the bright colors, she becomes so excited that she squeals with glee, and then she proceeds to test out that sound until Mom and Dad develop tinnitus.

Oh, well. It was going to come to pass sooner or later. She did, after all, descend from a man who once yelled so loud at a basketball game that the mascot heard him in the locker room.

(Like the video, by the way? I finally figured out this camera capture device we bought months ago, so more should be forthcoming.)

A big dude like me doesn't usually have much luck in getting out of a traffic ticket. So when the Georgia Highway Patrol officer pulled me over Friday night, it looked like another addition to my inglorious track record.

I must admit, I was flustered. We'd just stopped for the third time in less than two hours, attempting to appease Avery so she'd sleep the rest of the way to Charleston, with limited success. In the midst of her screams, I'd failed to get out of the right lane, away from the traffic stop in progress, replete with flashing lights and officer waving me over, before two cars bumrushed me on the left and boxed me in. So she wasn't the only one upset when said officer jumped back in his car and chased me down.

"Care to explain why you didn't move away from my traffic stop back there?" he barked over my daughter's wails. Apparently, this is a law. I'm glad I'm not taking driver's ed now; I'd bring home a big fat F.

I apologized for my inability to act, explained the situation, and handed over my license and insurance information. He walked away from the car for maybe thirty seconds, then came back to the window and handed my stuff back.

"For future reference," he said, "you need to get to the left when you see a traffic stop. We enforce that very vigorously in Georgia, and it's a five hundred dollar ticket. I didn't see that you couldn't get over, but if that happens, at least slow down. Don't let it happen again."

Note to self: Next time I am pulled over, make sure to have a screaming child in the back seat. I love pity.

Today during Mama-Mandated TV Time (the hour immediately after Sed gets home, when Ned's Declassified is on), I heard this ad for a kid-specific cell phone.

No, this isn't another Commercials That Piss Me Off post. What snagged me about this spot was the music -- the "Cha Cha Slide." Apparently, this has become a hip dance craze sometime during the nine years when I already had a significant other and no longer had to go clubbing to find a mate. I don't know how to do it, and you know what? I don't care.

At some point beyond the haze of collegiate alcoholic debauchery, I decided to stop doing any and all line dances. The Cotton-Eye Joe was fun after a few pitchers, especially the part where you yell "Bullshit!" as loud as you can just before staggering off the dance floor and puking in your date's handbag. And the Electric Slide was fine when I'd ingested enough margaritas -- plus, since everybody knows it, you're almost weirder if you sit it out.

"So why?" you're asking. "If you're as little of a freak as you might inversely claim to be, why don't you just do the dance?" And you're running down a list of options:

• When they audition for "Dancing With the Stars," there's actually a category called "Exact Opposite of Rick."
  
• I'm such a belligerent nonconformist that I also throw punch at the dancers and the DJ when it comes on.
  
• I'm lame and I suck.

When really I just stopped when I realized it wasn't fun.

Seriously. Next time you're at a wedding (like the one I'm going to this weekend, where I just know they're gonna play the "Cha Cha Slide") or a club or a bar mitzvah or whatever, watch the dancers during the line dance. But don't watch their feet. Watch their faces. These people are locked in concentration, working to lock their steps with their neighbors. When they miss a beat, they wince or curse or stop despondently and watch the rest of the block for a good place to re-enter. Thanks, but when I want to march in formation I go to drum corps practice.

Dancing is about expression, about freedom, about just having a good time with your friends and loved ones. So when I'm dancing with my daughter at this wedding, I won't be goose-stepping -- I'll be expressing myself.

Specifically, I'll be expressing what a fool I am and how hard I'm going to embarrass Avery in twelve years.

Seriously, parents. You could have warned me that having a child would turn me into Edward Norton's character from Fight Club. Without the punching and the split personality, I mean; just the insomnia.

Not helping my free time is that I've taken a pro bono gig doing graphic design and marketing for my drum corps. More on that as I'm permitted to share.

My dad sent me a birthday gift that enabled me to purchase my Flickr account. Thanks, Dad! If you wanna see something cool, go check out my map and look how I've taken pictures from Vancouver to Tampa. That tool's been fun to play with, not least because I'm determined to place my photos at exactly the right point they were taken. No general Magic Kingdom for me; no sir, you're getting Ariel's Grotto! (No, the ones I took at my house aren't on the map. I'm dumb, but I'm not stupid.)

Did you know that VH1's "I Love the '80s" series is very easy on people whose brains are dissolving from lack of sleep?