Blue Strawberries

Your love is like  hitting your finger with a stapler

• WARNING: It's that time.. pumpkin spice is back. Keep your kids off the streets and ask Dr. Fauci if we need to be vaccinated against it. If you're still using last year's pumpkin spice tires, you must keep your car six feet from all other cars.

I think it's the house. Everything turns blue eventually.

The worst is bread. Given about a day, it turns blue. Everything has to be refrigerated, including the strawberries. The only thing that doesn't grow hair is the top of my head. If it were blue, it would go unnoticed these days. Blue macaroni and cheese is the worst.

Today in Olympic News:  Something not involving a ball came close to a record in something

Today I identify as  Ultraman

• Know what's interesting? Stats show that adding more lanes to highways doesn't help.

It was a gray, rainy Saturday. The forecast was Generally Ugly.

I was (more) unpleasant, having been awakened at noon.

We took Mom out on Saturday, so Wife had the unpleasant duty of waking me. Things were even worse than normal because the ten foot pole was in the shop for a tuneup, so she had to get within arm's reach of me to get me moving. She established, long ago, that it's best not to be near me when waking me. Or when living with me.

Time is weird when being dragged, painfully, from sleep. I feel my eyelids drifting closed and want to fully support them in their efforts, but realize I can't, just before they slam shut. This usually results in one eye open and one eye shut. It takes roughly 20 minutes to fight the Waking War and actually move a centimeter. Then, with my legs hanging off the bed, it's another few minutes for them to apply themselves to the floor. Socks take a while, though. I have to generate the energy to get one on, then rest for a bit, while I consider if I want two socks that morning. It occurs to me that I should have my coffee before I wake up, making dressing so much easier.

I woke up with a headache - it was my Saturday headache. The Saturday headache is drastically different from my other headaches. I think it's my body getting even with me for getting more than six hours of sleep. It's revolting. I've been told my body is revolting for years. Normally I feel the headache and combat it by going back to sleep.

But I had to soldier on. The problem here was that the headache had invited a few of its friends. They were taking up places in my head and causing clanging noises off and on. I've never had more than one headache, so I was a bit flummoxed. After a while, the headaches started arguing. When Mom asked what I wanted for breakfast, she too was flummoxed at the small motions and tics on my face. She was concerned, because she's never seen me short of words. I'm reasonably certain one of the headaches ordered pancakes when we got to the restaurant, cuz that's what was on the plate. I have to hand it to him - he has good taste - the pancakes were great.  [IHOP Tres Leches]

One thing that pissed off millions of people at the start of social media was the people who went out to eat, took pictures of their food, and described it in detail. They became Foodies. Foodies were only slightly more popular than Furries. The reason I mentio
n this is that this blog is kind of an anti-foodie service. One reads along and sees what I like. Then one strenuously avoids it due to sugar, calorie, or fat content. This is like a free public service. Ihop had a promotional hot chocolate last year that had something like maple syrup in it. I think they called it French toast hot chocolate. It was delicious. Unfortunately it's no longer here and the waitress had never heard of it.

It's not that coffee outside my house is bad, but I prepare large travel barrels to take on the way to the restaurant. The Coffee Police should come down on Ihop and Waffle House in a serious manner.

Temporarily almost caffeinated, I ate. This calmed the inter-headache sparring. Some of them even took the rest of the afternoon off, while some came and went. It was near 5:00 when I got home, without my first nap. Sometimes my first nap comes as I transition from the bed to the couch, so this was a glaring problem, as reinforced by the headaches. They stopped arguing and decided to work together for evil, teaming up to sing some current hits. I threatened them with "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" and they quieted down. Stuffed for the next seventeen hours, I did what was right for my body and started my first nap. When I got up, a few hours later, the headaches were gone. Let this be a lesson to me... if I take naps, the singing stops? Was this a cluster headache, because there were so fsking many of them? And to stop getting up before 1:00 on weekends.

• Yes, the food and culture are great, but why live in New Orleans? The entire city is without power due to Hurricane Ida. No matter what happens, New Orleans gets it. It's like the state flag says "Hey hurricane - come get me - nyah nyah!" 
• some areas won't have power for weeks

How are broken clouds different from scattered clouds? Or mostly cloudy? Or mostly sunny? I've obviously been checking the weather today, in a last ditch effort to avoid.....  mowing.  On the other hand, it's more difficult to mow wet grass and it grows faster due to too much rain. When I first visited the southwest, I noticed few lawns. It was a life-changing experience for me.  [notice I didn't say g*me ch*nger]

Every other house on the block has nice grass. I mow weeds, that grow while I'm cutting them. My grass is the kind that doesn't need sun - only rain. It's perfect for the climate. It's called Philly Raingrass.

• is it funny that I can't even get my own relatives and friends to read this blog? I feel really weird about sending out an email, asking them to check it out. Got any suggestions?

I just saw a listing for "Politics Nation with Rev Al Sharpton."

Remember: the two people who watch it vote and their vote counts as much as yours.

• President Taxes called on leaders to mandate vaccines
• #ImpeachBiden

I'm not suggesting you get your shots or not - that's your decision. I will not have mandates, especially the kind that come from government. The shutting down of businesses by state government was a disaster. Nanny State needs to be stopped. You're old enough to make your own decisions.

• Faceyspaces has trackers in 25% of its websites and 61% of the most popular apps
• I don't use Faceyspaces, but I'd advise using 'private browsing' windows for all browsing. When you close them, everything gets deleted.

Moderna Vaccine Shipment Crashes, Prompting Hazmat Cleanup and Shuttering of Airspace

Huh?

And we put this in our bodies?  

• Federal government to expand use of facial recognition despite growing concerns
• They don't care what you think, they don't care if it's illegal or unconstitutional - they're the government

 

With all that's wrong with Google and Gmail, I have to give their spam filter credit. The worst I've had is a few false positives.

• Ok, we all have musical guilty pleasures. Right now I'm listening to Slade. What's yours?

 

[Guitar Only]

I have no idea what possessed me, but I bought a Vox VBM1, the Brian May model. It's small, white, and looks like an AC30 put in a dryer and shrunk down to roughly 12" across.

It has just a few knobs, which is good for guitar players, who can't handle complex equipment. It has a switch too. Save the limited space in your brain and leave the switch depressed (or you'll be depressed).  The knobs are GAIN, TONE, and VOLUME. GAIN controls distortion, you should know the rest. The switch is a gain switch. There is a preamp output, as well as a few others.

How does it sound? Depends on how long you've been playing and what you're looking for out of an amp. The thing is much louder than it looks. The clean tone is... among the most recent clean tones I've ever heard. The fun here is with the GAIN switch depressed (not depressed is lower gain, which didn't sound at all good). You can control the GAIN by degrees with the GAIN knob. This is a real powerhouse of a gain box. It can take you over the top, where there's too much gain (did I say that?). 

Let's be real: this will not make you sound like Brian May. It was put together to emulate his Deacy amp, built by bandmate John Deacon, out of an old transistor radio. The Deacy was used on several older Queen songs (none of which I remember). As it is, it's a really fun toy. The hidden key is the preamp output. Brian uses a treble booster to overload his amps, so this is allegedly the same circuitry. You can plug the guitar into the Vox, run the preamp output to your real tube amp (Brian uses 9 Vox AC30s live) and punch the hell out of the front end of the amp(s). Hang in for a review using the amp this way. May isn't the only famous player to use a booster in front of his amp. Jimmy Page used a number of Tone Benders. If you look closely, Ritchie Blackmore used a reel to reel deck into his Marshalls. Tony Iommi used a sledgehammer.

OVERALL: it's another cute living room toy. The amp itself is cheaper than some of the current treble boosters, so consider that. It's a decent, cheap practice amp. I don't have a lot of use for it. Will probably sell or trade. It's between $250-$300 used. For May enthusiasts, there's also the Digitech pedal that gives you a bunch of his signature tones. That's going to cost you around $300+ used at this time. Unless you sing like Freddy Mercury, it's unlikely to get you laid.

kudos to me for reviewing something put out years and years ago.

I will not be reviewing the mini Marshall stack because someone bought it before I did.

Think of the money I saved.

• Oh poop - right-wing NRA hottie Dana Loesch is married

Taliban militants stormed a Kabul tv station to demand anchor praise the terror group

Over here, that's just network news (without the storming).

 

Captivity - Day 81 Motorcycling Hamsters

The sun's out again. I'm still watching carefully.
My personal fan's already running, making work conferences that much more interesting.
There are no mowers or construction today, which also makes me nervous. Perhaps as a result, Mrs lefty is spreading Stuff on the weeds grass.
We have differing opinions on grass. While we both are ok with it, the maintenance is the dividing line. As you know, I'd rather drive backwards, drinking bleach, while blindfolded, than mow. I prefer the use of fire for grass. As it appears she doesn't, we're looking at other methods. Whatever she wants, it comes with a mind-boggling set of instructions that are performed over 4 days, if the weather is ok. If not, it can take the entire summer, with rain, clouds, and her husband's downright refusal to mow.

If you follow the first set of instructions, you mow on the first day, wait 2 days, then put the de-Weeder down; unless you are using the Feeder, in which case you have to make sure it doesn't rain for 3.5 days. If there are any ants about, you have to count them. If there are less than 14,954, you wait for a few more days. If there are more, go on vacation to a rainy place, then come home and ignore the )$#$ing grass. Backing up, you can't mow if it has rained in 2 days, or the mower starts to laugh very quietly, which sets off the trees. In 5 minutes, the entire yard is laughing to you, or at least that's what you're hearing. At this point you can get out of the entire project by telling police or a convenient hospital that you're hearing voices. When you get there, and they ask your spouse what the voices are saying, they can say "I don't know - I can't hear them."

And that's how you keep your grass well-fed, green, and free of weeds.



As bad as things are in the world, the optimists (and pessimists) tell you it could always be worse.

They're right.

According to a Bernstein analyst, Apple should purchase DuckDuckGo.
Sorry, Bernstein, but this just won't work for me.
Yes, it would create a problem for Google, as you say. But it would put my favorite search engine with my less favorite computer ecosystem.

So, nice try and all.....

Discussion used to have at least 2 sides, and nothing was locked out.
The thick black line wasn't there. Have you noticed the line has suddenly appeared, and is moving to the right?  Several stories have come to light that show this. You can discuss anything on the right. However, left of the line is verboten. You can no longer speak of certain things, rendering your discussion worthless. One of the top guys at the Philadelphia Inquirer stepped down after an editorial titled "Buildings Matter Too". He went to the left of that line. Political Correctness has gone off the charts, and seems to be moving in the wrong direction. Think about it....


New in the discussion of The Flying AIDS is research into when it started in China.  You're saying to yourself, how can anyone know when it started in China?  Satellite imagery shows when traffic to hospitals was up.


Tinder is in trouble, in these days of The Flying AIDS. You can't hook up if you can't leave your place (or your selection doesn't work in an essential business). While we're locked down, Tinder has rebranded as SexTinder. You flip through the candidates and select the one(s) you want to sext. You have to do the in-person work yourself.

Will the Genders Ever Be Equal?

The president is holding a conference near where I work.
I'm sure it has nothing to do with me being asked to take the day off with pay.
There is a poll on how many times he says 'the best xxx'. Another poll on which one of us can get some quality time interviewing Melania. And $1,000 to the person who asks if this is the first set of implants on a First Lady.

We had to cancel the poll about the media treating the First Lady like they did the former First Lady (fashion icon and all around wonderful person) because we couldn't find anyone who thought they would.



Election Overview

The 2020 election will make history.
There are 457 democrats running, Trump, maybe another republican for fun, and one of any number of Clintons. The Libertarians (my people) haven't selected a candidate, the Greens get less press than my people, and the Socialist Party refused to support Bernie because he's too socialist.



Dear lefty:

• Why are there red spots on my wee wee?
• Because you'll nail anything that will stay still for 30 seconds.

Best Headline: "Tornado of poop" hits Massachusetts town after overpressurized sewage line experiences severe blockage.  Everyone wants to be California.

• Debate Season: when you watch these travesties (from any party), listen to the empty promises, some which don't align with reality, and ask yourself what the person has already done about the promise. The answer is nothing.
• Note the naked pandering.
• Remember the last debates. Remember the promises. Do you remember any results?
• Remember the hot air about things getting better when the opposite party gets into office. What happened? What are you being told now? Same thing.
• Our memories are short - about four years. Let's go over the script and decide to do something different. If we don't change our actions, we won't change the endless cycle of the same results.

A political parody, not too far from truth

Recently, Amelia Octavia Complex, democrat and Trump admirer, compared the illegal alien holding facilities to Auschwitz.  Her party did not take the statement lightly but used the opportunity to complain about the facilities. After Trump had them moved, Pelosi and Schumer were apoplectic because the illegals didn't get cable. After Trump gave them each $25,000 out of his own pocket, Pelosi publicly vilified the president for going outside government channels.

Trump put the illegal aliens up in his hotels, which drew the ire of Schumer, because they had a lot of stairs to walk down if the elevators broke, and still no cable. A problem solver, Trump built each of the illegals a house, again out of his pocket. The entire democratic party screamed, "IMPEACH" because the houses weren't in nice enough neighborhoods, and they still had no cable. No sane person should tolerate this. As a final move, the president gave all illegal aliens citizenship, expecting Pelosi would finally be satisfied. Pelosi stammered and shook, saying that illegal aliens should not get instant citizenship; instead, they needed to go through the official immigration process.

• Pro Tip: stay out of the Dominican Republic

Good Morning, Vietnam. Good Night, Georgia

For tax and other reasons, a lot of Hollywood's filming moved from Los Angeles to Georgia. They were doing well. Since Georgia passed the anti-abortion law, many businesses are boycotting, among them, some of the film industry.  It will be very interesting to see the end result of the boycotts. May the bite you take out of your own ass be large and painful, Georgia.

• My carbon footprint is size 11

Let me put your day in perspective

Penny just returned from a chemo treatment.
There was a couple who was looking after their mom's dog while she was in the hospital. They got a call that Mom died. Then a staff member came out to tell them the dog died.

Stay close to your people and pets. Appreciate them every day. You never know...

• Angela Merkel (R-Germany) has been seen with really bad tremors. It was so bad, her assistant mistakenly called her Hillary. The staff claimed it was hot outside and she was dehydrated. 
• Like you, I've seen a lot of people in hot weather (except my Siberian readers); none with serious body tremors. It was painful to watch.

Politics is Politics:

The British liberal party just accused the conservative party of being the party of antisemitism. Sound familiar?

This shouldn't be a problem in a country where it's against the law to say anything bad about anybody online.

• This week's Word We Can Live Without: staycation

SJW News

Toy Story 4 slammed for 'lack of lead black characters and disablism'

The knitting community is dealing with racism.
While they're at it, they banned pro-Trump content.

• An Alabama Ford dealer offered a free shotgun, bible, and American flag when buying a new vehicle.  The promotion stopped abruptly, when Ford Motor Company asked them to STOP IT.
• It's not like the items aren't going to be in the vehicle the next day anyway..

The Neighbor and World War Four

What a lovely day.  Not a sun in the sky, not a chance of sun for days and there's this old dude in the parking lot, loading animals into a big boat.  Don't ask me - I just report stuff.

I got a call at work a few days back from the wife.  This in itself is not odd; my wife only calls when it's important (or when it's twenty minutes past the last time she called).  It turns out this was nearly significant, though.  We got another visit from those nice folks from the township.

For those not following along, the last visit from the township was due to an anonymous complaint about our front yard being a mess.

Now when they say anonymous, they mean The Crazy Lady next door.  Crazy Lady is four-hundred thirty seven years old and steadfastly refuses to die.  Whether it's cancer or repeated replacement body parts, she simply stares it down and will not succumb.  One time she fell off her broom and broke her hip.  It was replaced within three days and she was worse than new.

The Crazy Lady seems to have two hobbies: gardening and calling the township on us.  It must be nice to have that kind of focus.  One time she claimed our bees bit her.

What makes things doubly confusing is that Crazy Lady has two personalities - Ok and Completely F*ing Nuts.  She'll leave fresh tomatoes from her garden on our steps, then call the township because we haven't raked the leaves to her specifications.

So Visit Number One from the township involved the messy front yard.  The nice fellow from the township seemed somewhat confused, as there was no mess in the front yard.  I explained The Crazy Lady to him and he got the picture straight away.  He shared an anectote of his own with me: somebody (guess who?) called the township because another neighbor had too many birdhouses on their property.  I suspect she has a red phone in her cave that dials the township and nowhere else.

Which brings us to Visit Number Two from our friends at the township.  This complaint was from yet another anonymous complainant (guess who?) about standing water in our yard.

Now I don't want y'all to think I just randomly blame people for stuff without any proof or that I think I'm psychic. The small bit of evidence that holds this theory together had something to do with a voicemail my wife received from The Crazy Lady, complaining about standing water.

Donning my Sherlock Holmes hat, Mrs. Watson and I connected the dots.

The fellow from the township and my wife were both a little confused, until she escorted him to the back yard to find the culprit: the standing water was the dog's little plastic pool, which gets refilled every other day so it doesn't turn green.

Everyone (except The Crazy Lady) was in agreement that there was no standing water on the premesis. When we mentioned that we knew who made the complaint, he said the call was anonymous and he couldn't tell us. Uh-huh.

Our grass, however, turned out to be a problem.  Why?  Because it was a little tall.  Not a foot tall, mind you, but tall.

How tall?  Nobody knows.  But the nice man from the township assured her that they had standards, even though he didn't bother to tell her what they were.  I suggested we paint a ruler on the inside of the fence, so we would always know how tall the grass was.  If the township said the grass can't be any taller than six inches, I'd adjust the mower to cut it down to five inches, then wait til it hit six inches again to cut it.  We could have them come out to measure it on a bi-weekly basis.

You may have detected that I have a problem with the township and you'd be right if you said that.  First of all, the weather here has basically two states: rainy and sunny.  It's rainy at least five days per week (in fact, we may be the new rainforest) and sunny rarely.  How anyone can mow with this disgusting display of wet weather is beyond me.  And did I mention that mowing ranks slightly above dental work on my preferred list of things to do?

The guy from the township claimed to understand all about priorities (my working three jobs and my wife physically unable to push the mower).  I get the impression he didn't understand priorities at all, as he said he'd be back to check.

I wonder if he'll bring a ruler or if his retina is calibrated in inches.

Justin Bieber and Toe Cleavage

Q. How do we know that the suit against Justin Bieber for assault will never go to court?

A. Because no one will admit that Justin Bieber beat them up.

----------------------------------

Toe Cleavage?


Glad you asked, Billy.  Tell me, do you like gladiator movies?

My twenty-something niece told my forty-something wife about toe cleavage.  My wife told me.  It was immediately obvious to me what it was; in fact, I remember seeing a picture of some famous female on a runway and thinking to myself why couldn't she afford proper sized shoes - her toes barely fit in them.

Apparently this is an acknowledged issue in these wild days of 2012, when either the Big One is going to come get us or nothing too far out of the ordinary will happen in late December.  I predict gas gouging and a smaller holiday because no one can afford Stuff anymore.  And that our new president will be more of the same.

--------------------------------

So apparently face-eating is caused by bath salts.  Or something.
No, really.  The police found some guy eating another guy's face and he growled at them.  He was found to be under the influence of bath salts.

OMG - my wife bathes in that stuff all the time!

--------------------------------

Speaking of face-eating, my ultra nice wife kept offering me the evening off.  It might just be her kindness responding to my morose attitude toward mowing the lawn.  She told me to sit and relax.  I told her I had to mow the lawn.  She said that the lawn could wait a day.  I said it was going be the lawn because the two things I dread most in life are the dentist and the lawn and I went to the dentist yesterday.

I decided not to waste too many words on yesterday's visit to my genuinely caring dentist, Dr. Mengele.  In truth, I don't feel much pain from either the good doctor or mowing the lawn, yet I'm terrified of visiting the doctor.   It was never this way until recently and I have no idea why.  Never mind that my one and a half hour slot had me seated for over two hours.  Perhaps I can describe my terror better this way: while seated, I do not look into the deep blue eyes of the dental technician nor do I even think of looking down her shirt.  Yes, I'm that scared.  I even forget the view I got following her down the hall to the damage dental suite.

Since I merely loathe mowing the lawn, it was off to locate the mower.  In theory, the mower is in the same place I left it, so it shouldn't be too difficult to locate.  In practice, however, all sorts of things could have happened, up to and including full dematerialization and rematerialization in a different dimension altogether.   I think this might have something to do with string theory but in truth, the only string theory that matters is will the string that starts the mower be intact when I pull it two or ten times to start the infernal beast.

Most likely the mower is just hidden under the new growth of grass.  The grass grows really quickly here in Pennsylvania, largely due to the rainy season.  Our rainy season runs from about March 13 to about February 29.  April showers bring May showers and it rains most of June.

Sometimes we worry that the dog won't be able to find his way back to the door because the grass is already taller than he is and I mowed two weeks ago.  I tried to cover all the unnecessary grass with concrete but discovered that, due to drainage, this is not legal.

So the bugger started on about the eighth try and off I trudged to do my husbandly duty.   One of the obstacles to mowing is plants.  Unfortunately the definition of plants differs wildly from my wife to me.  I tend to largely mow over most anything that's vaguely green, much to the consternation of my wife.

The other obstacle would be the still dormant planting material; the very material that put the Crazy Lady next door over the edge and forced her to call the county on us.  I figured that after I was finished, there would be enough grass clippings laying about to potentially put the Crazy Lady further over the edge.  Can you imagine the call to the county?

Mrs. Crazy Lady:  Hello, I want to complain.
Poor County Employee:  How are you, Mrs. Crazy  Lady?
Mrs. Crazy Lady:  Oh, terrible.  My horrible, slovenly neighbors have done it again.
Poor County Employee:  What is it this time - someone throw a candy wrapper on their lawn?  More than one bag of trash in their can?  Color of their house not up to spec?
Mrs. Crazy Lady:  Remember the planting materials?
Poor County Employee:   How could I ever forget, Mrs. Crazy Lady?
Mrs. Crazy Lady:  They mowed their lawn and didn't sweep it up.
Poor County Employee:   We'll send a SWAT team immediately.  Now go take your  meds.

My wife keeps telling me we have to be nice to her.  I keep asking why.  She keeps telling me because she's old and our neighbor.  I keep telling her that good neighbors don't call the county on their neighbors.  She shook her head and let on that Mrs. Crazy Lady's hip had given out and that she was in a lot of pain.

Ok, I had to admit I felt a little bad for her.  Here she is, 347 years old (quite young for her species), and she was in serious pain.  My wife says this is when neighbors lend a hand.  I had no choice but to agree and offered her a helping hand - a push whenever she's at the top of a set of stairs.

That's not wrong, is it?