God, I love Flori-Duh.  Most of all, I love my favorite time of year – Hurricane Season.

It’s show time for our state’s weather professionals. But folks, please take a step away from your weather maps.

We’ve got Erika, whose status could be anything from a hurricane to a remnant – which I thought was related to sewing and cloth – dallying in the Caribbean and apparently set to chug up our west coast.

When the “Spaghetti Models,” I assume named for Erika’s noodle-like paths, showed one path as a threat to us, the TV gurus raced to interview the managers of Lowes, Home Depot and Ace Hardware.

From what I could tell, “preparedness” meant we had to buy one of just about everything in the store.

A couple of days ago at Costco, I got the inside dirt on this Tropical Wonder Woman when I overheard the woman ahead of me say to the cashier, “Take it from me.  Don’t worry.  My husband’s a professional meteorologist and he says the storm’s a bust!  Don’t buy anything!”

Wow … What’s a guy to do?  In the meantime, we’re supposedly in the “Cone of Uncertainty.”

Oh no!  Not the Cone of Uncertainty!  WTF – Cone of Uncertainty? What happened to the spaghetti noodles?

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Based on Saturday’s forecasts, Erika succumbed to an untimely hurricane death.  She has failed the primary hurricane test – no definable eye.  She’s flying blind?

By Monday, storm trackers tell us we should know for sure whether we’re in the path of Erika and whether she’s a hurricane, storm or just a remnant with a sh*t load of rain.

Since I don’t think you should ever look a hurricane in the “gift-mouth,”  Erika’s three day TV-weather-hysteria-binge pushed me to hone my own personal hurricane preparedness list.

So, for the sake of our collective sanity, here’s my adult non-LowesHomeDepotAceHardware approved hurricane prep list:

First – get ice, limes and vodka.

Next – make sure all your insurances are paid.

Then – deliver a box of chocolates to the one family in your hood with a full house generator.  Be sure you spell their name right.

Next – get more ice, limes and vodka.  Why?  Because you prepared early and drank your first supply!

Then – load up cash so you can go out to eat … and be sure to brush your teeth, shave, and complete other toilet necessities in someone else’s facility.

Bring all your plastic flamingoes inside … they hate hurricanes.

Oh, did I mention…get ice, limes and vodka.

Just sayin’.

Small talk at a cocktail party?  It’s an art form.  After “Hi, how ya doin’?” what do you say?

Forget the senseless banter.

This tidbit guarantees you’ll be a treasured invitee.  You could even be an A-Lister – the person everyone wants at their next bash.

Here’s the secret.  At cocktail parties, everybody talks about diets and weight.  Who’s on what diet?  Who’s lost weight?  Or who’s gained weight?

But you can stop this blather in its tracks because everyone really wants to know what you know … “where does fat go?”

And you, A-Lister … you know where the fat goes.  Armed with this knowledge, you are the one everyone wants to hang with … so here’s the scoop on fat.

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We all know fat can’t just disappear.  That’s against some kind of esoteric Laws of Matter … and surely the laws in a lot of southern states.

Personally, I always thought fat hid in my closet blended in with my “fat clothes.”  You know … the ones we save for when we fall off the wagon again, and again, and again.

If you listen to weight loss commercials, a fulltime job, you’d think that we have to “burn fat” to get rid of it.

Watch those exercise crazies who practice that Tae Bo Kick Boxing stuff.  Once you’ve destroyed a heavyweight boxing bag that withstood the assaults of Rocky Balboa, you can walk or crawl off your floor and declare yourself a new person … without fat.

But the dude who really knows where your fat goes is an ex-pudge-guy, Ruben Meerman, an Australian surfing physicist and TV talk show guest de rigeuer.

Meerman discovered that fat ‘burned” by your body is converted to Carbon.  In every 10 pounds of “lost weight,” 8.6 pounds are exhaled from your body via your lungs as CO₂ molecules.  The remaining 1.4 pounds exits your body via “waste water,” probably from the sweat and tears it takes to evict the fat in the first place.

Go lungs!

So, exhale deeply, me hearties, and feel the fat fly from your body … but not in my direction because I so don’t want your discarded fat atoms entering my lungs and I sure as hell don’t want to smell your bad breath.

And the next time you’re allowed out in public, corner your friends and dazzle them as you solve the amazing mystery of where fat goes – though they may be a little disappointed to learn there’s no Fat Fairy involved.

Just sayin’.

Have you ever heard “cris-cross applesauce?”  WTF, you ask?  Cris-cross applesauce!

The PC Police have invaded preschools and determined that sitting “Indian style” is verboten.  To teach the little buggers how to sit cross legged, teachers have been told to use this cutsey little rhyme, “cris-cross applesauce.”

Let’s face it, kids are going to find out they’ve been sitting “Indian style” while they’ve been cris-crossing their applesauce.  Then we’ll have to explain how insulting the term sitting “Indian style” is to Native Americans.

And, aren’t kids gonna be puzzled when they find out we have pro sports teams named the Cleveland Indians, the Washington Redskins and the Atlanta Braves … but we can’t sit “Indian style?”

Who are these self-appointed language janitors scrubbing up our speech?  Are there PC Police pouring through their outdated Funk and Wagnalls handing out death sentences to de-selected words?

Here are some words already executed.

Swamp … A no-no.  “Wetlands” is so much friendlier.  Who wants to protect a muddy, smelly, insect infested, reptile filled swamp?  Can you hear the Florida Gators welcoming rival teams to “The Wetlands” and not “The Swamp?”  I don’t think so.

Jungle … Nope.  Try rainforest.  Jungles are filled with dentist eating animals.  Rainforests are filled with Disney characters and songs.  Jungles are filled with head shrinking cannibals.  Rainforests are filled with Macaws and tree frogs.  Get it?

Foreign … So rude.  It’s now “international” – much more sophisticated.  The Turner Network’s World Championship Wrestling performers ran into a PC problem in the late 1990s.  When The Hun bashed our homegrown hero in the head with a chair, the chair was no longer a “foreign object,” but instantly became an “international object” used in an international incident.  True … no s**t!

I just read that the phrase “politically correct” is up for review and may be declared, well, “politically incorrect.”  It seems that the term politically correct has been so misused and misunderstood it’s become ineffective thus causing it to dwell in the land of nonsense.  To be politically correct may soon no longer be … well, politically correct.

Could it be that we’ve finally plunged into an alternate reality of politically correct incorrectness?

Just sayin’.