After 12 Hours, Your Crotch Smells a 6 on a scale of 10

Don't ask me - I didn't write that. That's the claim of the alleged doctor, trying to sell some cream that makes your crotch, and other parts of you, not stink. You know, that annoying commercial that looks like it was shot with an old cell phone. Whoever came up with this idea for a commercial was completely under the influence of something and was mostly joking.

In related news, we escaped from the house last weekend. This is never good news, and it had been weeks since the last time, so I was a bit.... prickly...  from not getting out for a few weeks.

We found the one mall that wasn't half empty of stores, due to the Flying AIDS. We have no idea why, but it was good to see. Unfortunately we were there to eat first, so we went to the place with the cheesecake. They told us it would be 30 minutes' wait. I told them no, it wouldn't, and walked.  I shouldn't have to wait 30 minutes, especially when it's not mealtime and anyone with halfway decent vision could see the many tables that were waiting for customers. 

Then we walked to the 'food court.' Cajun Asian food? A Philly steak place in Philly? A closed Chik-Filet (because Jesus didn't eat chicken on Sundays). It was pretty miserable. A salad store? ACK! Oh wait, a brewery.. it was supposed to have good food, and we don't drink beer at all, so it was perfect. And when I say perfect, I mean we waited by several entrances and nobody could be bothered to greet or seat. I guess they were too busy for customers.

Our final hope was Friday's. I've had ok food at Friday's, so we went there, with great hope. Of course with great hope comes great expectations and with great expectations comes great disappointments; they were closed. How many large chain restaurants are closed? It looked dusty in the windows, like they were getting ready for Halloween, but we feared it hadn't been open since last Halloween.

My powers are great and they're back! I can halt all customer service and entire businesses by merely showing up.  The power is awesome, but with great power comes great responsibility. Local restaurants as well as national chains pay me not to come anywhere near their businesses, so they'll stay open. I don't really work in IT security....

So we went to our favorite diner, where I have no apparent effect on the service. Perhaps because there are never any other customers there.  I wonder if that's my fault too....

Q. How do you know you're in trouble purchasing Eeyore merchandise?

A. The attractive foreign girl at the kiosk asks, "What [is] Eeyore?"

Have you ever had to describe a depressed purple cartoon donkey to anyone? 

 

Across Israel, Jews and Arabs Join Forces to Help War Victims and Prevent Riots

It's not the people - it's their alleged 'leaders'. With exceptions, nobody's looking to kill civilians. I think people should get day jobs that they share with the 'other side.' You'd be surprised how well they work together and don't want to kill each other.

The people mentioned above are living their religion and morals.  Do not kill. Help others.

 

The Mormons were around last Saturday.

My friends wanted to know if I answered the door naked, or with a leather outfit.

Neither.

You gotta feel sorry for people whose religion has 'rules' that not only get you up early Sunday, you also have to get up early Saturday and knock on doors of people, none of whom want to see you. Maybe they weren't Mormons - they were definitely trying to look hip. How many hip Mormons do you know? They even had black Mormons. Most of the door-knockers had t-shirts that said 'At least we're not Scientologists'.

• The Phillies once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and managed to lose. My friend says she's a lifelong Philly fan, so she's used to loss. As the AntiSports, I cackle and move on.

surveillance world

• ICE Uses Tool To Find 'Derogatory' Speech Online   Ze Fuhrer vill decide
• Oops! Google Search caught publicly indexing users’ conversations with Bard AI
• A Key US Government Surveillance Tool Should Face New Limits, a Divided Privacy Oversight Board Says
• UK passport images database could be used to catch shoplifters
• ICE, CBP, Secret Service All Illegally Used Smartphone Location Data
• Chinese citizens feel their government is doing such a fine job with surveillance

--Americans do too, the difference being the Chinese government is SUPPOSED to spy on its citizens

There are LEAVES on my lawn 

I sure as hell didn't put them there.  Last time I looked, the grass was there.

You see, leaves are the final stage of mowing, the thing I hate most.

The dear departed Crazy Lady next door went to war with me about raking leaves. I hope she doesn't come back to haunt me, this being Halloween and all....

This is the back yard; the dog's personal bathroom. I look at it every day, several times, because she has to go out there. Since the weather got ugly(er), the grass was alerted to stop growing. Well, the grass out back... the grass in front ignores any seasonal cues and grows, just to spite me. And when I say grass, I mean weeds. I mow and within 2 days, the weeds are taller than the grass. Within a few more days, it has to be mowed again. I know it's personal and I never get over it. I remember previous Halloweens where the grass needed to be cut (excuse me, the weeds). 

After the final stage of mowing, the actual final stage will arrive. This takes  the form of Wife and me arguing about raking leaves. The dog's bathroom is full of leaves but I don't see any reason to rake them. It's not a public walkway and involves lots of raking, putting the little bastards in huge bags (the leaves, not the kids), then towing the bags out front. It's too much work and I see no benefit, aside from the cessation  of the screaming, so there's that.

Halloween itself is an interesting time of the year. It's getting colder (it was in the 70s last week, so it's 40 today). It's time when parents dress their kids in some crappy old outfit that no one can guess, then bus them into our neighborhood, where they heard we give out good candy, or we give out full size candy bars. I don't care which, I just find it a little annoying. Our neighborhood seems to be mostly dogs and their people; I can go days without seeing a child. Yet on Halloween, there are tons of kids. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting one of them (I just found out this is not a universal phrase - people, I don't swing dead cats, it's a figure of speech). 

Due to Supply Chain Issues, the candy got smaller and the cost doubled.

One of us is really fond of the holiday... really fond. You could guess, and you would be correct, that it's the one of us who likes kids. You know, the one who doesn't author this blog. The problem is that she isn't always around, having made some incredible excuse as to why she couldn't participate this year (sudden fear of children, no dead cats to swing, forgot to get candy..), so I get left holding the (empty) bag, which should be full of enough candy to withstand the busing and a few months' supply of candy. Since the timing is inconvenient and there's pr0n on the net, and since I don't like kids, I put the candy in a huge bowl and let the little bastards children pick their favorites. From time to time I refill the bowl. This absolves me of responsibility for Halloween and allows me to get back to Important Stuff<tm>. Then we both get to eat the leftovers, provided they're not lollipops, gummy dead animals, anything that even looks like fruit, or diet chocolate. Have you ever had dietetic chocolate? You bite into it, expecting the glorious chocolate goodness, then all of the sudden, you realize someone has tried to poison you. If you're still alive you ask why there isn't a HUGE yellow label on the box, that says WARNING - THIS IS DIETETIC CANDY - THERE IS NO SUGAR - DO NOT EAT! Then you dispose of them after consulting the HAZMAT people for proper disposal instructions. It turns out the precautions for disposing of dietetic candy are more stringent than for disposal of spent nuclear rods.

To my surprise, Wife has come up with yet another original excuse for missing Halloween (parents in hospital, need to stay in the will), so it's just me. Again.

The problem here, aside from my severe dislike for holidays, weeds, and people, is that there's no candy. This tends to loom large on this holiday. Why, you ask, isn't there any candy? Good question.

THE CAR HAS A FLAT.

Of course it does. We've had it for years and only $10k in body damage, but never a flat. 

We even have a donut (or something... it's covered by Stuff and I refuse to deal with it when I'm working) so somebody called the service with a lot of A's in it. This is not always a good idea. We knew this wasn't going to be a delightful experience when they wanted to tow the car to the AAA garage 30 minutes away. Not to make waves or anything, but why not the one around the corner, where they towed it last time?  "Oh, we don't have a listing for that." Imagine that... well I don't have a listing for patience.

 A few hours later, Junior left us a message. This is a futile endeavor. SOMEBODY (the dog?) left a house phone out back. While the grass might have stopped growing, the weather continued.  Surprisingly, the phone worked when brought inside, covered with a towel, fed it coffee, and sung to it. It only had a problem when we went to actually dial. SO, soon we'll have our 4th wireless phone in 1 year.  Where was the 2nd handset? Nobody knows, but it definitely wasn't near the one out back, that's for sure.  Where is Mrs. lefty's cell phone? Over there. It won't charge. Ok, use my phone.... just don't tell anybody to call back because it refuses any number not in the address book. Naturally Junior called back on my phone. So I called him, waited the standard 45 minutes for his workmates to find him, and got.... hold on... surprise! I got his voicemail. 6 hours later I called again, pretending I didn't know his name and asking for status (this way always works). The flat, with free towing, was going to cost about $700.

I know for a fact that the car found out the guitar show is this weekend. There's no other explanation for it developing problems. My house, car, and family are all in it together, to deprive me of more guitars and guitar-related equipment. I want to be fair - when you replace a tire, you should replace the other one too, get it aligned, then fly in a bishop to bless it and sign off on the work. I don't trust AAA mechanics - and sure enough, there were additional charges, like warranties, nose-picking charge, FAA charges, and something about safe disposal of dietetic candy charges. After this bout of sticker shock, we thought we were done. You're fsking kidding me, right? It needed brakes and a left handed smokeshifter, along with a left handed catcher's mitt.  I'll let you guess which of these items doesn't exist.

And after the regulation 27 hour period to complete any job at all, including filling a tire with air, off Wife goes to visit sick parents in hospital. And I'm stranded, without candy, and filled with remorse that I'm depriving the little children out of the Holiday Experience<tm>. Maybe next year, they won't bus the kids in.

Yes, Deer...

No, I didn't spell that incorrectly.  More later.

How was your week?  I ask because mine was a real doozy.

So it's Thursday night and I'm waiting for the wife to pick me up from work.  I leave at four.  Round about four thirty, I called her, wondering where she was.  Round about five, she returned the call, apologizing profusely for falling asleep and telling me she was on her way.

Closing in on six, I got another call: she had hit a rock and gotten a flat.  Triple-A was forty five minutes away, so she'd be really late.

An hour later, guess what?  Yet another call.  Triple-A hadn't exactly appeared yet, although she had been on the phone with them for a while, attempting to give directions to the apparently direction-impaired soul driving the truck.

I don't know about you but I'd think that a national auto rescue corporation would have something of a sense of direction or at least a GPS.  Old school maps, maybe?

But no.

Another hour later, another call.  This time she called Triple-A and was told the direction-impaired driver terminated the request, which was her prerogative.  Unfortunately, nobody bothered to tell my wife; neither Sparky the driver nor the dispatcher.  This caused the entire process to start again.

You'd think a national auto rescue agency would have more than one driver in a large metropolitan area.  Still, it would be up to another hour.

Meanwhile at work, it's getting pretty bleak.  The entire crew has left for the day and I'm holding down the fort.  If I were the easily shakeable sort, I'd be terrified.  Instead I was bored.  Horribly bored.  So bored that I had to resort to doing my own work.  And maybe watching a little South Park.

The next wifely call revealed that the battery was dead.  Why?  Because Sparky the Direction-Impaired driver told my wife to leave the headlights on so she could be located easier.  Meanwhile the occupant of the house in front of which my wife was broken down, wandered over to inquire what she was doing parked across her driveway.  Once explained, she was terribly accommodating, offering food and a rest room, just in case.

Eventually a second driver showed up and had the car running in no time.  He was polite, had no trouble finding her at all and really wanted to assist her.

Closing in on ten pm, I was rescued from work.


FRIDAY

My wife said she'd be at Pep Boys first thing in the morning, bless her, to get the bad tire replaced (we had a warranty).  I took the opportunity to sleep late.

Unfortunately so did my wife. Or rather, her alarm slept late.

Off I went to Pep Boys, in a flurry of loving epithets and general four-letter verbal exercises.  Pep Boys, to their credit, jumped right on matters.

I somehow managed to VPN into work, thus becoming the first member of my department ever to work from Pep Boys.

Hours later, I had my replaced tire.  Too many hours, in fact, to efficiently return to work, so I went home.

While home, my wife informed me she couldn't find her credit cards.

Yes, the Tire Incident had morphed into a Missing Credit Card incident. [I am not blaming any organization or person, other than perhaps my wife for not having had them stapled to her forehead].

I had a doctor's appointment at seven.  Something looked odd about the car.  Of course something looked odd - I had a flat.  Yes, another flat - this time on a different tire.

Cursing Pep Boys and the Universe in general, I tore through the trunk, looking for our poor excuse for a spare and the tools necessary to change it.   Naturally the tire was in plain sight but the tools had entered the fifth dimension, which is located either at the very bottom of a car's trunk or the very bottom of a woman's pocketboot.

Continuing to curse, I somehow managed to change the tire with enough time to get to the doctor's.
While there, I inquired whether he had gotten a referral from my primary.

Oops.

Didn't he talk to me about this?  He just went cash-only.  No insurance.

Oh.

Well, that was awkward.
And wasn't his fee exactly the amount of money I had for the week?

Meanwhile, my wife had taken the entire day off and was spending it snoring on the couch.  As she had given up sleep for lent forty years ago, I left her alone.

SATURDAY

Back among the living, the wife took care of her missing credit cards and license, then went back, again, to Pep Boys.  Pep Boys fixed the issue with haste.

I don't know what they did to my car but it tends to veer toward Pep Boys whenever it sees one.

SUNDAY

After a day of rest, we were off to visit friends.

SMASH - out of the supermarket, we were almost hit.
BLORP - fifteen minutes later we narrowly avoided hitting yet another kamikaze deer.


Go ahead - tell me it's not personal.