Pasta Fazool and Low Gas Mileage

 Your love is like  that kid in 3rd grade who ate paste

You have to know that the rusty oven and demolished car ain't enough....

I have a broken window.

Never had a broken window before.

My house was put together with wood, plastic, and beaver snot. Nails and rulers were too expensive and required too much skill.

All of the sudden my window has a warped metal frame for a window. 

Warped? Yup. It has turned itself into some sort of trapahedronagonal shape. No one knows how.

In addition to its morphing capabilities, it lost its pane of glass. No, really. The glass stayed while its metal frame walked off and changed its shape. It's like how women can remove their bra without taking off their shirt. It will never fail to amaze me.

You can't simply attach the glass permanently without some sort of industrial adhesive, I guess, that will keep a navy aircraft carrier free of leaks on its underside. You can't really do much at all with the glass, especially without its now interestingly-shaped frame.

So the frame hangs there, somehow, mocking us. It thinks I just got a few discretionary dollars, but the joke is on it: the oven already got it. No, wait, the car's deductible got it. 

But the joke is on me: I selected the shop to work on the car, but no one seems to know how to get the car to the shop. The 90 minute wait on the insurer's phone anti-support line only ate up 90 minutes of my life. The local agency, to which we send money monthly, has yet to be of any assistance, aside from being nice people. I expect the car repair to be processed quickly... approximately 4 weeks after/if the car gets moved to the collision place. That beats the actual dealership, which should give it back with a Christmas bow on it.

In actual fact, the frame and window is sitting at such a precarious angle that any bit of blowing on it, whether breath or storm, could send the glass hurtling toward the ground at somewhere near the velocity of hurtling glass.

So Mrs. lefty suggests 4 different species of adhesive she procured from that loud guy on tv who built a boat out of it and unfortunately failed to sink. She loves this Super Tape or whatever it's called, regardless of the fact that I tried to use it once, and it failed quicker than Cardio B dumping her career to sing the blues in dingy little bars, where the smell of stale beer overwhelms your ears.

Mrs. lefty came to the conclusion that I came to an hour before but failed to vocalize: we need professionals for this job. She figgers hundreds (dollars, not professionals).

So the window is now racing the rusting oven, and according to quantum physics, the car doesn't exist.

Today I identify as  Frau Blucher

Are you a California resident and wondering where the latest $100 million glob of your money went?

It went to bailout its pot industry. 

to aid companies that are struggling financially in large part because of bureaucratic delays and missteps in transitioning them from temporary licenses into more stringent permanent ones.

So your money is going to bailout a huge cash cow because your government can't get its excrement together to manage it correctly.

There is no end to the money that comes out of your paycheck to bail out businesses. And everything else.

• Wife is standing there, holding the phone and the coffee cup. Phone rings. Rather than actually answering the phone, Wife turns the coffee cup upside down, and we get to watch the entire contents go to the floor. In slow motion.
• We both often wonder where the person we married went 

If you're in the UK, a Flying AIDS booster vaccine plan is coming in a few weeks.

They never met a tragedy they couldn't exploit 

Smell anything yet?

Just in case you're asking yourself what those seltzer drinks taste like, think of liquefied cardboard that someone walked a picture of flavoring by. Yum.

• I finally found my brand new, non-existent work badge. Sort of.
• I have to take a 2nd day off and go to the place I went on my first day off
• and hope they have it, because there's no way to check
• I think I'm in the army and somebody forgot to tell me

Beginnings of sentences guaranteed to cause problems

1. I don't mean to make you mad, but....
2. I've been thinking...
3. Ya know that [furniture/possession/car]?
4. Remember I said I wouldn't....
5. You're ok with kids, right?

Car Cont'd

I didn't know you could do this, but the last time I rented a car while mine was being repaired, I actually ran out of rental days on our insurance. Because I don't just like, but require pain, I had to rent a car because of this particular car repair. 

So off we went, to the place that rhymes with Renterprise.

I want to specify that the sign out front said RENTERPRISE Car Rental. This will become important shortly.

The over-friendly lady behind the counter asked what she could do for us. Per their sign, I suggested renting us a car.  

"Oh, terribly sorry, we don't have any cars."

Now that sign outside says "car rental," does it not?

"Yes, but we don't have any cars. Do you have a reservation?"

No, I walked in to rent a car. I didn't know I needed a reservation.

"Yes, you have to make a reservation with your insurance."

Oh. Except last time, right?

"Let me look you up. Mrs. lefty? Nope. lefty? Nope. Your insurance didn't make a reservation.

So now my insurance has to make the reservation in advance? Like they knew before the idiot crunched up my car? A psychic insurance company is a pretty good deal for what I pay.

"Maybe we can schedule you."

Ok, I'll play along. How about tomorrow morning?

"We can fit you in in a few days. We should have a lot of returns then."

Should...

"Yes, should. You'll be fine. I damn near guarantee it. And I may not be the manager but I sit next to the girl who's very good-looking."

Ah. I see. Just let me go over this one time, please. This is Renterprise car rental.

"Yes, Sir."

And you rent cars.

"Absolutely."

But I can't have one today or tomorrow because you don't have any cars."

"Yes."

And I need my insurance company to make my reservation before I keep my reservation, on the day that you tell me you expect some returns.

"You got it. See you Wednesday."

Car rental, right?

"Largest rental agency in the world."

Well, it's largely free of cars you can rent, that's for sure.

Why do so many events in my life feel like Monty Python's Cheese sketch?

• Chocolate Eclair day?
• still no left handed history month

Badge Cont'd

Back to the work badge... 

I had to take a day off to get it, because we can't simply get it on-premises.

And I had to go into the jungle of downtown Philly.

And after 2 weeks, I heard nothing, but was advised to make another appointment to pick it up.

Against my better judgment, I took off another day and did.

And naturally, it was not there.

So at least my judgment is intact and accurate.

Still, no one can tell me what to do.

Plenty have told me where to go.

And in the end, we can't get no stinkin badges.

I don't want to give it too much attention, lest it grow and assault me further, but the other morning at 8am, I heard something that sounded like drums. Just drums - no radio or other instruments. Drums are frightening enough, but a drummer who will play at 8am does not bode well.

Drummers are the weirdest creatures. They're the kids you went to high school with, who would tap on desks with pencils all day, earning nasty looks from students and nasty words from teachers. Some carried sticks. After a while, you wanted to carry aluminum sticks and play on their heads. You voted to slip some Adderall in their lunch. While this worked for school, they could no longer play drums.

The really frightening part of the whole drum thing is that for a few houses down the block, everybody's of retirement age. Drumming is NOT a hobby for retirement.

• Canon is using AI cameras that only let smiling workers inside offices.
• in unrelated news, Canon's is experiencing a 95% decline in employees and is hiring

The Teamsters Announce Coordinated Nationwide Project to Unionize Amazon

That's a really huge, profitable business you have there. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it. Things happen, you know. All of the sudden, every one of the delivery trucks have 4 flat tires. Engines break. Explosions happen at the warehouses. These are the kinds of things that don't happen in union shops.

A U.S. Air Force base responded to controversy about a drag queen show hosted by the base by saying the performance was “essential to the morale, cohesion, and readiness of the military.”

"In fact, we were not prepared to defend the country without it"

• Microsoft fixes high-pitched noise bug in Windows 10
• Turns out it wasn't actually Windows - it was the people using it 

Stevie Ray + big brother Jimmy Lee Vaughan