Where’s Waldo Getting High?

Waldoooo, are you out there?

Boaters in Sarasota, Florida (yes, Florida again!) have been asked to be on the lookout for a missing robot belonging to the Mote Marine Laboratory.

This robot was built to find things like red tide (more on this in a minute) in the Gulf Coast region, and what makes this story remarkable — and more than a little amusing — is the fact that the robot’s name is Waldo. Yes, Waldo, like the perpetually lost, bespectacled character from the Martin Handford children’s books.

Waldo has a detector to help him locate red tide. What he, apparently, needs now is a detector to find the detector, maybe a black box  — or a red one.  Or maybe a She-Waldo can be built to find the missing He-Waldo, preferably a divorcee, because anyone who knows a sex-starved woman knows she can find a man at a “Vagina Monologues” after-party in held Ellen DeGeneres’ basement. That’s laser technology that NASA should be trying to harness.

Red tide is also known as toxic algae, and considering the fact that finding the stuff was Waldo’s primary function, would it be totally out of the question if Waldo simply went A.W.O.L.? Surely, there are a fair number of royal food-tasters who have gone missing over the centuries, too. It’s not that they died, they just got “fed up” — pun intended.

And is “toxic” algae toxic in a “Liquid Plumr” kind of way or “toxic” in a hold-your-nose-over-a-bottle-of-rubbing-alcohol-and-forget-about-your-lacerated-finger kind of way? Does anyone know how good a buzz a robot can get from toxic algae? Maybe Waldo’s hiding in the bushes outside his ex’s house a la Lindsey Lohan.

The Waldo robot is valued at about $130,000 which is a lot of cheese to sink into a water-bound object that isn’t designed to resurrect the Titanic. Scientists familiar with its construction speculate that it may have had a leak, causing it to sink to the bottom of the ocean. Since Waldo was built to do its work underwater, this seems like a very strange malfunction for him to have. That’s like a bad kid whose butt is allergic to belt leather, or a David Beckham who can’t kick.

Mote Marine scientists were hoping Labor Day boaters would have spotted Waldo in the Gulf waters over the weekend but, so far, no one has come forward with news on the illusive, possibly-high robot.

This blogger suggests searching out places where other robots party.  Chances are, Waldo will be found somewhere in a crowd, perhaps at a carnival or in the District 9 sequel.

But if Robot Waldo can’t do this, why bother?

Florida, You May Now Leave the Union

No more Florida bananas

There is clearly something seriously rotten in the state of Florida. Aside from the electoral debacle of 2000, there has recently been a rash of weird stories coming out of the state that makes this blogger wonder if something has been leaked into the water supply. Is this the subtle work of a Weapon of Mass Destruction designed to slowly render the entire state into a condition of profound idiocy?

To wit, there was the woman in Ft. Pierce, Fla accused of stealing $7 from a parked police car; then there was the man in Ormond Beach, Fla whose Diet Pepsi can became the final resting place of a mutant frog.

And now from Miami comes this, the icing on the seven-layer cake of idiocy. An armless man recently went into a Bank of America to cash a check, but was refused on the grounds that he could not provide a thumbprint.

Tampa resident, Steve Valdez, who uses prosthetic arms, was cashing a check for his wife and was told that since he couldn’t provide a thumbprint, he’d have to either open his own account or bring in his wife.

There’s no way to know why Mr. Valdez’s wife didn’t join him at the bank. Maybe she’s a paraplegic and has a hard time getting around considering her husband is sans arms. And even if she had accompanied him, who’s to say she wouldn’t have been refused service because she couldn’t reach the teller at eye-level?

Whatever the reason for Mr. Valdez’s solo trip to the bank, one would expect him to have been afforded the courtesy routinely extended to the disabled, even by a giant, soulless financial institution.

Yes, there is no dearth of stories recounting the impersonal and lackluster customer service provided by the big banking conglomerates, but this takes the cake, the big, thickly iced idiocy cake.

Here’s an idea: might a toe-print have done the job?

Florida, you have some good things going for you — Miami Beach, Gloria Estefan, Shaquille O’Neal, the setting for the show, “Dexter,” and Zora Neale Hurston, to name a few — so we’ll give you one more chance to get your act together. But if this obtuseness continues, in the words of Jon Stewart, we’re going to have to let you go.

And this time, we’re serious.

paraplegic