Our Next Long-Term National Nightmare...

Let me start off with some bright news: healthcare breaches hit an all time high in 2016. At five months into 2017, would you care to guess which way that trend is heading? From my memories of working in healthcare, we're pretty much screwed.

• As I type, there is a noise like a 100 pound bee coming from another floor. It has depth like no other. A quick search of archival memory brings back last year, when the wife told me this noise was spooking her and the dog (back when the dog could hear). A window is open, apparently creating currents of air so strong that it's playing songs with the miniblinds, like some sort of gargantuan kazoo. In addition to normal human laziness, I'm typing and don't want to be bothered with the alleged musical instrument, but it's so loud even the mostly deaf Marshall can hear it.
• I've mentioned trash before too. It's less immense for me than mowing but still annoying. I'm a big boy, though... I don't have to be reminded constantly. The Crazy Lady next door found out that cans can't be put out til 7:30 the previous evening, so she stands out there with her atomic time standard and her clipboard, waiting to POUNCE on getting those babies to the curb by 7:31. And after they're collected, they're put back precisely where they came from and ready for next week's assault before the truck is two houses down.
• Speaking of trucks, I've worked out that there are three very loud trucks that come to collect cans, every trash day. I know this because when I'm off work, each one of them wakes all the dead at the cemetary a few blocks down. After further thought, and further leaping out of bed, screaming, I realized there are not three, but six trucks in the morning, as they take care of the other side of the street.
• Just to make matters more amusing, someone is having yardwork or something done, necessitating very loud construction gear. Very loud construction gear. It might be tree-related, which means it's only a matter of time until the Industrial Tree Chipper comes into play, like a mighty present buzzsaw, with loud spikes.  A coworker often tells me about her h fantasy of putting her ex into one of these, so I know it can be done.
• Oh wait - correction... the loud noises also have something to do with stones. A humongous pile of them got dropped in the drive, and the time since has been spent shoveling them. Ever hear Repeated Stone Shoveling? It's American Water Torture.
• This might come as a surprise to you, but I'm off work today. As I type, I can hear the kazoos, with their swan song. As God is my witness, I will stop this minor annoyance!

If you're an IBM or Lenovo Storwize customer, IBM wants you to locate that flash drive they sent you and feed it to the cat. Apparently it has malware on it. Oopsie.

• A pair of Pennsylvania medical clinics have reported a 'privacy incident'. They determined that in March, a person "could potentially have accessed" data on their systems. There is no evidence that they did.   Let's dance, shall we?

If you feel your android phone needs optimizing, do not install Full Optimizer or Full Optimizer Lite from Google Play - they're full of malware and only show ads. Your phone really doesn't need optimizing. Install Android Assistant to clean it up weekly (among its other talents) and Malwarebytes to run scans for junk.

• In the latest set of public excuses as to why she lost, Hillary Clinton blames the FBI letter and "Russian WikiLeaks".  Somebody should explain to her that the election was over in November and she lost.  Even after the George W Bush Hanging Chad Miami Fiasco, the crying didn't go on this long. You'd think simply having Chelsea omnipresent in the news would be enough for her. Someone has to take over...

Some poor fella was just struck by lightning. He's alive, in the hospital, and has a rather ugly red mark from neck to below his waist. He also has another lasting trophy: a permanent erection.  In unrelated news, there is a line of nurses outside his door, stretching back to the front of the hospital. An anonymous female charity group has paid off his hospital bill, and doctors have advised him that if his erection lasts longer than 4 days, to call a dating service and have them show up at hourly intervals.

• At a fast food expo in the Netherlands, two Dutch pranksters served McDonald's food, cut into pieces and skewered with toothpicks, and then told attendees that that they were eating an organic product. Participants described the taste of the samples as being very rich, and very pure. the link goes to a YouTube video in Dutch, but subtitled. One day, I want to pull off something on this level.

On this day in 1991, Texas governor Ann Richards declared ZZ Top day.

• Remember in the last post I reported that the NSA is suspending collection of US data because it referenced a foreign target?  Check out this article on how they collected data on 151m Americans.

Yes, I could've written this, but no, I didn't. A female UCLA student and member of MENSA has developed an IQ of 220 after drinking sperm for a year. Her original IQ was 154 and she was already a MENSA member.

The article details her decision to go with this method. Her new IQ makes her smarter than Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and Leonardo DiVinci. Also listed are some benefits of sperm ingestion.

You have to know I didn't let this news go to waste, alerting Mrs. lefty, who promptly told me to "get chugging." Witty as this was, I was forced to remind her that my IQ is several points ahead of hers.

You can tell neither of us belongs to MENSA because there is a regulation that you tell people you're in MENSA within five minutes of meeting them (similar to the Vegan Rule).

Judging by the story on Yoko Ono admitting to a lesbian affair with Hillary Clinton, this 'newspaper' is probably more of an entertainment source than pure news. The story above on the lightning strike came from the same source.

• One of our charities is Oldies But Goodies. It's a Virginia-based non-profit that finds homes for old cockers.  We're on their mailing list, having donated and because we're stupid enough to keep reading their emails (which would make Sarah McLachlin shoot herself). The latest is about Snoopy, who's 12. His owner died and family members took him to a vet to be put down. The vet refused, saying Snoopy had much life left in him. So the relatives dumped him at a shelter.
• Not. Human.

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I don't like to mow the lawn.
You might remember this from paragraphs to entire blog posts, ranting on this topic. In fact, there are an awful lot of activities I prefer to mowing:

• chewing razorblades
• dating dead people
• eating stinky cheese in a pit of fire
• a quiet weekend with my cannibal in-laws

My wife, dear smart woman that she is, figured out I don't like mowing (after ten years of forcing me to do it at gunpoint) and went in search of a solution. We can't afford a service and don't really have a lot of grass.

My nemesis in life, the mower, is seriously a great piece of hardware. And when I say great, I mean the engine still runs after ten years. Almost out of the box, the throttle cable broke. I purchased a replacement, which of course did not work at all, even after I did a remarkable job of attaching the cable to the handle. So I had to devise a custom rig that would keep the throttle open enough to run the bastard. This involved a pair of locking pliers and a foot of wire. Also about 30 minutes of screaming per effort. Suffice it to say the neighbors, even the very old ones, learned some interesting new vocabulary words.

Don't let my technical words and inventive solution fool you - I should not be allowed near a mower (or under the hood of a car). My solution was somewhat less than optimal, in that it lasted for less time than I needed to complete the mowing, resulting in a second case of interesting verbal output.

I am mortally terrified of going to the dentist. Even though I can generally allow him to work on my mouth, the other 2/3 of my body keeps trying to escape. I would gladly spend some quality time in his chair than mow. It's ridiculous and illogical but it's reality.

Alas, the seasons took their effect on the mower: the engine started every year, but the body got cancer and I'm afraid it won't support the engine much longer.

Just the other day I was advised that a box would be appearing. Boxes appear at my house all the time.  I gave up on asking years ago, as the answer would only frustrate me. Just the other day an outdoor gazebo/tent thingie appeared. No one knows why but I thought I caught a glimpse of the dog with a sly grin on his face.

The box arrived shortly thereafter. It was a new mower. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or give it back to the poor driver. I was 'urged' to put it together, as that's generally the safest task, as opposed to me actually using the device. It was battery-operated, with a cute battery that looked like a car battery that was left in a dryer and shrunk to 1/3 normal size. It was also considerable more narrow than any mower I have ever seen, generating complaints because I'd have to mow more rows. After getting halfway done, I realized the instructions, which made Ikea instructions look like fine literature, failed to mention that the handle needed to be attached in only one direction. And look at me - I was cursing before even running the little bastard for the first time.

Once again the wife outsmarted me. She hired a neighbor's kid to use the new Infernal Device. He was thrilled to get paid for what he has to do at home for free and eagerly took the job. In fact, he just got done.

I have never been happier in my life.

I guess it's time to start using my dental insurance now.

2016 Fall Philly Guitar Show

As it is written, we battened down the hatches, battened up the car, and got off to the Philly Guitar Show, Fall version. As is traditional, is it held nowhere exactly near Philthydephia. Also traditional is making that stupid location reference. Ah, where would we be without tradition?

For health (and sanity) reasons, Mrs leftystrat could not make the trip (she had to wash her hands and couldn't leave for a few hours). The weather was just at the point where a jacket wasn't necessary for us over-padded medium-size manly men. That strange light was in the sky again.

The state has always done interesting things with the roadways in Pennsylvania, the PA Turnpike and Rt 422 being real Standouts of Stupidity. Although PA residents aren't actually sure of WHAT the state does with roadways, we are assured and reminded via almost monthly increases in tolls. Just to make things a little more interesting, the use of EZ-Pass combination tracking device and toll payer is being Highly Encouraged, in the form of many EZ-Pass lanes and a diminishing number of cash lanes. The turnpike exit in question (I am not kidding - this is the butt of jokes nationwide) is King of Prussia. The area has undergone such a ridiculous amount of growth that there have been many road-surgeries to widen ramps and install more toll lanes. This creates yet another excuse for Bad Driver Behavior. There are about fifteen lanes, fed by several distinct ramps, which causes people to veer, cut off, and race at high speed to any of the jumble of strangely-plotted EZ-Pass or a few cash lanes. The only exceptions to this are at rush hour (5:30am - 6pm), when it's the largest parking lot in the state.

Naturally, the exit from fifteen toll lanes boils down to two actual lanes, thus weeding out the men from the women, the children with BMWs purchased by their parents, and any 18 wheelers that can't accelerate fast enough. And people going to guitar shows. Hopefully you took the correct ramp, because if you didn't, you will simply never get to your destination or home. You'll be doomed to wander King of Prussia for several years, or until the next State Improvement that will take five years to build a small ramp that is already overcrowded when it is opened (like all roads in the area).  While you're lost, all roads may or may not lead to the King of Prussia Mall, one of the biggest in the country. Also one of the strangest, due to an asymmetric layout, where the first floor isn't set up like the second floor, plus there are actually three malls joined together by a caterpillar the size of Rhode Island.

Eventually you may or may not stumble onto Rt 422 West, so-named because it doesn't go east. Well, at least until you come home. The state was much more subtle about improvements on 422. Here, to keep attention away from the unbelievably poor condition of 2 two lane highways, they simply installed bumps every few car lengths. Who is going to comment on a few Cadillac-sized holes when your ride goes BUMP..BUMP..BUMP. It's sheer brilliance in a way that should qualify for an award at the National Alliance of State Stupidity Awards. I was passed by a very loud Harley with two very loud riders, straight out of Central Casting. They were mad that I was only going 20 over the speed limit. Seconds later they completely disappeared, probably into a hole under a bump, where they have to keep paying rising tolls every day.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

Opening the main doors is fun - you never know what you're going to see. Whatever you see, it's great because this is the damn guitar show; two times a year that I'm likely to have left the house and seen guitars and amps and Stuff. Drop a few bucks in the Greyhound Rescue hat. They always bring a dog or two and they're beyond mellow for dogs that have been thrown out after they're no longer useful for racing. Support your local dog rescue group - all of ours have been rescues.

There were lots of things to see and try out, which was a great improvement over the summer's deathly feeling. All vendor spaces were occupied, including some surprises. You could see all kinds of vintage guitars, incredibly vintage guitars, celebrity-owned guitars (Danny Gatton, Johnny Winter, etc), amps, effects pedals and even a few new things and cheap stuff for beginners. There was a really popular guy who had unfinished guitar bodies but also small (6") bodies, hollowed on top to put picks or business cards in, as well as guitar-shaped cutting boards. Accessories galore.. handmade leather straps, garish straps (my favorite), colored strings, and very interesting people.
 Word to the wise: go for fun. If you go to purchase something, know what you're looking for and what it's worth.

Let's get down to some good old-fashioned visual stimulation, or , as I call it, Guitar Porn...

this is a 1956 Telecaster in mint condition - 3rd year for Teles

yes, it's backwards, but if I had one, it would be in this finish exactly

DHR is a large lefty dealer, which chose to only bring a few non-standard guitars

Danny Gatton (RIP) Fender prototype

1979 Les Paul - weighs more than my car but a hell of a player

1979 Rick 4001 bass

very old Gretsch, maybe a Chet Atkins model

newer Martin - a little stiff

very used Martin

ever been frightened to be near an amp? even before you saw the price? This is more of a megalith than an amp. Orange/Matamp stack.

Reverend had a ton of guitars, plus a pair of lefties. Good value, good guitars, just not for me.

saw a number of Taylor 314s. As a rule, they play better and have better top end than Martins.

a Fender '52 repro Tele, unlike the American Vintage series '52 Tele, also half the price. I'd still go with the the American Vintage for the baseball bat neck.

Last but never least is my dog, Marshall (aka Muppet Paws), and the amplifier named after him (Marshall Code 25).
They both shred but my Marshall shreds tissues.
They both scream but my Marshall screams for people food and dog cookies.
Marshall the Amp is covered in black tolex. Marshall the cocker in black fur.
The amp has a 10" speaker. The dog has two large flaps covering his ears.
We are unsure about getting him an endorsement from Marshall Amplifiers but hope for at least a cover shot and story.
Missing from the shot is a 1974 Marshall half-stack, formerly on tour with UFO and possibly Robin Trower.

And there you have it - the show, minus most of the backwards (right-handed) guitars, which comprised 99.5% of the show.

The Unemployment Follies (#2)

So, as you might have guessed, I remain without job.  I could go ahead and suggest that I'm only doing this to provide my readers with more of what they expect from this blog (whatever that is) but I'll cop to simply continuing to be without employment (temporarily).  Ok, it's only been two weeks or so but I'm an impatient little (&$#er.

As I mentioned, Unemployment Compensation comes in at roughly half of what I was making, resulting in a few small changes.  The lavish parties, complete with drugs and loose women, have had to stop. Now it's just allergy meds and the wife.  No more buying stuff because it's on sale. I know Guitar Center is having a sale too and I can get a bigger discount if I buy two guitars.  Something tells me this logic isn't going to fly with the Shoe Buying Person.


QUANTUM COCKERS

We've even had to cut down on the amount of cat food the dog gets. This is what really hurt.

The last time I left the house, I came back to discover that the dog hadn't eaten or drank anything. We started to wonder if he was like Schroedinger's Dog, wherein he stopped existing when we weren't there to observe him.  We devised all sorts of clever scientific tests to answer the question but in the end, we couldn't come up with anything that would prove the case once and for all.

Not to worry.  Marshall, as usual, came to our rescue.  When we got home, this is what we found:

He had gotten into the recyclables, spreading them out nicely across the floor.  There's our PROOF that he still exists when we're not there to observe him.  BUT WAIT!!!  He not only spread the recyclables out, he bloody sorted them.  Most of what you see is soda cans.  He separated the soda cans (in the kitchen) from the cat food cans (in the dining room).  Each cat food can was lovingly placed in the next room and licked clean of any miniscule bits of cat food that might remain after rinsing them out.

I think we should get him a job in recycling and he can support us for once.


MORE JOB STUFF

So there has been another great rush of recruiter contacts this past week.  More jobs in Ohio, Wisconsin and across the state from me.  One genius saw my resume and wanted to know if I wanted a job in the exciting field of insurance sales.  I put my own resume together and can assure you that the words insurance and sales do not appear ONCE.  Are they truly that desperate?  Do they get paid for each email sent out?

Some of the Job Nonsense is caused by 'someone' putting out the wrong or incomplete job description. I applied for a network security job that turned out to be helpdesk; installing and supporting programs and being on call to answer users' questions and running the phones.  Ummmmm... no.  I didn't work my butt off in security so I could get a job placating end users who can't grok rebooting their machines, as well as making sure they're plugged in (no offense to the great and tolerant people who do this).

The next job someone sent me wasn't for security at all; it was for a high level engineering job.  Also no.  I would hate to repeat what someone told me once about recruiters: some of these folks can't get a job selling used cars (not all of them, of course).

Many have asked me about consulting.  Well, since I hit the FULL TIME button on all the applications, I dare you to take a stab at my answer.

Perhaps I should consider that insurance sales gig after all.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure I could make it to a job interview anyway.  As I was driving down the street, two out of three lanes had been blocked off by those nice men in their day-glo green t-shirts.  It seems that the local authorities released some cash for a Neighborhood Improvement Project.  Since our area didn't get hit as badly this winter with potholes, the local government decided to heed the loud cry of the area for parity and take some time to install potholes and a few new trenches in the road.  I don't know about you but I feel better about the hood now.

I will also have to allow a lot more time to get to an interview due to my unique ability to make any traffic light turn red, simply by approaching it.  My wife looked at me in great surprise at a light, informing me that she always makes this light (except when I'm in the car).  As if that weren't enough, when I hit the aforementioned hole-installing project, the guy holding the SLOW sign immediately turned it around to STOP.  Some people would see this as a curse.  Thus far I'm choosing to see it as amusing (or not see it at all).


NEIGHBORS

My dear neighbor (the good one) wanted to know if the house was going up for sheriff's sale (bless his pointy little head).

My other dear neighbor (the 437 year old crazy demon from Uranus) bitched my wife out because some trees were hanging over the fence and all she ever does is sit on the steps and smoke cigarettes and why doesn't she ever clean anything.. yet shooting a neighbor is still illegal.  It's a good thing the Crazy Lady is terrified of me... I'd unleash a verbal barrage that would blast her back into her cave before I even noticed what was coming out of my mouth.  It would fail, though, as everything else has, because she's crazy AND mostly deaf.

I finally realized what the best (legal) revenge is: keep the place in disarray.  She has nothing better to do than look at our property and seethe because it's not up to her standards.  So I'll make sure to keep it that way, while still adhering to the letter of the law.

Who Was That Masked Woman?

As summer starts to heat up here in the humidity capital of the east coast, one's fancy naturally turns to sleep.

And sleep was what I was trying to do the other night.  Sleep was somewhat impaired by the sound of heavy construction equipment being operated by my wife.  Most people refer to this as snoring.

Normally it takes me a few rounds of poking and prodding to get the Snoring Follies to stop.  This night was no different.  I thought the task would be a little easier because of the warm body pressed against my back, so I shook, trying to jar her out of her snoring frenzy.  No luck.

Again I shook, nay, jerked.  And again, the snoring continued unabated.

So I turned to the warm body, intent on making my point more pointedly, only to notice that the warm body belonged to the dog.  The wife was snoring, all the way over on her seventy-five percent of the bed.

When we rescued Marshall, no one warned me that he liked to spoon.

My Dog is Smarter than Your Honor Student

Other folks at work brag about their kids.  I bring in pictures of Marshall the cocker.  He has his own fan club.  I can't get work to put him on my health plan, though...

Marshall is the third rescue cocker.  He's also the smartest by far.  Between three dogs and two cats, every one has managed to figure out how to open bi-fold doors.  Amusing as this may be, the bathroom has a bi-fold door.  The dog opens it to be with his mommy.  The cat seems to have something against doors being closed so he'll open it while you're in the bathroom, then walk out.

We also have louvered doors going into the kitchen.  The cats have made short work of them.   The dogs, not so much.  Marshall can open them if they're already open a bit.

Every now and then, the cat will jump on the table and knock something yummy off for the dog.  We have no explanation for that.  They can both knock each other out of their food bowls, which is odd.

Marshall, as I've mentioned, loves cat food in an unnatural way.  We feed the cat and close the door so Marshall can't get in.  As soon as the cat is done, he opens the door and Marshall rushes in to lick out the bowl.  Sometimes the cat eats dog food too (neither is good for the other, btw).  We call this Cat Food Ballet.  When he's done, Marshall makes a stop at his bowl, as if to say he was there the whole time.  It's hysterical to watch.

I came home from practice today and my wife couldn't wait to let me know what my special child did while I was gone.  When we feed the cat, we take a spoonful of food and put it in his bowl, then put the cat food can back on the counter.  The cat will spend all day bothering us to feed him but doesn't have any issues with leaping up and eating our food.

Marshall figured out there was cat food on the counter and set about getting it.  My wife heard noise in the kitchen, which is never a good thing.  Marshall was leaping up and knocking the cat food cat off the counter with a paw.

I'd say I'm proud of him but this is getting tiresome.

Marshall also has a fondness for trash, like most dogs.  His main hobby is shredding the tissues he pulls out of the trash.  Sometimes he makes tissues appear from nowhere (usually after I'm done vacuuming).  To combat this, we purchased a can that has a lid that snaps down.  Virtually dog-proof, right?

Not so much.

Marshall figured out that if he leaps up and hits the can the right way with a paw, the Magic Trash Lid opens up, allowing full access to the trash he loves so much.

If we could just get them to do some cleaning or taking out the trash, they'd be worth their weight in gold.  Tonight, tired from practice, I asked Marshall if he'd make me some dinner - nothing fancy, just something small.  He just sat there on my lap, pretending not to understand me.

It's hard to get mad at a creature with such magnificent brown eyes.  It drives my wife crazy when he sits on my lap and stares up at me.

I have to go now.  I think Marshall is on the computer in the next room.  No telling what he's up to now....

Welcome to ThermionicEmissions [or Please ask the dog to stop humping the cat]

I didn't start out intending to be a blogger.  I wanted to be a lumberjack.
No, actually I just had a stupid webpage and someone suggested this as a better outlet for my frustrations (and observations).

While I'm new to Blogger.com, I have several years of blogging under my belt.  I hope to bring these to bear in an amusing, thought-provoking, and sometimes alarming way.

The cute little fella in my avatar is my dog, Marshall.   He was named after those huge black amps you see behind all the rock stars.  Marshall is that most dangerous of dogs: a smart cocker.  He will sit there and watch to make sure we're not looking, then blast off to steal something; usually a treat or cat food.  There is nothing in life Marshall enjoys more than cat food.

PET FOOD BALLET

Every morning the wife and I get to participate in or observe Pet Food Ballet. This is a highly skilled maneuver involving Marshall and his sibling Ren (aka Satan) the cat, along with a bowl of dog food and a bowl of cat food.  Ren eats in the kitchen, behind closed louvered doors.  As soon as he's done, Ren opens the doors and heads right for the dog food.  This allows Marshall to get into the kitchen and get at the cat food.  Voila - Pet Food Ballet.

This is somewhat complicated by the fact that Marshall is pushing forty pounds, which is rather large for a cocker, and Ren is pushing twenty (we were told he's part lynx).  Last year we spent well into four figures treating Ren's diabetes and got him completely stabilized.  We were told to keep him out of the dog food because of this.  So Marshall doesn't need the calories and Ren doesn't need the carbohydrates

DON'T ASK ME HOW THEY FIGURE IT OUT

Both of the `children' have figured out how to open the bi-fold doors to the bathroom.  For the life of me, I cannot figure out how they figure this out.  We have had a total of three rescue cockers and two cats, all of whom have figured out how to open the doors to the bathroom.  This wouldn't be worth discussing if we didn't mind being on the loo and having one of two pets bursting through the doors to say hello.

But the bathroom holds other amusements too.  Marshall loves shredding tissues but prefers used ones.  What better place to find used tissues than the bathroom trash can?  If necessary he'll get a fresh one from the dispenser.  Occasionally Marshall enjoys a brief dip in the toilet too, which is usually followed by wet paw prints all over the place.


The one thing we can't figure out is why Marshall humps Ren.  They're both about seven year old fixed males.  I guess it's purely dominance but there is no conversation stopper so grand as Please ask the dog to stop humping the cat.

But don't let me have you believing that Marshall's loves stop at cat food, no sir.  Another favorite of his is coffee.  My wife knows everyone at Dunkin Donuts by name, such is the result of her manic coffee-drinking.  Marshall, being the smart cocker, somehow figured out how to remove the plastic lid from the styrofoam cup.

No, I did not believe this either, until I watched one day.  He gingerly took one nail and went around the lid, prying it up, around and around until the lid popped off.  At that point it was face-first into the cup and drink whatever he could get before Mom decided she wanted some.  From my wife's point of view, she was driving down the street and reached for her coffee.  The lid was in her pocketbook, there was precious little coffee left, and Marshall was licking his lips to get the remaining coffee residue from them.  Sometimes he gets the lid up by licking at it until it comes up.  He tried that tonight. The road noise was perfect camouflage for his coffee-stealing activities.

Today when I came home, Marshall had procured two extra large Dunkin Donuts coffees from up on tables, pried the lids off, and consumed the contents.  And it doesn't affect him at all.

TODAY'S QUESTION

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is all the rage these days.  Monk is a national hero.  Everybody has a `thing' they do or are uncomfortable with that can drive others nuts.

My wife, for example, must watch tv with the volume on an even number.  Since I cannot let anything alone, I will frequently set the volume up or down one so it's an odd number.  This drives my wife through the roof and we spend the next few minutes chasing each other around the couch in the endless quest for the remote control.

I don't have weird stuff like that.   Ok, maybe one thing... I prefer not to drive with things leaning on me.  If my wife's pocketbook lands on me while I'm driving, I get agitated.   Aside from that, I'm perfectly normal.  Heh heh heh.

So what is your weird little thing?  (please don't send pictures)