You’re in Monaco, you just finished a bottle of Dom Perignon, and so have whetted your appetite.  From your balcony table you look out over the  Principality, the Mediterranean, and the myriad of yachts, and think what now?  Vat now?  Then it hits you: voila: you order “Designer Maine Lobster by Captain Christopher” -- and so you rescue yourself from the approaching doldrums, impress the Maître'd, and you and your guests from the House of Windsor are rewarded with that Lobster by Captain Christopher Coppock. 
    
    The following could have happened but -- you know -- possibly might not have:  
    Free diving at 150 feet Captain Christopher attacked and subdued the above pictured lobster with a choke  hold.  Within ten, maybe twelve minutes, the brute tapped out (not the Captain but the lobster).  Called the Lobster Whisperer by some unstable but interesting  characters (and this writer) the Captain then, over a period of several years,  “rigorously trained” the giant lobster to behave.  Frederick Nietzsche (the lobster) learned the hard way to channel his hostility into a comprehensive  societal pleasing form.  So, now “Fred” is a watch lobster.  God help the  uninvited guest that climbs aboard Captain Christopher’s Yacht after nightfall looking for a beer (I lost two fingers).   


Give to the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter, 263 Main St., Bangor, ME, 04401  207-947-0092

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(edited 4/13/20):
I inadvertently deleted the blog, "Happy Fourth of July" (posted on 7/4/13) at some point, so I put it back: Happy Fourth of July.


 
 
Please give to Loaves and Fishes, 1321 N. C St., Sacramento, CA,, 95811/ 916-990-2870

Please give to Manna Ministries 629 Main St., Bangor, Maine, 04401  207-990-2870

   Taken from real events the following is dramatized:
   
   We climb in our new used truck.  We close the doors.  Sniff, sniff.  Wow.  There's a jagged cloying smell.  P.U. 
   My son groans, “I can’t breathe dada.*  I can’t breathe.”
   I grab the offending deodorizer, which is hiding in plain sight and hanging from the rearview mirror, and I rips it down.
   My son yells, “No dada it stinks in here!  We need that artichoke-looking deodorizer thing!”
   I calmly rebut, “No we don’t,” and instruct the lad in a wise and fatherly way: “Roll down the freakin window, son, we live in Maine.”

* The a in the first syllable of a central Maine word for father is pronounced like the a in dad.  The second syllable in pronounced duh.  Da-duh.