This question comes from Fred in the Palmetto state, South Carolina.
Fred I just saw Bernie last night starring Jack Black. It is about a true story of a guy named Bernie who lived in a small town, Carthage, Texas. Bernie is loved by all. He is a funeral director, and one who sings like an angel at the service and made the dead look so good that the living look forward to his makeup job on them.
Bernie loves the older ladies especially and they love him. Bernie did kind things to everyone, from little league teams to bringing widows gift baskets long after he’d buried their husbands. Bernie even befriends the meanest, evilest widow in town through his relentless kindness.. (played by an old disciple of Zamboni, Shirley McClaine, who’s looking very sphinxlike!) People are amazed that she warms to him, and she does, she smiles for the first time. Then things start to get weird for Bernie. And you.
Bernie is like many men I know today. Like me. We have become creatures obsessed with being nice and liked by everyone. We have become so enamored of friending the world that when we do have to stand up and flip the bird to something- we don’t. Or we do in such a scary way, we hardly know its happening.
I had a step-grandfather in Estonia who used to call these sorts of men, frakakta shultees, which being pidgeon yiddish and estonian and esperanto is very hard to translate but means somthing akin to “men without penis and balls the size of peppercorns”…
And Fred, don’t tell the Devil I am asking, but what is a “palmetto”? Is that like a dwarf palm tree?
great zamboni 
Because I like to be like Bernie who everyone liked, I will explain palmetto: some people say palmetto and some people say palmettah. Like tomato tomatah. Potato potatah. Only palmetto is always deep fried and eaten with hot sauce and only when among ones best pals who all like one another or think they do at the moment. Still there is a mystery here for Zambonie – How do we know if we really like our pals or if we only think we do?