Son, We Need to Have a Talk About Your Flugelhorn

Your love is like   spaghetti, when it grows that blue fuzz

Today I identify as  pureed yak

Way back in the forbidden years known possibly as the 70s, there existed a place to buy electronic kits. It was called Heathkit and you could get everything from a clock to a tv to repair gear. People ignored the obvious conundrum that the price was roughly equivalent to purchasing a new, prebuilt thingie.

Now things have gone to hell, nobody cares about electronics, and it's extremely difficult to buy kits. Heathkit folded, stayed folded, continued to remain folded, then very quietly reappeared. True to form, you can purchase learning kits, a $125 LED clock kit, and a no-solder $149.99 AM radio kit. With no brick and mortar stores, maybe it's cost-effective. I can't imagine "these kids today" learning to solder....

Over on Ebay, where things are fun and people ask $50 for old magazines, occasionally Heathkit kits show up. It must be inflation, because they're going for over $600 for the tiniest of kits. I didn't do any Heathkitting, but it's nice to see.

I grew up with a soldering iron in my hand. Unfortunately, it took a while to figure out which end to hold, and to remember never to solder in shorts. I like to whip it out now and then (I also like to solder). If nothing else, it's a skill all musicians should have.

Also back in the 70s(?) was the digital watch. It's back, but no one knows why.

Dear lefty 

• Why are they singing in the rain?
• turkeys are so stupid, they don't come in from the rain. They turn their heads up to drink and can drown.

McDonalds plans to launch a plant-based burger - the McPlant

You're gonna McHate it! 

Collins Dictionary declare "Lockdown" as its word of the year.

runner-ups were blowfart, covid baby, respirator, Flying AIDS, and "that will not fit".

• Yes, science has given us nano-scale guitars that you can actually strum, but there is nothing that approaches the precision of my dog eating around the kibble to get to some tuna someone put in her bowl.

Some lockdown children in England are forgetting how to use silverware or regressing back to diapers. I know it's a different country, but don't they have parents there? 

ROME (AP) — A Vatican investigation into former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has found that a series of bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed reports of sexual misconduct with seminarians, and determined that Pope Francis merely continued his predecessors’ handling of the predator until a former altar boy alleged abuse.

These guys really jump on a catastrophe. Fortunately, this is the only instance of child molestation in the entire Catholic Church. Oh, I get it... this is like UFO Disclosure... 

• Keith Richards (1941-1975) does not own a cell phone. He is something to aspire to: 76 years old, playing music, and one of the happiest men on the planet. The best vintage equipment, and the ear of every manufacturer. He wipes his butt with $100 bills - he and Mick are the songwriters, so they get the cash.

I am constantly amazed that people, including school districts, use Zoom.

The FTC announced an agreement, covering their misleading statements on security. You should not be using Zoom. For anything.

• My neighbor's 13 year old daughter is getting bullied at school for being a Trump supporter. At least the kids are being indoctrinated into bullying, regardless of side. This will help them on social media.
• I didn't have a political choice when I was 13 - did you? I had just discovered the opposite sex was good for something other than ignoring me. In spite of my discovery, they continued to ignore me.

Speaking of which, men are stupid. Ladies, I do not want you to hurt yourself agreeing with me. Some guys just couldn't pick up signals, thus were fatefully ensconced in their basements and bedrooms for most of their lives. If I weren't with Mrs lefty, I'd be there. I am incredibly dense. If a woman were to come up to me with a sign that said, "I like you a lot and would love to do some mattress dancing with you," I would look around the empty room, trying to figure out who the sign was for, all while carrying on a perfectly normal conversation with the woman and wondering if she liked me. This started and continued through high school, when we'd talk on the LANDLINE with our buddies, going over the events of the meeting and whether we thought she'd be into us. "Well, she took her top off, but maybe it was dirty." "She invited me to go skinny dipping" but maybe she just didn't have a clean bathing suit.  This was before Tinder and random sex you videoed for Pr0nhub.

Looking back, the really cool girl in high school who wore what looked like a crochet shirt (full of holes) with no bra was telling me something. I say this because she told somebody years later. Cuz you know I sat there and discussed the shirt with her. 'Dweeb' comes to mind. A frying pan to the head should have come to mind.

This continued into (alleged) adulthood. I failed to pick up on absolutely any signs, no matter how loud. OK, there was one... a very brave lady came up to me at a show and said I was very good looking and she wanted to go out with me. THAT one I got. But first, I checked her pupils and made her walk a straight line. No coke-bottle glasses either, no legal blindness. Once, at work, a lovely lady walked up to me, kissed me on the cheek, and walked away. I figured that was a pretty good signal, but Mrs lefty disagreed, saying the lady probably lost a bet. That was cruel. The one who asked me to fix her computer appeared in a sheer bodysuit, which I just started to pick up on, but even I know that you never mix reproductive parts with people just this side of the Happy Place<tm>. Any other blogger would say "never stick your dick in crazy," but I go the extra mile for my readers.

Speaking of (musical comedy) shows, this apparently happened a lot at shows, but again, I was too stoopid to notice. This was pointed out by Mrs lefty, in a very amused way... "Didn't you see that?" What? "That girl, very interested in you." Where? "She was right in front of you." Well how was *I* supposed to know? Apparently this happened fairly regularly and I missed it fairly regularly. No way in hell I'd cheat on Mrs lefty, but it was nice to know someone thought I was attractive enough to give me signals I would miss. 

Thinking this over, I can strike up a conversation with a woman almost any time, in any situation, the weirder the better. It suddenly hit me, if I could use my comedic talents for picking up women, I'd be drowning in them. But if I tried to do this consciously, I'd clam right up. I probably missed out on many potential get togethers because there was no Mrs lefty there to tell me they were amused by me and primed for an exchange of numbers. 

There's something wrong with the Plan when it took me this long to figure things out and I've been married for xx years. 

Perhaps women should come with a sign of some sort.. a bit less subtle than flicking her hair.. after all, we're very dim and inexperienced. Maybe a large pin with half saying INTERESTED and half saying nothing. They can rotate it to the proper orientation and even the really st00pid guys will get the message. Nah, we'd just think it was set to INTERESTED for the last guy she saw and she forgot to set it back.

• on V-Day, Wife watched horrible old war movies. One thing about the Germans - they didn't have the courtesy to speak English.

Garmin added pregnancy tracking to their Connect app.

Because we not only don't want privacy, we demand we don't have any.

Ask Dr lefty

According to a study, the benefits of multivitamins 'may all be in the mind'.

Let's ignore the fact that the doctors recommend them... anything that is claimed to be all in the mind still works. It shows the body's power to heal itself. When placebos work, it's just the person healing themself. So take them.

My friend is a Weird Magnet: she attracts Weird. This has gone on since I met her, many many years ago. They come out of the ether to meet her. Our theory is that she exudes a Weird Vortex, which pilots their semi-faulty aircraft into her life. The latest is a guy she called in to fix up some hardwood flooring. She had to have him 'evicted' because he became convinced he lived there. This is only mildly Weird, as these things go.