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.

The Earth Represents the Patriarchy

AI can be really scary. We're not really looking forward to its incursion into social media. We have to admit it's a really impressive effort, but the real difficulty has to be programming it to deal with all the rude, nasty, and death threat responses...

AI: Good morning, FB!
Answer1: F' U.
Answer2: Trump fan
Answer3: what kind of post is that? Go F yerself.
Answer4: Good Morning is a CIS white hetero statement, proving you're racist
Answer5: Jump off a bridge, asshole.



Your love is like a small stone in my sock



Somehow it figures that we bought a new GPS and Garmin reportedly paid millions of dollars to resolve their ransomware attack. Had I known that, there would be no GPS. Had I known there was going to be a new GPS, I would have objected anyway. When said GPS appeared, a small knife fight broke out. The counselors say this is a great improvement over the jousting that used to happen. The home repair guys are less happy, because there will be no more horses crashing about the house. The service elephant, though, remains.



Dear lefty

• My therapist says I'm paranoid
• thank her and keep on doing what you're doing

Good for the goog: they're buying a 6.6% stake in ADT. Now their alarm installers can put in a paid listening device without the homeowners having to leave the house. I'm sure that any day, the goog will let us know that they will never eavesdrop on your alarm signals. Nope. Not at all.


Speaking of which, I just saw Tik Tok. The aliens have stopped their breeding experiments with earthlings and are running away as fast as they can.  

Beach SOS saves men stranded on tiny Micronesian island. Micronesian (Little Nesia) men scrawled SOS (SOS) in the beach and were rescued after planes flying above spotted the message. The men, Gilligan And Skipper, commented, "The SOS in the sand thing never worked before."

Ever notice, when we see a rescue craft, we jump up and down, shouting, as if the helicopter or ship will hear us.


After 4 years of trying to hamper Trump, we realize the Democrats have done the country a tremendous favor: they spent all their time trying to screw Trump, so there was less time left for screwing us.


Science Minute

Water beetles can live on after being eaten and excreted by a frog.
An experiment was done with politicians, but they couldn't find anything that would eat them.



The president released an Executive Order indicating telehealth may be the new normal. Rural communities are thrilled with this, but their joy may be cut short when the doctor tells them to examine their own ears.



Flying AIDS news

Hey, those Norwegian cruise ships that started sailing after the Flying AIDS crisis? They were canceled due to breakouts of another Flying AIDS crisis.

In some Chinese caves, one out of every 20 bats is infected with the Flying AIDS.

How do they know?  Is there a People's Bat Tester?

About the Flying AIDS and treatment....
This doctor treated 300 patients.
Post it on social media and it will be removed as fake science.



Are you a fan of Microsoft Teams? Are you forced to use it?
There's a tiny bug that allows the program to keep on communicating when a VPN is disconnected.


Penguin poop has been spotted in satellite images of Antarctica.
It's not that our spy satellites are high resolution, but they also found microscopic parasites and recommended an antibiotic.


A new Canadian guideline says obesity shouldn't be judged by a person's weight.
Obviously, it should be judged by the quality of their nose hair.


A Connecticut man failed the test to become a police officer.
He was not admitted because his IQ was too high. He lost his suit for discrimination. SMARTISM!



Honda is recalling 608,000 vans and SUVs because of faulty software. It's nothing important: just the driver's display.
Well, don't put software in cars. Test it intensively. Getcher damn connectivity on yer laptop, not yer car.

Meanwhile, Tesla's wiper controls through its screen are now illegal in Germany, because someone got distracted and crashed their car. Can you imagine what things would be like if we tried to eliminate the Doofus Factor (further)? We already aren't allowed to cross the street in some places.


Just found out that a comic we performed with had a sex change.

She should magically change sex in the middle of her set.

SJW Sonar

A female veteran was called 'racist' for attending a Blue Lives Matter protest and there is a change.org petition for her removal from the school board.

My buddy's office is filing a federal Equal Opportunity complaint and all work has stopped. Their anti-harassment training said there were only 2 genders.

Kindergarten Cop has been canceled in Portland after complaints it sympathizes with law enforcement.

After vandalizing another Starbucks, one Seattle activist justifies the destruction by claiming buildings are “perpetulating” violence against people.

why America will always be the best

F- Off, I'm Having a Bad Day

Well, I'm not, but that fellow in England who just got pulled over by the nice policeman probably is.

That phrase was on a bumper sticker. The nice policeman kept pointing out that this was no good; somebody could take offense (offence in Britain). So it had to come off.

The US has no shortage of issues with hurt feelings but the First Amendment covers us, sort of. We're not all that concerned about someone taking a fence. It's astounding to me. Also astounding is the absolute look of shock in the eyes of the police when someone says a bad word. They threaten to arrest them for Public Order. Citizens of England: you better stop this before your government outlaws offensive thoughts.




ThermionicEmissions has been here approximately seven years.
Time flies when you're... ummm... here.

No Idea Where I Am

The above phrase denotes location, and when there's a location issue, we just know another Garmin Rant<tm> is coming.

And we're right!

First we went guitar and device shopping. This is traditionally a total failure, and we were not disappointed. With hundreds of guitars all over the walls, there were three low line lefties. That is par for the course, so it wasn't a big deal. I spent my time looking for deals on amplifiers and pedals, none of which presented themselves to me as a deal or a must-have.

So it was the wife's turn to shop, but we weren't sure where the store was. Hey, let's ask the Garmin.

The definition of stupid is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.

I joked about what happened the last time I used the Garmin... it tends to make me very angry. As the address went into the infernal device, it appeared that I was not the only person upset by the Little Black Box from Hell. It couldn't find the listing for the store. Every other store, yes; this one, no.

Why didn't you use a different device, like maybe your phone, you ask. Good question. The answer is that last time we used three different devices, all of which tried to make us drive into the water, to a different state.

Finally the address came up and we were off.  Really far off.
The long and short of the trip was that it was two turns down the road. This will be pretty easy to remember for next time, if there is a next time.

The five minute trip took a total of one hour.

The Garmin told us to go down the street a bit and make a right at "Street". I don't know about you, but I'm willing to bet there are no streets in the state called Street. There is a Street Road (no, really), but it was about an hour away. So we took a guess and turned onto Street. Went to the end. It told us to make a left. Into a parking garage. I'm a good sport, so I made a left into the parking garage, thinking we were taking a shortcut through the garage. Heh heh.

Following the EXIT signs, we came out exactly where we were when the black box told us to make a left (into the parking lot). My temperature was headed up. As the navigator, her job was to procure the directions and communicate them at less volume than a 767 taking off, or a Slayer concert, whichever is louder. The literal temperature in the car went up twenty degrees. The passengers had become quiet because they sensed war, and trusted the Garmin almost as much as we did.

I headed them off at the pass, but was foiled at every intersection by stop signs that only applied to me. Before you go thinking that my mind has finally gone south due to extreme paranoia, I must explain that we were in a large shopping complex, with complex turns. All stores were outside, like a long, winding, tortuous mall without a roof. The stop signs were all pointed at mall traffic, not street traffic, so we had to wait for street traffic to stop. The joke was on us... the street traffic never stopped.

Visually, we had one long block to go. Timewise, we might have been home before we got the length of the block. The little black box that caused explosions outside it was so friendly as to let us know to make a turn onto "Street" at the end of the block. We persevered until Street. What are the odds that a state would have two Streets within yards of each other? Thirty minutes later, I pulled the car into a handicapped spot. In lieu of a handicapped tag, I just left the Garmin hanging from the mirror, tied like a noose. The police would understand.


I'm here for your pleasure. Someone should derive pleasure from my misfortunes. Also my fortunes, should they ever occur. Statistically, they will, but statistics are pretty bad on the when. According to the many statisticians who read this blog, fortune will in fact occur; definitely by the time I am unable to type or change my diapers.

The universe is a strange place. The Universe really gets off on screwing with people, under the guise of helping them. Everything is related, according to Dirk Gently, and many other people who like phrases. The problem here is that one has to put this cryptic system together until it makes sense. This is virtually impossible, given phrases like "you will know then" and "maintaining operational readiness." It's like the bible, Shakespeare, and what the dead allegedly say to the living. It makes absolutely no sense and you're left wondering why they can't simply explain it to you in English. Because that would ruin all the fun.

Although I too can't understand the bible, Shakespeare and the dead, sometimes I see the results.... usually in hindsight, like a smack upside the head with a small foreign car. The car always loses.

So in hindsight, I figured out why I couldn't find anything to spend money on at the guitar shop: my idiot employer submitted incorrect information and I now have a tax bill that would purchase many guitars.

Stop laughing - it gets better. This bill was for a few years ago. Every year I'm going to get another bill until this clears up. You may now continue laughing. I haven't had this much fun since the IRS failed to steal enough of my money in taxes and I came up with a bill that made my head spin around and spit pea soup. And then I got mad. I actually upset the IRS, as they told my wife when she spoke to them.

One of the truisms in life is that you can't fight city hall. In fact, you can't even get in touch with city hall. I called and was put on hold but assured that their best people would be with me as soon as they were done assisting other customers.  I was assured of this repeatedly over the next thirty minutes, right up until the message changed... "We are open til five o'clock. Please call back during business hours." [CLICK].

They honestly felt bad for me, so they sent me an envelope. In it was their sincere apology and a high-level personal contact to help move this along.  Of course I'm kidding.. it was another bill, with another stack of money added in for interest, Getting Hung Up On Fee, Calling on a Friday Fee, and Affixing Postage to the Envelope Fee.

By this time, I had stopped spitting pea soup and went to blood instead. Whose blood was not important at the time. I went to call them, because it worked so well last time (see the theme here?). There was one phone number, for payments. I dug around and found another number. All circuits were busy.  BUSY? What is this - 1980? Did we overwhelm the entire city's phone network? Or was the phone company also given the day off for the Eagles parade (2 days early)?

Speaking of which, there is a public transportation lottery to see who will be allowed to board public transportation to the parade. Entire stations will be closed and bypassed. With public and parochial schools closed, people taking off work, denizens of the area, and people working in the area taking 'extended lunches', it should be a real blast. I'll probably be the only one at work.



Great.. now I've depressed myself.
But in a sadly amused and creative way.

• Sometimes stuff seems so obvious that I scream at the tv screen or the computer monitor because they're so stupid. A perfect example was the aforeblogged news story about the government UFO secret program that studied UFOs for a few years. As I pointed out, we've been studying UFOs since at least 1947, probably longer. The facts are not hidden at all.
• Another ridiculous excuse handed out by SETI and others is lifeforms from so incredibly far away could never visit us because it would take several forevers to get here. This sounds like an acceptable answer, provided you don't think about it for longer than about ten seconds. Forgive my fuzziness on the topic but there is a thing called the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, which is essentially a wormhole. Obviously we can't test it just now, but it's a theory, and that Einstein fellow sure was bright. I think it's safe to assume that aliens can be thousands or millions of years ahead of us, so isn't it possible they have the Einstein-Rosen thing figured out - or its replacement?
• Keep in mind I'm not saying that the unidentified flying things seen in the air contain alien life. I'm just countering more than one excuse at a time.
• Take a moment. Get to your Quiet Space. Now imagine handing an android tablet to Ben Franklin. What would he do with it? Would he be able to understand and operate it?
• It's exhausting, always being right.

Good News/Bad News

Congress just put together a budget.

The good news:

• Congress just put together a budget.
• it is a bipartisan effort

The news you were expecting:

• It will require one more stopgap bill to keep the government allegedly running until March
• It will last two years
• It will add $380 TRILLION to our spending
• It will require Congress to increase the debt limit, as the bottom-dwelling self-serving scum-sucking subhumans do every budget, along with stalling.
• Congress wants to thank you for all the cards, letters, and good wishes, and would like you to know that their free healthcare will continue, with no deductibles or copayments, forever, despite any other healthcare crisis that the entire country may or may not be experiencing.

The commentary:

• One republican said he won't vote for it even if President Trump calls him and asks for his vote (somebody read The Art of the Deal ).
• Nancy Pelosi said there was no way she'd vote for it and gave a multi-hour filibuster on why president... uhh.. .Bush.. no.. Obama.. was wrong for this country, especially considering the healthcare crisis for Uranus. Furthermore, the rain in plane stays currently on the can, which affects the brain flowers that cause ammoniamentia in puppies.
• The president got more money for the Pentagon. So, you know, we'll all be safer. Unless, of course, we work in the Pentagon and a small drone happens to crash into it, producing four entire frames of video.
• The dems got more money for social causes, like the opioid crisis, because throwing tons of money at problems always fixes them.
• The country and future generations got screwed, so no change there.

If at first you don't succeed, being awake may not be for you.

• So there's this new, magic technology that can put faces on bodies, in decent, believable quality video. Naturally this has been adopted by porn, so a celebrity face goes on a porn star body. This is called Deepfake. As much fun as this sounds, the spoilsports at Reddit, Twtter, and Pornhub have banned them. The social networks are doing what you'd expect, but when adult sites do it, you know the legal team has had their say. To be fair, we get this.

A gender equality campaigner from London has received general praise from men and women on the internet for having a 'smashing pair of tits.' A Faceyspaces occupant posted gender equality content on her page and within an hour, had 2,000 comments that she had a stupendous set of mammalian protuberances.

If the picture in the article is the person mentioned, the commenters are dead on. Even straight women are commenting in a positive fashion. I never suspected how wonderful social media could be.  Had this happened in America, there would be rampant aneurysms in collegiate circles, fainting, and Unbelievable Outrage all over social media. In response, there would be Unbelievable Hilarity from the Social Media Joy Squad, having a poke at the Fainting Feminists. It makes great reading.

As this is in England, the commentors had better watch out, because you can be hauled down to the pokey for making 'rude' comments. Wouldn't want to offend anybody Over There, would we?

• Digressing for a moment (as usual), Philadelphia Police have stopped showing up for run of the mill crimes. The only sure way to bring them around is to say 'gun' in your call.
• In England, it would appear that bringing the police becomes a much easier feat if you tell them that people are hurling racial slurs out in the open. It appears that the worst crime you can commit is hurting someone's feelings.
• Keep in mind that my England knowledge comes from Monty Python and, for current day information, English police shows.

• You simply can't out-parody reality department: Antifa disrupts Swedish  LGBT parade because 'Gays are offensive to Muslims...'
• It would appear that this worldwide anti-fascist group is behaving in a fascist manner. The irony is obviously lost on them.

President Trump has addressed the National Prayer Breakfast, because screw the First Amendment - we need to prove we're holy. At least to court the religious backers.

• Just in case you were bored, Richard Pryor's widow tells us that Richard slept with Marlon Brando. “It was the ’70s!” she said. “Drugs were still good, especially quaaludes. If you did enough cocaine, you’d f–k a radiator and send it flowers in the morning.” Read this - it's great.

Spirit Airlines suggested a passenger flush her emotional support hamster down the loo. Spirit wouldn't allow the rodent on the plane, even though the student checked in advance. They deny saying it.  Meanwhile, United Airlines is partying because it wasn't them this time.

I can't say more: my emotional support elephant is getting very upset.

• Upset because they haven't been in the news for anything stupid this week, California announced it will block the transportation of petroleum from new offshore oil rigs, a Trump administration program.
• California just won the award for most congested driving. I am going to consult for the California Department of Transportation. Although I will pad my services out for several years, the award-winning proposition will be writing TRUMP on the dirt of the trucks that bring fuel into California. In less than a day, there will be no gasoline in the entire state, hence no traffic. I'll make millions!

This security researcher decided to set up her apartment as a Smart Home. With a little help from her friend, she set up monitoring to see what the devices collected and where they sent it to. Before you die of suspense, every device collected information and sent it upstream to the manufacturer and marketers. Precisely as I said. But you should read the article anyway, to get an idea of how everything worked. The conclusion is very interesting too, although it wouldn't exactly be mine.

I'm not sure how I'd set things up if these devices were in  my house. If you stop your data from being sent, you won't get updates for the devices. The data, meanwhile, builds a profile of what you do and when. What time you're home. Exactly what you watched on tv and when. Pictures of you (and the baby), walking around, possibly naked or half-dressed. Maybe using the couch for something other than sitting.

The truly sad part is that in 1984 (the book), you watched the tv and the tv watched you. Your smart tv is already watching you. You might put cameras in the house too; at this point, you've already done the spy agencies' job for them.   The devices promise, and sometimes deliver, convenience. Why is the paranoid lunatic from that blog so against the Internet of Things? Sure I'd like a few.. but the downside isn't worth it. Take a moment and think about that.

Not addressed here is the fact that the majority of IoT devices are insecure by design, so 'others' can potentially see what you're doing.

• Elon Musk launched a rocket. A private firm. This is pretty big. If it continues, we may infect surrounding planets with our presence. If there was any time for the aliens to make themselves known, it's probably now.
• There is documented history of nuclear weapons being interfered with, concurrent with unknown aerial objects at close range. This is information only - you're free to do the research and draw your own conclusions.

A local concert venue just let me know tickets are on sale for Tony Bennett and Gov't Mule. Hopefully not at the same time.

• Look.. if I don't turn you into a raving acutely aware person, let some scientists do it: A team of scientists from around the world confirmed millions of viruses rising into the atmosphere, traveling — sometimes for thousands of miles — and falling back down to the surface. All of the sudden, agoraphobia is starting to sound pretty good, isn't t?

Uh-oh.

Male dogs win the Westminster dog show almost twice as often as females.

Hollywood is now wearing brown, in sympathy with fur. All colleges are now on strike for gender equality and demanding that male dogs be excluded from the show.

• Covered up by OXFAM, the charity's rescue workers paid refugees for sex, while helping in earthquake-torn Haiti.
• The US military has been said to be almost an invading force to women in countries where they are stationed. I'd say OXFAM is a giant step up: they actually compensated the people they had sex with.  This provided the prostitutes a job amid all the destruction and kept volunteer morale up, so to speak. Win-win.

God's Country

We don't get out much, not that I have to say that. Again.
Now that the weather has gone from cold, gray, and humid to warm, gray, and humid, it's time to leave the homestead now and then, for stuff not involving picking up dog food.

Much to the grief of the wife, it was a guitar and musician flea market. It was on the grounds of a large flea market, so everyone was covered.  There was a fifty percent chance of rain, which was a bit of a joke, but it seriously couldn't decide which way it wanted to go. This is why it's called Mother Nature, because only a woman would spend the entire day going from cloudy to sunny to cloudy, over and over again. The sun and clouds were fighting like Hillary and Trump supporters, with neither getting an edge.

The place was a bit far out, so we had to get some online directions; never a good idea. For instance, the directions said to make a left to Route 134 West, while the sign said Route 134 West was right. You know where this is headed, right? We sure as hell didn't.

We knew we were in for an adventure when 134 West crossed Forty Mile Road. Being from the city, we don't have Forty Mile Road. We have Market St. The Boulevard. I-95. Just down from Forty Mile Road was Granite Road.  Forty Mile probably indicated that in 1900, it was forty miles to civilization, not that much had changed, except some nice houses and grass. Granite Road was the entrance to the quarry, where Fred Flintstone worked.

It was ten miles to the next road, so being the Excellent Navigator I am, I mentioned we were to continue for ten miles.  A ways down the road (because you say 'ways' past the city line) I asked how close were we. The answer, Excellent Driver she is, was "I don't know - I got distracted." And so it began.

When we first met, we were unusually perfect for each other. We didn't fight and managed to do everything together and in rhythm.  As we got older, we started to notice stuff.... stuff like all of the sudden, it wasn't too good an idea to have both of us in the kitchen at the same time. It was like putting Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen with coked up Billy Mays, a few sharp knives, and maybe some grenades. I'm extra careful around knives because I almost amputated a digit when I was little. This is not helped by my wife's tendency to reach past me every time I slice something. Similarly, water acts as a trigger for her... whenever I run the water to do dishes, she automatically needs water for something else.  I don't pretend to understand, but let this be our biggest problem, right?

But no. Another large problem involves Going Places, specifically places we've never been, that rely on directions. She becomes very nervous and extremely short-tempered and communicates by yelling.  Since yelling is usually my territory, it gets hot and loud in the vehicle. Hot and loud is good during sex, for waking the neighbors, but it does absolutely nothing to help get somewhere.

'About' ten miles down the road, the yelling continued. We had no choice but to pull over and fire up my eternal nemesis... no, not the mower... the Garmin.  Technology certainly has come a long way from having to get directions over the wired phone, write them down, then remember to take them with you. Now you just have to know the address and put it into your GPS. Most people have stopped using Garmins and simply use their phone's system. Since I'm tin foil hat, I have the GPS in my phone locked down so far it would take longer to activate it than to walk ten miles. If we fire up the wife's phone, it will give us directions completely different from the Garmin.

I decided to make peace with the Garmin, in spite of my one hundred percent negative experience with the infernal device. This was going to be different, I told myself.  And of course I was mistaken. Putting the address into the device, it immediately told me there was no such address. This is absolutely typical of my Garmin experience. It always requires screaming. And the moment the first error comes up, I go from quiet and positive to wishing universal death and destruction on the device, its headquarters, and everyone involved in its production, down to the clerk that rang it up for me at the electronics store. There is no other device or circumstance in life that gets to me like this, except possibly the mower.  Once I established that the little $@&*er didn't understand 'Rt' and required me to type 'Route', it asked me if I wanted the exact address I typed.  Smart little box, isn't it?

Back on the road, it told us to go another few miles in the direction we were headed, causing a temporary thaw in international relations. The moment it told us to make a left from Green Road to Green Valley Road, one of us completely failed to make the turn, causing a recalculation. Fortunately it did not recommend driving into the water, as two of them did last time we used it.

Eventually we made it to the market. There is all sorts of folksy lore on the website about how the market came to be, with Old Papa Jed selling stuff on the roadside back in the 1800s (or 1900s or something) and the stand becoming so popular, it's now a large flea market.  And when I say large, I mean an awful lot of rock-filled drives and stalls, similar to a dilapidated drive-in of yore. The wife immediately started asking where it was. Well, it was the only indoor area and the rest of the place was stalls and parking lots. This was insufficient, for some reason, so yelling was indicated. Impossible physical acts were suggested. And cigarettes were involved.

Cigarettes are always involved. It's the most bizarre legal drug addiction I have ever beheld. While Mrs lefty is gracious enough never to smoke in the house or car (even she can't stand smelling it), it's worse than crack. The moment she leaves a building or exits the car, the cigarette is At The Ready, before she has actually left the building or opened the car door.  We call this PTSD - as if she's never going to get another one so this one is Very Important.

This was God's Country. We kept checking the GPS and our phones, shocked that there was signal at all. The big hangout was probably the Walmart, no doubt a very recent addition. There were feed stores, as well as actual hardware stores, which have all but disappeared in the city. The was an actual dairy with an attached ice cream shop. Horses, chickens, cows, and very few people were seen on the way.

After locating the sole indoor space, I sallied forth and intruded. After over an hour's drive, I had no idea what to expect, but at least there weren't two toothless family members selling used guitar strings and a whole lotta space. There were about twenty tables... I hesitate to call them vendors because this was an indoor flea market. Gone are the days of finding an ancient gem under someone's bed - things were market priced or higher.

One table featured violins in different colors. They even had ukeleles in different colors. Not sure if the color indicated the value or tone, or whether it was just best to breeze by quickly. There were definitely a lot of guitars there, mostly of the very cheap off-brand variety. Someone even had a few off-brand lefties, bless them. There was also a metalflake pink, star-shaped guitar, hopefully for young girls, although I wouldn't hesitate to play it if I were wearing a pink tutu, a set of Disney ears, singing Earache My Eye, as Cheech Marin. But I'm just different that way.

I saw a few Marshall amplifiers, which was exciting, right up til I got close and realized they were the kind that didn't have tubes in them, which sold about four units when they were new. There were also a few very old mixing boards, one described as vintage, priced astronomically. The board used to record Abbey Road sold for millions and was worth it. These relics of the Eighties were approaching $1,000, for which you could triple the performance by purchasing a new one.

There was one item I didn't want to leave without, but alas, the vendor was nowhere to be seen.  The Rules would tell you that since it was not marked, it was free and since there was no vendor around, I could just wheel it out myself, but I wasn't sure if these people read The Rules, so I decided to leave it there. It was a huge console tube tester. You know, old folks, when you had tubes for your tv or radio and you needed to see if they were good or you had to buy new ones. I use tubes in most of my guitar amps, so this would make a great piece of 'furniture' for the house. I even had Wifely Approval, but the bastard was nowhere to be found. Ok, I do have a portable one anyway, but this was in its own console and looked all retail-like.

I suspect because it was God's country, the people were largely locals and they were nice, amiable folks... the kind you like to do business with. I manged to escape with a few baubles. My wife, who can find treasure anywhere things are for sale, managed to locate some bizarre sort of pick holder that involved velcro. I already have quite an efficient pick holder made from denim. It's called pants and it has four or sometimes five pockets which can be filled with picks. Come to think of it, there was not a single pick for sale in the entire structure. In any case, she saw gold in these devices, purchasing a bunch of them for relatives who do not play guitar, but would find them invaluable for something entirely different. I gave up asking a long time ago.

Musician Crap: I got a Boss DS-1 so I could do some modifications on it and check out the differences. Also a Tascam USB audio interface that I took for granted will work with linux. This is an adorable little box that will take a mic or guitar signal and send it out to your computer via USB.

And that was that for the guitar show. If we were so excited we couldn't contain ourselves, it was also open the next day. You know... if we didn't get to all twenty tables in one morning.

Poof - out of the music gate we went, walking in minor, freshly-installed lakes, to the rest of the flea market, conveniently located out of doors. Flea markets are different than I remember, not that I am a frequent visitor. The first few stalls seemed to consist of merchandise from QVC, which was a selling point, for reasons I am not privy to as a man. Guys, or other genders with external plumbing, would think that one doesn't need to drive over an hour to purchase merchandise that can be ordered via the phone or QVC's convenient website. Women, on the other hand, don't let logic interfere with a good shopping opportunity.

Some of the other vendors had tables plus what can best be described as a small shed that you could walk into and see more merchandise, some actually not from QVC, but in an atmosphere that could make mice claustrophobic.  The places looked a lot like episodes of Hoarders that haven't aired yet. My job was to Hold Things. It was my job for the day, apparently. Wife would pick something up, say some words, then order me to Hold This. As any husband will tell you, it's better to smile, agree, and Hold This, never asking a single question or uttering any noise that would invite further talking or debate on the item(s).

Because we don't get out a lot and because I'm probably past the mean age of crime, I'm not used to seeing an employee appearing wherever I am, 'tidying up' an area. And reappearing at a different area at which I've just arrived. Usually the more observant of the two of us, my wife did not notice. I did, and desperately wanted to find a different vendor to give my money. That was to be a losing proposition, so I just continued to Hold This.

There were a few places to get breakfast, like eggs, sausage, and bbq. Apparently bbq is what's for breakfast in God's Country. I do not have a single issue with this, so bbq it was, with some loaded fries, outside a railcar-turned food truck, in the recently started monsoon-ish wind and the clouds which had temporarily won the argument with the sun. It was romantic. We decided it was as romantic as we needed, whereas if it rained, we couldn't stand that much more romance.

I saw a drill press, next to some strange scented lotions, probably from QVC. I was compelled to look upon it's pressiness with manly appreciation, exclaiming that I wanted it.  What would I do with it, Dear? I have no idea... I could put it in the basement and tell people I had a 'shop' down there. Then show them the various holes I had drilled into my hands since I got it.

You know the stuff at flea markets, as do I. This flea market was no different, so naturally we had to look at everything. We are now the proud owners of a bunch of bizarre, loud, owl necklaces. Fortunately they're for a family member, as were the Daffy Duck glasses.

On the way home, we stopped at the dairy to get some ice cream for breakfast. We did well.

And nobody had any marks on them by the time we arrived home. Except for where the ice cream dripped.

Hello, It's Time to Go

Say you want to set your house on fire and you happen to have a pacemaker. The police come by and arrest you for arson and insurance fraud. They demand the information from your pacemaker to show you couldn't have escaped the fire with your belongings because your heart rate stayed the same-no extra effort shown. And to make matters worse, you killed your cat in the fire.

Yes, now your own pacemaker can incriminate you, regardless of that pesky old Fifth Amendment. Every piece of data works against you. I wonder if we have to encrypt pacemaker data...

• I feel really bad about this StupidBowl. Didn't know about it til last week and didn't get a chance to get my party planned (good food, the wife, the dog, and 4 hours of Monty Python).
• The local morning show spent quite a while on the Lady Gaga halftime performance, even bringing an 'expert' in to help analyze it. We are doomed.

Are you familiar with Google image search? You can upload an image and Google will search for similar images. Hold onto your underwear - there's now a porn image search. Yes, you can take a porn star and figure out who she is (female-only at this point) with this website. Of course this is academic - none of us would use this. Of course.

• If you use any kind of voice controls for your android phone (if you talk to it, and I don't mean cursing), you can check out what Google has recorded here. Yes, Google records everything you say to it, as does Apple. You can allegedly delete whatever's there, but my feeling is that if it's there, it's already mined for information. Needless to say, I don't use it. 

I'm not certain of the manufacturer but I read a story recently on some poor lady having trouble updating the firmware in her breast pump.  I'm not entirely sure why her breast pump required a firmware update or why it required the update over the internet.

• Like Alexa, the Amazon product that you put on your table, talk to, and it gives you information, Google has the Google Home. This device was set off by Google's commercial during the Super Bowl. This will not be the last we hear of this. Alexa already recommends changing the device's name to something else. My friend suggests Hal.

If you ever thought bus riding was boring, you've obviously never been to Macon, Georgia. A female bus driver was going along her route, when a drunk passenger lit a cigarette. She told him to put it out, at which point he 'took exception.' She pulled over and told him to stop smoking or get out. He grabbed her keys, scratched her with them, pulled out his lighter and set her hair on fire, then proceeded to lead police on a 95mph chase through two counties. He even rode over spike strips, which flattened a tire. When the police finally got the vehicle pulled over, the drunk wouldn't open the door and bit the EMTs. This is only his seventh DUI.

• The Santa Clara University student senate has rejected the petition of a conservative group to form a chapter because because it's presence would make them feel "unsafe". Boy, the world is going to look really nasty if these kids ever make it out into reality. "Boss - he disagrees with me. You need to fire him."

We all know I'm tinfoil hat security and privacy but let me present the other half of the coin: my buddy. He has one of those X-Boxes with the always-on mic that listens to everything you say. It's plugged into a smart tv, which monitors everything you say and watch and do, sending the data back to the manufacturer (he had to agree to this when he first turned the tv on). Then there's the voice-controlled remote control on his cable system: I don't know much about it, but I'm relatively certain that cable company records every command. This in addition to monitoring everything the family watches and records. The house is alarmed, which can be enabled and disabled through a cell phone app. He also has Alexa, which is an Amazon product that you can talk to and get information from. Of course this device listens, even though you have to say Alexa first, before it will do anything. 

His cell phone is voice-operated, and we know that everything said to a cell phone is kept on a server 'to improve voice recognition.'

His cars are wired, so they transmit all location data, plus the On-Star system, that can listen to everything that happens in the car. All of this data has been used by the police in criminal cases. Then there's the E-Pay system for turnpike tolls - a perfect system for tracking and figuring out how fast he was going between toll points. 

So my buddy is at the beginning of the Connected Life. Regardless of security and privacy concerns, this is pretty neat... it's what science fiction writers have been writing about all these years. The man goes to work and doesn't have to stop to pay a toll. He asks his phone for directions to a different site. When he gets home, the house alarm is shut off via his phone, which can be used virtually anywhere. He asks Alexa and the phone to set up a reminder that he's going out with friends for dinner, then asks what time the restaurant is open til. He tells the tv remote what he wants to watch and it goes there. After a while, Alexa and the phone remind him that he's going out for dinner with friends, at this restaurant. In the car, the phone gives him directions. If the phone acts up, the car will plot the route. If he wants, he can hook the phone into the car to play music.

Pretty neat.

On the other hand there's my family. You may remember my last outing, in which a cell phone and a Garmin device, with which I have a very contentious relationship, both tried to take us to the wrong state, largely through a body of water. Yesterday my poor wife, possibly in a scientific effort to prove that it was only me having the Garmin Issue, used it to get to a destination. The Garmin won, of course, by 'forgetting' to tell her to take an exit ramp before making that left onto Main Street. Perhaps the device would perform better if everyone employed by Garmin was forced to use it on a daily basis.

You Can't Get There From Here, So Die

It's Saturday. I've been cooped up at work and home all week or two and it's time to get the hell out.

Mrs. leftystrat told me about this place called The Christmas Tree Store. Right off the bat, it sounded horrible. She said it's open year round, at which point I asked what was the point. Well, they don't just sell Christmas trees and stuff. With virtually no way to say no that would leave my genitals intact, I agreed. Being at least somewhat clever, I bundled it with a trip to the guitar store.

Since the wife was so familiar with the store, I had to look it up online, just to make sure it was in roughly the same state as the guitar store, which it was supposed to be. I got very simple directions from Google, which should have tipped me off immediately.

Once on the road, I figured I'd put the address into the Garmin GPS, in case Google's directions were faulty. HA! The joke, however, was on me, as it usually is with the Garmin. Remember the movie Poltergeist, where the station wagon hated Craig T Nelson's character but purred for the Indian? That's what my relationship with the Garmin is. Except for the fact that the Garmin really does piss everybody off and causes marital strife. First, I typed in the city. The Garmin, ready for me, assured me there was no city with that name in New Jersey. This will come as quite a shock to 71,045 people who live there (per 2010 census). Not to be outwitted, I put in the street address. The clever auto-complete finished the street name for me and suggested four addresses, none of which was the address I put in.

Now here is where the marital strife bit comes in. When I start to curse loudly (as opposed to normal everyday cursing), Mrs lefty provides some helpful tips. And when I say helpful tips, I mean THINGS THAT MAKE ME WANT TO STRANGLE HER. These consist largely of the steps I have already taken and produce largely the same results. This is in addition to one of the main difficulties of Garmin; the fact that any kind of entry is near impossible due to some sort of anti-input coated membrane keyboard. Never mind the technical aspects, what this means is that you can't actually enter most of what you want to type into the bloody thing. It may take every other letter or refuse to take anything. Wife uses a stylus, which makes things slightly less painful. Slightly.

Having gotten absolutely nowhere (with the backup system, mind you),  Wife 'suggests' that she give it a try. She rips it out of my hand and does the same thing I just did, with the same results. Then she tries it a different way, producing the same results. Only then can we 'just screw the stupid thing.' The inevitable followup is "I dunno, it always works for me when I'm alone."

NOTE: this is not good, as it brings up a part of my life I thought I had left behind. The part where my mere proximity to things made them go awry. If I went to a store, no one would wait on me. If I went to a restaurant, my order would get messed up or go missing entirely. The grocery store's automatic door wouldn't open for me. I am not making any of this up. Burning dead chicken parts and eating the feathers, combined with Good Clean Livin made it all go normal for me.

Both of us having given up, I put in a nearby address and off we went.  The Google directions were completely foobed. There are cute little phrases like 'take a small right and you'll be on the same road,' which means Go Straight, Stupid. Well past where we thought the place might be, we turned on the Garmin. The fact that it did not cackle at me left us with a slight positive feeling. After pondering for a mere few seconds, it told us exactly where to go, not at all like when I tell IT exactly where to go.

DOES IT MEAN HERE?
DOES IT MEAN HERE?
Yes, Dear, where the sign says Exit.

One thing my presence does still affect is my wife's driving.  This woman can get anywhere in any car, including in states in which she has never been. Put me in the passenger seat and she regresses to a twelve year old, who can't decide if take the next exit means pull over to the side or take the next exit. It's painful to see a well-educated, bright woman go all blonde on me. Total airhead. It's not like I have this effect on other women.... and I stopped giving her the pills ten years ago.

The Garmin gave good, solid directions, complete with mileage figures that made us feel all secure inside. And then we hit Camden, New Jersey - armpit of the US. The bridge to Philly was coming up on us and the Garmin said to go straight five miles.

Dear Garmin: ahead five miles would put us in the Atlantic Ocean and I'm reasonably sure the store is not located under water, especially on the PA side of the water. So we pulled off at the Last Exit Before Bridge and looked for a place to launch the Garmin and try a cell phone. Wife throws her phone at me and tells me to look it up while she exits the car and works on putting the disgusting smoke of burnt leaves into her lungs. The problem here is that I've never played with her phone and she has it set up in a way that even she can barely operate it. I can't use mine because it's so locked down that by the time I can enable GPS, we could have walked the 120 hours home. One 'Christmas Tree Store' input later, we got a list of ten locations. Each one was in a different state, none of which were the current state. I do not run a retail business but I'm going to guess that no retail business has any interest in hiding and not being found. Putting the actual address into the phone produced a route. Halleleujah!

We went a few miles in this direction then that direction and finally found ourselves..... in Camden, exiting at the Last Exit Before Bridge. Why do two separate GPS devices want to send us through Camden and into the water? Does Camden pay off the GPS manufacturers to route all traffic through there? If I were going from New York to Rhode Island, would it take me through Camden?

Wife insists we use the Garmin. If the Garmin tried to get us wet, cold, and dead last time, what could we reasonably expect it to do when we asked it a second time? But we were wrong - it provided a path that did not involve water, bridges, and death (we hoped). Or Camden. This proves that if you're going west, Garmin will give you the wrong directions but if you're going east, it will get you where you want to go. Remember this.

One left at the light later, we were at the Christmas Tree Store. The (internal) children were as excited as they could be. I was assured that I would love it too. There were these huge glass-ish globes called Wishing Globes. Apparently she bought me a blue one last year. Hmmm... never saw it. I was extremely curious as to why I needed one. Well, you like blue. Yes I do, but what about a glass-ish 10" ball was supposed to be interesting or useful to me? She got distracted immediately by some other shiny object but I managed to keep steering the topic back to the value I was somehow getting from this ball I never received. I think I finally nailed it when I asked if it was like me buying her a guitar for Christmas.

The part about me liking the store was strictly to make her not feel too guilty about dragging me into a warehouse-size store with 90 tons of Christmas Crap. They had stuff we'd never seen before, which is almost as much fun as going to a dump and finding trash you've never seen before. Stupid swirly Santas, three thousand nutcrackers, hideously gaudy this and that, and even some furniture and tables. I try to be reasonably nice (to my wife only) so I kept my tongue largely in my mouth and didn't utter a single "Dear God, please get me out of here or at least lock me in a random trunk until she's done."

I pointed out the Clearance section, which she loves. She asked where. I suggested it might be under that HUGE RED SIGN that said CLEARANCE.  You know she would have found it immediately if I weren't there. It was over there, past the sixty-year-old lady with purple hair and a nose stud. Go ahead - I'll wait while you read that again. In spite of the proximity to Halloween, this was not a costume.

There was a bathroom stop. There is always a bathroom stop. While it is a fact that women's bladders are smaller than men's, hers seems to be the size of an average pea, and needs to be emptied at a frequency that is inversely proportinal to the location of a bathroom. And I, of course, had to watch the pocketbook and cart. And you guessed it - I got the cart with the square wheel. Again. I really thought this was behind me, and here it is, popping up again. Perhaps ALL the carts are developmentally disabled. Or perhaps the stores need a pit crew, like NASCAR, where they change the wheels in under ten seconds, so the driver can get back in the race with minimal lost shopping time.

They did have food at this store. It was closeout food, most so bad you didn't know it existed in the first place. I did see chocolate Frosted Flakes, which looked Greeeeat, but the box was in Spanish. We also found some garlic fig spread, amazed as we were that we never saw it when it was really popular. Once we passed the Maple Bacon Pop-Tarts, we knew it was time to go.

We got directions to the guitar store from the Nicest Cashier Ever, who even recommended restaurants in the area. We bravely followed the directions, not even bothering to turn on the Garmin, which would have told us there were no guitar stores in New Jersey anyway.

The Sam Ash chain store even had a few lefty guitars. They were all cheap, thereby encouraging beginners. I looked around for other stuff, none of which caught my eye. They had all of two acoustic lefties, so we lefty.

The Guitar Center chain store had roughly the same amount of lefty electrics, largely cheapies. Ok, good for the lefties that need them. My wife slyly started asking me questions about stuff. I slyly denied knowledge or told her I was not interested, as she was trying to get something out of me about a possible Christmas present. I tried diligently to find something to purchase but again failed. Well, there was an $1800 amplifier that I heard great things about, but I didn't think I was going to like it $1800 worth. As I was checking out some effects, I walked past a female employee in army greens and a military hard hat. Maybe it's because I'm getting older or I just don't care anymore, but I declined to ask.

Walking to the car, we passed one of those buffet places. Worse - a Chinese buffet place. These places, like Golden Corral, frighten me to death. Everything comes out of a can, like industrial food.  Vegetables from a can, mashed potatoes from a can, whole chicken from a can. Ice cream that has no ice or cream in it. Still she wanted to go, however she wisely suspected that I may not like it. There were people eating that stuff with chopsticks. Although I consider eating an Olympic sport, I will not (and cannot) perform the digital gymnastics involved in operating those infernal wooden things.

So we went home to Pennsylvania, where the food is tastier and we can get there without any forms of GPS assistance.

In fact, if you listen closely on a cold autumn night, you can hear the sound of traffic being routed underwater and Garmins being thrown off bridges.

Chicago, Chicago... it's a Wonderful Band

No matter how I tried, no matter how I used Official Phraseology, no matter how I financially justified, I could not stop my boss from sending me to Chicago.

But I don't like to travel....

But I've already been poorly trained on this...

But the company shoudn't waste their money...

But if I get near the TSA, I'm going to need bail money....

But since the boss asked nicely, I couldn't say no.  Well, I could say no, but I like my job.

WHAT DO JEWISH WOMEN MAKE FOR DINNER? RESERVATIONS

I have traveled all over the country in very strange ways but never have I gone through the blood, sweat and tears required to simply make arrangements for a flight and hotel. My colleague had everything done for her via our employer. Because I'm a different class of employee, I had to make my own reservations. And when I say make my own reservations, I mean get all sorts of estimates and submit them, allowing my employer to decide which fit within the financial guidelines.  My coworker got to stay in a really nice hotel, to which I was refused admittance, due to rate (although I suspect they didn't like my mustache). I booked a four star hotel via Travelocity, which, strangely enough, managed to look nothing like the rooms on their website. In fact, when I opened the door to my spacious suite, I immediately noticed that my room seemed to be missing half of its promised volume: it was a spacious closet with a king-size bed. And when I say spacious closet, it did not have a spacious closet, instead gracing me with a six-inch deep closet that required me to turn my jacket around so the door would close. But at least they had an iron. I knew I had arrived at my hotel when I noticed that the entrance was completely blocked by construction. This was to be a theme.

The room was on the 20th floor and featured a spectacular view of an alley. I dared not ask whose alley it was. I did get a spacious desk on which to work, featuring a chair that I suspect was older than me.

At the airports, I discovered there was a Qatar Airlines.  It turns out they have no set destination: they go wherever they're hijacked to that day.

When friends and relatives ask me how Chicago was, I say "Windy". They're not kidding when they call it the Windy City. Because O'Hare Airport was designed by drunk monkeys, there was no way to get from my terminal to my coworker's terminal, so I had to walk a few city blocks outside. If the direction was away from the wind, I could have let it carry me there, but no, I had to walk Triple Uphill to locate the terminal. The nice policeman I asked looked really confused until his partner told me to go outside and walk a few blocks. This would not have mattered except Work Rules stated only my colleague could rent a car - I couldn't.

Chicago has all the charm of Center City Philadelphia, without the on-street parking. I don't know about the rest of Chicago but our section required a car or public transport to go anywhere, which then required parking. Parking cost a week's salary, but only if you stayed under thirty minutes. Anything over an hour required a title loan, which, oddly enough, one could obtain approximately every two blocks.  In fact, you could not swing a dead cat without hitting a title place, a 7-11 or a Starbucks, most of which closed at six or seven, along with the restaurants. Because who wants to eat at a restaurant at six or seven anyway?

Chicago is also inordinately fascinated with the use of car horns. I truly believe that if a Chicago-an's car horn is broken, he can't drive. My colleague is from Texas and never hears car horns. Why? Guns.  

If you can't afford parking, there's always the elevated train system, which is organized by colors. My local transport was the Brown Line, so called because riding on it causes you to poop yourself. But I kid... I only had to stand for thirty minutes to get to my destination, accompanied by a very talkative blonde, droning on about marketing to her frustrated coworker, who strained desperately to get a word or grunt in here or there. It was like being forced to listen to your great aunt talking to your grandmother about World War Two housing.

The reason I found myself on the Brown Line (if you didn't watch out, you'd wind up on the Red Line, or, heaven forbid, the Pink Line - with stops at all shoe stores, as well as the theater district), was to visit a guitar institution in Chicago - the Chicago Musical Exchange. After much complaining by the internal voices about not staying in, I found myself at the door. CME was blessed relief after years of shopping in Philly, the black hole of music and musical instruments. There were new guitars, used guitars, vintage guitars, amps and a ton of used and new pedals. There were guitars I had only heard of. It was a blast except for the fact that their lefty section was a bit anemic. It illustrated precisely why the Philly area is such a wasteland. As if that weren't enough, their sales staff knew what they were talking about!

THE TSA

Why haven't I flown since we bombed Iraq? Because of the TSA. There were work polls about whether or not I'd get held for Special Screening. I have to admit that the agents of the TSA were quite nice and practical. When I arrived at the line, they asked whether I would prefer the groping or the full cavity search. I went all-in, so to speak. You don't get that kind of courtesy at the DMV. 

You have to take your shoes (sneakers) off, put your bag up and open your laptop. Then you go into the glass whirlwind room, where you stand there with your hands up (because you're being robbed) and some metal thingie moves around you, obviously to graph your tolerance to metal thingies moving around you. When you exit the phone booth, one of the nice, uniformed TSA people watches your image (while several others point and laugh), then it's off to the gate. Except in the case of my laptop, which they needed to sniff very closely, as the excess amount of dog hair obviously set something off. I asked what they were looking for and the fellow said powder. I assured him I couldn't afford that stuff and went about my business, cursing at a volume insufficient to trigger a Terrorist Alert. At no time did I yell 'SECURITY THEATER' or show them the Fourth Amendment I had tattooed upon my nether regions.

FLY BY NIGHT CAR RENTALS

As I mentioned, I wasn't allowed to rent a car, so my coworker and I went off to the rental place. We were greeted by some guy with teeth so white and so large, we were afraid that he would eat his own head at any moment. This does not surprise me, as a certain rental car company that I shall not name (but rhymes with Wenterprise) has the slimiest employees I have ever met. After the obligatory shaking of hands, I had to shower six times, with my clothes on. To be fair, everyone was polite and efficient, although it was amusing to watch two female employees fight over who had all the damn keys (for those of you playing along at home, it was Ashlee).

As we were in a foreign country (Chicago), we thought a GPS would be handy. Wenterprise thought so too, as they charged ten bucks per day to rent one. The GPS on my phone is so locked down I don't think I can ever enable it, so we decided on the rental GPS. That little Garmin did a wonderful job of getting us to the hotel. Unfortunately, it sucked at everything else.  Hungry, we asked it what was nearby and selected BBQ. Off we went, to the closest BBQ place, until we discovered the highway was closed. The Garmin wouldn't take no for an answer, so we went to the next closest place. This place literally didn't exist. The third closest place was fifteen minutes down the road and had changed hands to become a greasy chicken joint.  It took but a moment to figure out what was up here: there is no BBQ in Chicago - only a series of empty GPS promises to get you to visit non-BBQ restaurants.

After this great realization, we figured there would be more and better near the hotels.  Boy were we wrong. We wound up at a burger place on the first floor of a high rise. As it turned out, everything is on the first floor of a high rise in Chicago, with the exception of a very scary round parking garage, in which you back up to the edge, presumably before plummeting twenty stories, ala Fast and Furious 26 and 1/2.  

We quickly discovered that the Garmin was a tremendous tool, provided you didn't use it within ten miles of our hotels.  We were making a right onto my street while the Garmin was telling us to go up a few blocks and turn on a different street. It would recalculate in the middle of a street. In the end I threatened to drop it from the Sears Tower and Wenterprise was nice enough to not charge us for it.

Speaking of modern appliances, I attempted to use several to locate a restaurant near our hotels, to which we could walk (coworker's hotel required 30 minutes' notice to fetch our car). I asked Yahoo Maps, which provided about 1500 restaurants, each of which were either too fancy, too expensive or too closed. They also had the audacity to refer to McDonalds and Popeyes as restaurants.

I don't travel well (or frequently), although you're probably wondering why. The wife and the dog came to pick me up at the airport, but neither would admit to driving. One of them also sat on my lap and licked my face all the way home but I'm going to let you guess which.

I leave you with this wonderful exchange I had with a stewardess:

HER: Warm nuts?

ME: Why yes, they are.

THIS WEEK'S TUNE

I thought it might be interesting to start including links to some music I like. This particular piece of musical proficiency is brought to us by Lyle Lovett. It features some really spicy guitar, as does most of my music. Lyle's really underrated.