Yet More Bottled Glass

Your love is like    The Roseanne Show without Roseanne

It snowed. I hate it here.

Because I expect winter to be 70-80 degrees, with little humidity, and perfectly sunny. No snow. Ever.

In fact, I expect summer to be like this too.

You doesn't has to be real smrt to has a blog.

I want to complain. OW. What did you do that for?

Oh, sorry, this is getting kicked in the nuts lessons.

Sorry... why would you need lessons in getting kicked in the nuts?

Sir, are you oppressing me?

Not me, I just want to complain.

Ah, that would be 2nd floor, with beds.

I want to complain. Why are there so many mattresses in Complaints.

OH NO, SOMEBODY SAID MATTRESS TO MR. LAMBERT 

[and did those feet, in ancient times, walk upon Philly's dirty streets...] 

I want to complain.

Get in line.

I am in line.

Ok. Do you have a number?

No. Where do I get a number?

It's on the ticket.

Hold on, hold on... I am expected to have a ticket and stand in line?

Yeah.

I'm sorry, this is a very silly sketch and I am not prepared to go on with it.

That's Philly for ya.

Is this Complaints?

No.

The man from Tickets told me to come here for Complaints.

Ok, yes, this is Complaints. We tell people no - it cuts down the traffic.

I want to complain.

Yes, we've already established that. I didn't have to take this job. I'm a theoretical physicist. I just do this for the benefits.

I want to complain. It's this weather thing.

I see. Can you be more specific? 

I don't like it.

Is there a part of it you don't like more than others?

Most of it, actually.

Is it the seasons? 

To start with, we only have two. 

Two, Sir? 

Yeah, summer, then somebody flips the switch and we have winter. I think they sold the other two for taxes. But that's not what's bothering me.

Sir, are you currently on any medication and have you taken it recently? 

Abuse is downstairs. I want to complain about the weather.

Yes....

It's cold in the winter and unbearably humid in the summer.

I see. And do you have any suggestions? 

I thought we could keep it around 70-80 with low humidity all year round.

Then you'd only have one season.

I could live with that.

Anything else? 

It snows.

It is the east coast, Sir.

If we get the temperature suggestion I made, we'd only have to see snow on tv news, from other states, and we could all laugh at them. And in Christmas movies.

I'll, uh, see what I can do.

What do you mean, 'see what you can do'? Is this not Complaints?

Yes, it's the largest complaints department in the state.

I want to complain. I want to speak to your boss.

Sir, if you think I'm an asshole, wait til you meet him.

[ThermionicPython]

Today I identify as  the semicolon key I hit instead of apostrophe. Every. Stinking. Time.

Flying AIDS News 

Meta (Faceyspaces) will require employees to have a COVID-19 booster to return to the office

Free AI protein software packages nearly predicted structure of the Omicron coronavirus variant correctly

Covid: Chile starts fourth vaccine dose amid rise in cases

                read that again 

Covid PCR tests end for asymptomatic cases in England

'We have gone backwards': Covid confusion snarls Biden White House

Which mask? What test? Covid's latest surge spreads an epidemic of confusion.

U.S. CDC may recommend better masks against Omicron - Washington Post

Don't forget, the majority of heart attacks happen while shoveling snow.

I keep trying to remind Wife, but she gets all wide-eyed, citing some sort of imaginary law, stating we must clear snow within 8 hours.

Or what - the Snow Police will get us?  

We have to bring up the trash cans too.

Yeah, the Trash Police...

And we still cannot find an enterprising youth to pay to shovel snow (or mow). I guess the youth of America have something better to do. Maybe they're quitting their jobs for Unemployment. Or quitting their job to work at Walmart or McDonald's, for $15/hr. Most likely, sitting in, playing video games.

Drones are coming to get us. It's fun to fly the hobby ones, but the Big Jobbies are there to spy on us and deliver less than pleasant payloads. So here's a great story about a drone delivering a defibrillator in time to save a man's life. He was shoveling snow and had a heart attack (told you so). 

• I had to go back to my old office. Again. I'm less sore this time, probably because I didn't have to play Naked Twister with the racks.
• Wife says I have to wear a mask at home. I suspect she's trying to tell me something....

Broadcast radio is trash. It has been trash for years and years. 

Never has it been trash in greater quantity than recently. There are a very few people writing the hits today; they're just handed off to the Flavor of the Month singer (sorry, dancer).

To make things more fun, there is now AI software that will create you a song. While this is fascinating on a technical level, it's pretty ugly on an aural level. It's not guaranteed to make you a star, and the company has most of the rights to your song. So go ahead - produce some product. It's all product anyway. Then everybody will want to sound like you. For a month. Good luck.

• Female dolphins have a clitoris much like humans’
• also get headaches 

My employer thinks ahead and wants to make things easier for their slaves employees. When they ask you to do something, they write it out and explain each step of the process. Unfortunately, the explanation is difficult to understand, and the steps are invariably wrong. It goes something like this:

1. Click link.   (Link takes you to old site that doesn't refer you to new site)
2. Look for Payroll    (there is no Payroll)
3. Look for "My last check"   (there is no Payroll. OH, it's under HR)
4. Print a copy   (you can only use work printers and you work from home)
5. Check to make sure you're under Payroll   (there is no Payroll)
6. Your information will be on the left  (it's on the right, 5 clicks away)
7. Can we offer you a soda?   (soda machines are at work, broken)
8. Is there anything else we can do?   (system does not understand DIE)

I'm the kind of employee who desperately wants to fix the systems to make things better for everyone. I learned to keep my mouth shut after the Talking to Manglement Incident.

• What 2 words tell you to immediately not watch the program?
• 1,000lb Sisters

I want my text messaging back.

With people using iDevices, I now get Likes on texts. This isn't social media - this is texting. And while we're at it, I don't want to see emojis on the subject line of email. In the beginning, email was text-only, and was checked in a terminal. We're being driven back.

lefty liked this post  😈

• 'They' say that many people with money are just as miserable as the rest of us, without money. I dunno about you, but I'd like to do the science.

As we mentioned in the last installment, Mrs. lefty is going visiting, and lefty knew he needed a babysitter. He suggested Jennifer Lawrence because they were talking about her.  There has been no response from the Mrs. lefty or the Jennifer Lawrence camp. I have a feeling it will be another lonely period, with no adult supervision. Anything that 'happens' is now on her....

• Today is the second day in a row we can see the sun.
• For penance, it's way below freezing.

In the future, people will look back on us and wonder what happened. There will be college courses on this time period. One of the more intense topics will be how vocal minorities managed to force the majority to go along with their bizarre ideas.

Captivity - Day 70 not as exciting as day 69

A Real Pollock

We have several problems, here at the ThermionicRange, even discounting its inhabitants. Stuff falls off walls, stuff falls off tables, and dirty dishes reproduce in the sink.

Most people would be fascinated with this. Entire tv shows have been done on it.  At this point, I'm less interested in the cause than the solution. A plastic glass leapt off the table, following a house guest. While we're not all that fond of guests, even I know this is not the way to go about it. The worst is Gravity Days. You've had them, whether you know it or not. You pick up a glass, which immediately goes to the floor. You drop the sponge in the sink a time or 12. Expensive possessions rocket to the floor while you're holding them or walk past them. Or look at them.  Sometimes, even thinking about them causes an electro-gravitical pulse, knocking the object where it is most likely to commit suicide.


Yesterday was a particularly bad Gravity Day, unlike we've seen in months. I walked into my Office of Captivity and immediately lost 10 items. I watched them go down, like a train off a cliff, some in a loose alphabetical order. Normal humans would be very amused by this gravitical display; I growled (a frequent, useful response that can cover a lot of ground). After a few hours, I grew agitated with this somewhat amusing display: all it was missing was a song and dance routine above the couch. So what do we do? We take lemons and make Orange Crush.

After watching my coffee cup do the long jump to the floor, taking a paper plate with it, I decided Something Must Be Done. This is usually the start of some really hideous, expensive, time-wasting endeavor. I do not disappoint. A man can only take a certain amount of crap before the Internal Twig<tm> snaps and Stuff begins to occur. In normal people, this can take years. Here, it's 10 minutes. Or less.

Something had to be done, and I was(n't) the man to do it.  As Mrs lefty was out, finding out which stores were open for Emergency Shopping, I was watching stuff leap to its death while I worked. Pro Tip: MUTE your work phone before letting loose a string of profanity, detailing what you like about a task or program or dog. It was not pretty. It had been 3 minutes and I had gone past my limit (temper AND credit card), so I decided to take a different mode: I launched the items myself. It's like your car breaking and you know it's going to be at least 4 figures to fix it, so you ram it into a convenient stop light or police car. This turned out to be my inspiration, my muse, my ability to finally conquer constipation!

I picked up a coffee cup and launched it outside the office.
This felt so good AND appealed to my artistic sensibilities (I *have* no artistic sensibilities), so I threw something else. Coffee mugs weren't a problem - I like to keep at least a week's worth in the office - makes things comfortable and discourages people from sitting. During my Own Private Physics Experiment, I notice the harder I threw an offending item, the further it went outside the office. Essentially, I had launched a couple boxes of Stuff out of my office. It's not MY fault - it's the damn Flying AIDS that forced me to work from home.

Mrs lefty returned, not quite suicidal from the shoe stores being closed, and was truly curious about the (additional) mess outside my office. "I was redecorating." Like most stuff I say, she said nothing. I was upset, as I didn't even get an eye roll from her. My general solution is to up the ridiculousness of my statement, but I wanted to play this cool.

her - "What is this?"
I was redecorating.
"Oh. Why are my 4 vases in pieces on the floor?"
To make omlettes, you have to break some vases.
"Ah, and this colorful display on the couch?"
The grape juice kept trying to leap off the laptop, so I took care of the matter proactively - aren't you proud of me?

As she walked around the house, she'd ask ridiculous questions about why, and what a muse was. I got tired of explaining, so I turned this into a business opportunity: lefty Pollock. People will pay me millions to come to their houses and throw their own crap at their walls. I will be THE new artist. I'm weird, I can't draw, and I have more social problems than most of the artists put together. In other words, I'm PERFECT. I'll finally be able to afford those guitars that are older than me!


It's raining again, which means someone's mowing. What IS it around here? There should be signs up or something. WARNING: No Silence Zone. Mowing and Construction Ahead. If we forced them to use electric tools instead of gas or pneumatic, it would at least be fun to watch. Ever put aluminum foil in the microwave?     (PS: don't)



A moment of respect, please.
George Floyd's mother got on tv last night and thanked everyone for their support. She asked for peace. She must be among the strongest people on the planet.


People are not very accepting of Minnesota jokes yet. Maybe they just don't like black humor. Oops. Sick humor.


The Blob, filmed just outside of Philly, will be running this weekend, at the very theater it was filmed at.  I had a great friend who lived right there. He is missed.

Unicorn Sightings Are Rare These Days

Peter Fonda's in the news, after he posted a tweet suggesting Barron Trump be ripped from his parents and put in a cage with pedophiles.

Melania Trump called the Secret Service.

Fonda deleted the tweet and apologized. We are assured that the Secret Service visit had nothing to do with the cracks in his skull, black eyes, and individually broken fingers.

We checked Twitter for Other Tweets Peter Fonda Deleted:

1. Obama is black, the bastard
2. Watch me put my penis in this pencil sharpener
3. DAMN my daughter is hot
4. I've got snails in my rectum

ABC has apologized for a graphic declaring Manafort pleaded guilty to manslaughter. What they meant to say was "Manafort builds model cars." Anyone could make that mistake.

• Many have predicted that the apocalypse will occur on the summer solstice, for some reason or another, ranging from Billy Graham dying to Kelloggs discontinuing Chocolate Frosted Flakes with Marshmallows. As the solstice has passed, some are starting to doubt the dire predictions. The people who predicted the tragedy said they made a mistake and pushed the date forward, but refuse to tell us when.
• Hollywood blames the NRA for the Apocalypse's failure to occur.

Speaking of proof of God's existence, Star Wars sequels have been put on hold after the most recent cash grab flopped. Also, there is only one treehouse show left on tv.

• Janet Jackson revealed her battle with depression.
• My wife is bipolar and has never bared her nipples onstage.

A woman is suspected of serving her ex-lover's remains at a barbecue.

Guests said, "He tasted like chicken."

• A Kansas man was charged for repeated attempts to have sex with a parked car's tailpipe. 
• The man's blood alcohol was four times the legal limit. His lawyer said, "There is no legal limit for having sex with a tailpipe."  Asked for comment, the man said, "It was a really hot tailpipe."
• Florida's Governor proposed a new state motto: We're messed up but least we didn't try to have sex with a tailpipe.
• Peter Fonda blamed Trump. Democrats called for gun control.

Canada has announced that it will not be attending the Philadelphia Guitar Show this year. The prime minister will be dress shopping with Celene Dion. A spokesman for Dion said she hopes to find him something nice and not too splashy.

• Guilt is twelve times stronger than gravity

Software tip: if you're looking for linux software that does what popular Windows software does, check out AlternativeTo - it also works for other operating systems. OS Alt finds open source alternatives to closed source or commercial software.

My new old office at home is proving quite useful, if for nothing else, escape from humanity. There is a phone on my desk, which makes me feel important. It isn't connected to anything, which also helps in my quest to remain invisible. It still has its original dust, which has kept the insects from taking over. One of the little buggers had developed speech and says stuff to confuse me during evening hours... it can successfully imitate my wife and gives conflicting orders, successfully imitating my wife.

Nothing has fallen and injured me, which is a very pleasant surprise, suggesting that the room exists in a parallel universe. The door, which doesn't shut fully, is actually the portal into the alternate universe. Thus far, everything is the same in the new universe: a profound disorganization, inability to find a single thing that I need, and every flat surface taken up with Stuff. This is precisely the kind of place Hoarders would put on tv, but there is no such show in this universe and the original show won't touch it because their union won't cross universes.

I have a new fan, with six speeds.. I feel so decadent using it. And it has a remote control, so I don't have to reach three feet over to adjust it.  My bigass old tube shortwave boatanchor receiver still works. Pro Tip: do not leave anything with batteries on top of this radio unless you want to see what happens to batteries when heated. In the winter, the radio will heat the entire office, if not the entire alternate universe. Still not answered is the question of why there is an odd number of speakers. Just like in the universe you know, the room eats screwdrivers. Unlike the universe you know, all the pens write. 

I need to speak to someone about getting cold running Snapple and hot running coffee. Somewhere is an old black and white tv. If I try to move it, one of the piles will fall on me and they'll never find my body. There are new popsicle sticks on my desk. There is a great story about these, but I don't know it.

The only serious difficulty occurred when I moved the wireless router into the office, rendering the rest of the house unable to connect. Unfortunately the wireless signal won't cross universes...

• A woman stabbed a stranger in the head with a high heel in a Queens subway brawl.
• Taken to Bellvue Hospital, the man required several staples in his head. A week later he was back at Bellvue because he tried to take them out with a staple remover he had on his desk.
• Democrats, England, and Canada demanded something be done about Shoe Control. Hollywood was strangely silent.

Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving has been lifted.
Saudi comics have requested American comics send them women driving jokes.

• In a nationwide phenomenon, people are dying in Walmart parking lots I told you that shopping there was dangerous.

California Congressman Maxine Waters, founder of Fairness in Politics, has ordered people to harass Trump officials in public places. "The thing I want you to know is that we're not desperate.  If anybody asks, blame it on the Russians."

Maxine also ordered the military to make fun of Trump's hair at White House appearances. "Nyah nyah should be enough to get our point across."

Asked for a quote, the republican party could not comment because it was rolling around on the White House lawn, tears of laughter running down its face.

Maxine also proclaimed God is on our side.
Reached for comment, God was really mad. He said a little birdie told him Maxine should make sure her affairs are in order.