Street Thumpin', Rental Pumpin'

 Your love is like  skin scrapes on concrete

It's been quiet around the neighborhood, so we've been waiting for the other shoe.

In fact, Waiting for the Other Shoe would be a great blog name.

Naturally the other shoe arrived, in the form of the Neighborhood Mover Slamming Thing from last time. It has the flat platform that it launches at the ground with great force. This causes the houses on the block to shake each time. It knocks pictures off the wall and moves furniture to different floors. Many of the neighbors like where the furniture wound up and are keeping it there. Since we live in the No Design Ability House, any movement is an improvement. The couch on the roof may have to be overridden, but we'll live with it for a week or so.

It must be a new physical year, or fiscal year, depending on pronunciation. There are ripped up roads all over the place. Don't tell anybody, but the improvements are nothing but ripped up roads, for the fun of it. The streets department has a wicked sense of humor. Different departments have a Noise Contest, judged by City Hall, when they can be bothered to come into work. They bring out a noise level meter and the loudest machine wins. This led to a little cheating this time, with some crews using fireworks and explosives under the machines. One used gas tanks. A fun time was had by all. Except the people that live in the houses. It was even louder than a Who concert or a Boeing 787 taking off, assuming it managed to pass inspection.

But wait!!!!!  The trash truck is here, in bold competition with the Great Bang Truck.

So naturally I had to get on the phone with Support four times. I was 90 minutes 'late' for work.

Today I identify as  mixed gender pronouns. 

• it's not like the band I just saw on tv is put together for the show, but the left handed bass player is strumming the bass like a guitar

CAR(s)

The collision center continues to move forward with the repair. The repair cost is more than I paid for most of my old cars.

The rental squad decides to charge you random numbers randomly. They like to keep their customers on their toes. If you no like, dey come around you house, capiche?

We still haven't figured out how to turn down the tsunami of air conditioning or pair it with BlueTooth. But it starts every time, and we're used to settling. Strangely, there is no USB port.

• Duckduckgo, the search engine that doesn't track you, now has an email service that removes trackers. You can get a free @duck.com address now.

Biden blasts social media after Facebook stonewalls admin over vaccine misinformation

When the president, or any member of government, tells a site or person what they can and can't say, it's a violation of the First Amendment. Not that Joe gives a rip about the First Amendment. Or the Second.

• How your personal data is being scraped from social media

Finding 'Grace': Murder, DNA and ancestry

Great story about solving an old murder

Reminding you that the ancestry sites are used by the authorities (and marketers)

• Reminder from the lDC [lefty Disease Control] that if you are on birth control pills and taking antibiotics, use a different form of birth control.  The antibiotics make the pills less potent and you won't like the result.

I could have been in the Olympics..

No, really.

There's just no event for napping.

• Less Than 7% of the Human Genome Is Actually Uniquely Human, Study Finds
• you really are a slug

15,000-year-old viruses discovered in Tibetan glacier ice

Fauci says we must all be vaccinated against every one 

This is America

A Texas man cited 7 times for grass over the 12" limit opened fire on landscapers and police who were there to enforce the limit.

Fortunately no one was hit in the 4 hour SWAT standoff.

The man was arrested and had on some sort of hazmat suit

It's only a matter of time til this is me, right? Without the gun, of course.

But seriously, folks... why are there grass height laws, and why do police come out to enforce them?

Another example of government in action: using force 

I got an overnight envelope that required returning.

I went online to schedule the pickup.

This was my first mistake.

There's nowhere to schedule a pickup.

I can make an account if I like. I can schedule babysitting or auto repair, but not a pickup.

In the Good Olde Days<tm>, you called a number or scheduled online.

These are not the Good Olde Days<tm> 

The website is very easy to navigate, so long as you're not trying to schedule a pickup.

There's a HELP function, which connects me to a virtual assistant. This is not actually a human, nor can you find one, possibly at the entire worldwide, well-known service. This is a bot, configured with the help of Artificial Stupidity, so if you enter "schedule pickup," it responds with 13 suggestions, none of which are correct. Now I'd think scheduling a pickup is roughly 50% of their business, so not being able to find it seems... I dunno.... weird?

I continue with HELP, trying "pickup envelope," which gives me another 13 suggestions with the word 'pickup' in them, but - SURPRISE! - nothing helpful. Even if it were to make a horrible mistake and include helpful information, you can't click it. So it will say "schedule envelope pickup" but you can't go anywhere from there. This website was clearly designed to be user-hostile.

I could schedule a ground pickup. How am I supposed to know what a ground pickup is? Well, the truck runs on the ground, no? But this is an envelope, which may not be ground.

So the best way to deal with this is to ignore it. Unfortunately if I ignore it, I won't win the Idiot's Clearing House offer of 15 cents a week for life. So I gotta get this in.

I finally figured GO and scheduled a ground pickup, as my house is on the ground, firmly, I hope. It told me to wait a few (years), then check the status page. WHAT status page? There is NO status page, as there is no schedule envelope pickup page. I think they're just messing with us now. 

So I may or may not have scheduled a pickup - I have no way of knowing. Guess I'll have to wait for the imaginary status page to indicate I have an imaginary pickup on some imaginary day this week.

It's not like they can't slip me in - I don't get out much, so they can show up whenever they want. In fact, they can take it from me when they make one of their 3 daily deliveries from the Shoe Delivery Network for Wife. Why didn't I think of that in the first place?  Nah, they'd just tell me I have to schedule online. My street might become a very dangerous place for these trucks if I can't get this envelope out. Of course if I stopped the shoe deliveries, my house might become a very dangerous place for me.

TOKYO (AP) — The chiropractor for the American women’s wrestling team has apologized after comparing Olympic COVID-19 protocols to Nazi Germany in a social media post.

We're offended so were automatically right.

Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, former general secretary of the U.S. bishops’ conference, announced his resignation Tuesday, after The Pillar found evidence the priest engaged in serial sexual misconduct, while he held a critical oversight role in the Catholic Church’s response to the recent spate of sexual abuse and misconduct scandals.

They are a criminal organization and should be investigated as such.

• Sperm Bank Holds Contest to Find Out Who Has the Best Jizz
• Had to turn away 100 women and 13 men - swallowers not allowed as judges

The new Flying AIDS (D) has affected vaccinated Capitol staffers in DC

Former surgeon general: CDC should fix ‘premature, misinterpreted’ mask guidance

We. Have. No. Idea.

We had a power outage the other night.

Power outages are ugly because they cut off Important Services: air conditioning and internet. We looked at each other and said, "WHERE'S THE INTERNET?" 

This started a cascading effect, namely, no pr0n and no napping, because it was close to 90 and ridiculously humid. Just sitting there was an activity that would cover you in sweat and grunge. If we were going to be sweaty and grungy, that was not the activity we wanted to cause it.

We 'found' the internet, in that we could use our phones to hook other stuff into.

Power outages have met the future with electrical provider websites;  you can look at the outage and get an estimate of how long it will continue. PECO has gotten into the future, that's fer sure. After a few hours, they were 'aware of an outage in the area, that affected 1200 houses.'  Ummmm..... no. This went for as far as the eye could see in all directions. Some of the traffic lights were out too. Businesses were open, but you'd never know it to look at them. Six hours later, PECO was still aware there was a problem. No estimates. Only 1200 houses without power were closer to 47,000. Small math error. 

So after 12 hours, electricity returned, around 4am. We were offering prayers of thanks to the air conditioner gods.

Wife got another 'great deal,' this time on a car battery-sized brick to power things in an outage. I wanted to know how they claimed it would run a fridge, because it was pretty light. To its credit, it charged my phone. I couldn't quite get across that this device was not the same thing as a unit that would power all the computers during an outage. I'm sure the commercial was awesome. THE NEW POWER 9000. GOT A POWER OUTAGE? THIS IS THE UNIT FOR YOU. IT WILL POWER YOUR PHONE. IT WILL POWER YOUR LAPTOP. IT WILL POWER YOUR CAR. IT WILL POWER YOUR PHONE. IT WILL POWER YOUR ENTIRE KITCHEN AND THE REST OF THE HOUSE. IT WILL POWER YOUR PHONE. BUT WAIT!!!!!

So I have to get a UPS, a real device to power the computers. This will be expensive, because it has the word Battery in it. Everything with the word battery is expensive. Even a battery holder is expensive. I don't know how, but I have a little Texas in me: bigger is better. I like big cars and big 17" laptops. If you're bored during a power outage, run a 17" laptop off battery and watch the gauge go down. Use it as a counting game for children. I lowered the brightness by 50% and it didn't matter.

TIP: get a tablet. Set it up to get your email and with your bookmarks. Use it during outages.

Or, you know, have family time. Or some sex. Try reading in the dark. Count salt shakers. Count salt.

here's something you don't see often..

Anal Recognition in Stores

 Your love is like  warts

Facial recognition is bad, wrong, racist, privacy-invasive, and makes your nose itch. Stores like Walmart, Target, Lowes, Albertsons, Macys, and others are currently using it. Sign the petition to ban facial recognition.

Another intrusive technology involves your phone. Turn off BlueTooth and wifi at very least. Turning off the phone is better.

• crab ice cream?

Demolishing another world problem, Biden talked to Putin, who agreed to do something about Russian ransomware. Putin kept a straight face, as did I, while typing this. Even the interpreter snorted into his borscht.

In case anybody's keeping score, SolarWinds, who got hit in a major storm this year, just got hit in another. I'm not sure why companies choose to continuing to use this disaster, but then I think of Windows...

Salmon Going Nuts at a Fish Farm Possibly High on Cocaine, Officials Say
last issue was worms on meth.... 

“The salmon panicked and attempted to jump out of the water,” Daniel Fey, head of the Ecology and Aquaculture department

The drug was not found in samples taken of the tank itself, but the researchers think this was likely because the tank is highly diluted. 

So the salmon have been snorting coke, but there's none in the water. That's what they told the cops anyway....

So what's up with the car?

Funny you should ask. Got a call from the collision center; they just got the car.

Just got the car.

The car that was being taken there last week.

For their part, they called within a few hours. That's a hell of an estimate. Damn. Should be done early next month. Need to get rental days extended again. I don't get a lot of headaches, but I think one is brewing.

 To keep you entertained, How's Mrs. lefty's phone?

Funny you should ask. For those of you playing along at home, it developed a crack, two days after the warranty ran out. Like most things that sit on the couch, the crack got bigger and the phone refused to work, like a city worker. Two days after the warranty expired....

After much research, she went to CostCo. My nephew says you go for a box of cereal and come out with $350 car tires. If it were that simple... as she got to the phone counter, they were closing (at 5:30). Their hours were cut back due to the Flying AIDS.

We have a lot of trouble, but it's all in the service of this blog and my readers. Our misery is your entertainment.

We'll just hold our collective breath to see what today brings at CostCo. I'm not discounting "spontaneous combustion at phone kiosk at local CostCo."

The other gross inconvenience is that I give her my phone when she's out, for safety reasons. I had to do some quick thinking.... what if one of my many girlfriends call? [cough]. Or my alternate sources of income? [cough cough] She said not to get anything for her birthday, but she got cards from three shoe stores. Meanwhile I had to find some locking programs to lock up certain.... sensitive.. files on my android. I think of it this way: she already has a set of boobies - why would she need to look at more?

I still can't remove my user picture in Windows. There are 237 answers to this question at Duckduckgo.com, and none of them work. This is, I would think, a relatively simple operation. What have we learned? As of last week, you could hack Windows via an insecure print service, but you cannot delete your picture. One of the answers said deleting and changing are two different operations, requiring two different solutions.

People pay for this crap?

 

  

I tried telling Wife that it's 92 degrees celsokevin outside, so I can't bring in the trash cans. She was not amused.

Mind you, the Crazy Lady next door, who just turned 489, has neighbors all over the place taking her trash out and mowing her lawn. 

I want in on this. The problem, as I see it, is that I'm not in the 450+ age range, and I don't present as particularly old. So when I don't want to mow, it's just because I'm lazy. Nobody knows the trauma I suffer... I get the bends thinking of mowing... I begged the doctors to help me with the repressed memories of getting attacked by a mower when I was little or something, but they can't hypnotize me. To make matters worse, one of the docs is really attractive, so I can't concentrate on the birdie. I asked her to concentrate on the birdie and she slapped me. This is going to nuke the doctor-patient therapeutic relationship. And shit.

Pronouns? 

How's work? Lemme tell you... there's talk of pronouns.

You know, the current pc he/him/his  she/her/hers

I guess after Pride Month and all the other months, we shoulda known this was coming.

I think I just discovered we have a Chief Silly Officer (CSO) he/her/yous.

Flummoxing aside, I can't leave this unparodied. Aside from male, female, and neutral, there are other groups...

• they/them/theirs  multiple personalities
• he/she/it  fluid
• yo antny/antny/antny's  South Philly Anthonys
• it/it/its  Cousin Itt or any Addams Family character
• no/thank/you   me
• no/fscking/way  most of the company 

Tokyo Olympics: 'Plague of oysters' threatens key venue

Massive numbers of them had attached themselves to floats intended to stop waves bouncing back across the water and on to the athletes. 

The history of the Olympics is a long and storied one

• in 1954, massive goldfish attacked swimmers
• in 1978, crabs infested the playing field (and the athletes)
• in 2003, China hacked the games, only to realize there were no games in 2003
• The Flying AIDS was expected to ruin this year, but there's only been one case

Hubble space telescope's function is restored

They had to remotely clean out the cat hair 

Prospective emojis include a pregnant man

ThermionicEmissions remains 100% emoji-free, largely because it can't stand the stupid 

Lots of apps use your personal contacts. Few will tell you what they do with them

enlightening 

• Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance
• It's for the children. It will only be used to spy on foreigners. We'd never spy on Americans...

The Anvil of Amazon Amuses and Amazes All who Approach

 Amazon continues to keep themselves in the news. The workers describe excessive heat, fainting in NYC warehouse.

These guys are like the government: they keep abusing the workers and nothing ever happens.

Also reported: the plague, herpes, and giving birth 

Your love is like  a rabies shot

FBI Confiscates Alleged Rioter's ‘Fully Constructed U.S. Capitol Lego Set’

Also an erector set, lincoln logs, and a couple of Rubik's cubes in the shape of an ihop 

EU increases pressure on Hungary over LGBT law

Regardless of how you feel about the law, note that the larger group (EU) is putting pressure. This is precisely the reason to not consider membership in any group including other countries. No group should have sovereignty over a country (like the UN). All of this has nothing to do with whether you agree or not with the legislation.

Today I identify as  out of date condoms

How's that car - is it repaired yet? 

Yer kidding me, right?

They still haven't gotten it towed from the tow truck place to the collision place. It's about 3 weeks since the accident. Two people from insurer have told me it's being towed in the past week. 

Ooooh, now it can't be towed without me releasing it.

Keystone Kop Towing, Inc.

How's the rental? 

Funny you should ask. They called this morning to let me know we are about to run out of rental days from our insurer.

It's a Mercedes SUV. WTF am I doing in a Mercedes? Everybody who sees me getting out of it wonders who that dirtbag is, getting out of the Mercedes. He certainly doesn't look like he can afford a used Hyundai, no less a Mercedes. Believe me, it's only because the rental car company took pity on us because they didn't have rental cars twice when we went there. I got stopped twice because the police thought I stole it.  PROFILING! 

How's the insurance? 

The third person I talked to this week, who told me the car is being towed to the collision center,  is allegedly getting the car towed to the collision center. After I release it. And they are nice enough to extend the rental days, for obvious reasons.

How's the car? 

Is it the Catholics who have a Purgatory? I think it's in Purgatory.

No, wait, Purgatory is after you die. Limbo?

It's in a Quantum state, in which it's at the tow center and the collision center (until it's observed).

This would be funny if I didn't have to pay a daily rate on the rental, regardless of the fact I have rental days through insurance. It's like health insurance, or any other insurance.

What now? 

The car will continue in a quantum state until it eventually gets towed. At that point, it will exist in only one place, which is obviously completely the wrong place. Ancient Astronaut Theorists believe that within a day of the quantum reveal, it will exist at the right place.

Whenever it arrives at the right place, Right Place Activities will start.

Keeping in mind that the tow guy said it might be totaled, it will then proceed with its estimate of the situation. Estimating is not a process to take lightly. 

1. the car goes to the Estimating Spot<tm>
2. the car is ignored for a week or two, because they're 'very busy' [with beer and spliffs]
3. customer calls to ask about car: "We're working on it. We've spoken to Insurance, but we're not going to tell you what we told them"
4. customer calls Insurance: "No, they haven't called us at all. We have 14 messages into them."
5. customer calls estimator: "It's ok, we've been really busy. The Emmys are coming up and we have been discussing them seriously and have to put our bets in. We should be able to get to it next week."
6. estimator walks around car, waits a week, makes notes, does nothing else
7. customer calls insurer, gets second rental car extension, has no idea of status
8. insurer gives up and gives customer the rental car for good

AND SOMEBODY SCRAPED THE RENTAL.

Go ahead, skeptics - tell me the universe isn't plotting against me.

Forced to get off the couch, I wound up driving the rental. To say the controls are user-hostile is to refer to WWII as a minor skirmish. I gave up trying to get the a/c off Tsunami Mode. My mom froze in her seat and we had to spend the entire weekend thawing her out.

More than anything, I wanted to Bluetooth my phone into the stereo, so I could listen to some music. I tried for half an hour. Wife tried for another hour. Needless to say, we're still stuck with the radio. There is no manual in the car. The trouble, as I see it, is that the entire system was designed by one of Mercedes' janitors, after a weekend bender. It was like one of those kids games, where they put plastic stickers on a surface. The system asks you to do something, but there's no way to say YES or NO. It just sits there, mocking the renter, knowing there will be no pairing today. Or ever.

• I'm taking a two week vacation from pr0n.
• Aren't you impressed that I could type that with a straight face?

The Internet of Clean: Samsung washing machine app requires access to your contacts and location

Yeah, I'll get right on that.

Dear Everybody: Joe's load is done. Come see Joe's load.

• Quadriplegic driver makes Goodwood Festival racing debut
• "Nobody told me I'd have to turn!"

It's been quiet on the internet and at work since LGBTQ+@- pride month expired.

There were actual meetings about putting LGBTQ into our work.

A survey of networks and hackers revealed that they don't care about LGBTQ and will continue to do their jobs regardless.

Hacker 1: man, there's a ton of industries we can hit this month

Hacker 2: we'll make millions on ransomware

Hacker 1: we promised to stay out of medical

Hacker 2: yup

Hacker 1: it's Pride Month, so we have to avoid LGBTQ

Hacker 2: how do we know?

Hacker 1: aside from theater - everything's fair game

Police: Man dies after he was found suffering from head wound

Coroner unable to connect the two 

KARAOKE TRAGEDY
Woman, 35, crushed to death by six karaoke screens as she celebrates her birthday in Russia nightclub

Karaoke is the tragedy

I went to a dry karaoke night, to support some alcoholic friends.

It was enough to make you drink.

Highly potent cannabis may cause memory issues for marijuana smokers and vapers

Huh?

I'm the hardass in the family.

Mrs. lefty is a saint who naturally has a lot of patience.

We took Mom our for food the other day.

There are pancake chains and there are pancake chains. This one had a blue sign.

The parking lot was near empty but, surprisingly, there were many people inside. And when I say many people, I mean many dirty tables. Mrs lefty went in to get us a table. She saw the carnage and waited for someone to seat her. There were three employees engaged in Important Conversation and indicated she should Hold On. Mrs. lefty, sainted and full of patience, actually turned around and left. It takes an awful lot to get on her nerves, as you would imagine. She said the employees looked relieved they didn't have to deal with another of those troublesome customers.

This location of the blue sign pancake chain is a disaster. To be fair, it's a disaster or slightly less disastrous, depending on time, day, and position of the Moon. We really wanted to give it a chance, plus it's really close. We normally drive 20 minutes up the road to their other location, which is nice, clean, has good service, and only slightly boisterous clientele. We mentioned this to the staff once, and they told us we're not the first people to say that.

When at the closer location, the nature of the disaster can run be from the customers and the staff or any degree in between. The customers are asked to leave their machetes, explosive devices, and children outside, but they can't read the signs. So to start, you have something that looks like a cross between George of the Jungle and a really bad war movie. The machetes are flying, the children are seeing how loud they have to screech to blow out eardrums or get their parents to do something, so there are a lot of busted eardrums. The wait time is thirty minutes, and when I say wait time, I mean from the time you're seated til a waitress happens to stumble by your table, mostly by accident. You better get your order in quickly because you're not likely to see her for a while, possibly til the next weekend. I've seen entire tables get sat, eat, and leave, before our order is taken. If the order arrives, it will be screwed up and she will apologize. She will promise to fix it, but that's just to keep you quiet so she can escape your table. She's not coming back. I'm kidding,.,... she'll come back with a check, eventually. By the time the check arrives, you're another year older and can't remember what you ate or what didn't arrive. Unless you check with the member of your party who died waiting.

They should really call the place WaitHop.

Meanwhile, the other tables are happy and wish to spread their joy by screaming, throwing food (if it arrived), and making intricate figurines out of their napkins (if they arrived). You will want to duck the flying silverware, if they haven't gone to plastic, out of fear of the Flying AIDS. Each table member takes out their phone and plays different tunes at once, as loud as the phone will go. Without parental attention, the children have escaped and are now standing on other guests' tables and taking their wallets. They are playing with stuff that looks suspiciously like plastic explosives.

When you ask the staff to call their next closest location to see if they're open and can get you a table, they get upset for some reason. I think this location exists to bump up the numbers of the farther location. Or this location is an experiment in how badly they can treat customers and what kind of animals they can attract before people get up and leave.

It's Awful Weird in Here

 No, really, they're getting to me. It's particularly bad this time and I'm not sure why.

The Street Improvement Fleet is out, days after I was assured they were done.

The particular event causing the problem is the one where the entire high school marching band is given large hammers and larger piece of metal and they stand there, banging on it, while the driller trucks jam along. The weird part(?) is that although I could probably sleep through it, it's killing what precious little concentration I have for work.

My entire department seems to have taken the day off for National Worm Day and once again, I never got the memo. I don't get the memo a lot. I think I'm either missing from the list or someone filters the good stuff out of my email before I get it.

The work lately has tripled. Because I'm the only one in, the math says my workload has increased 127 times. I didn't do well in math either. Each little piece of work comes with 12 pages of paperwork, making my load increase 4193%.  All this math makes my head hurt. It also makes me wonder what my coworkers are doing on National Worm Day. I'm sure some of them have been preparing all month. They seem to really go all out for their worms. It's a good thing most of us work from home. If we all worked in the office, National Tarantula Day would be hysterical. 

Your love is like  a house without chocolate

• Ah, Microsoft, you've done it again. Thirty minutes to update. Switched my mouse buttons - but mixed up left and right. Outlook only opens full screen, no matter how many times I set it to my preferences.
• Windows: it's not an operating system, it's a virus

So What's Up with the Car? 

The collision shop hasn't called.

Did you get a rental? 

The Rental Gods took pity on us. The place that rhymes with Renterprise came through for us, procuring a really nice car for the original price.

Keeping in mind that I'm thrilled to have a car that I can play tunes via Bluetooth, the rental was like a space ship's control panel. There was a huge display that warned us not to be distracted by it. As it wasn't a touchscreen, I wasn't too distracted. It was keen to show me the radio station, its genre, and what song was playing. Since local radio scrapes the bottom of the poop barrel, it held little fascination. I wondered if it showed anything interesting, like movies while driving, or pr0n, but didn't get a lot of time with it.

The air conditioner did its best impression of the Tsunami that hit Japan and I lacked the degree necessary to change the degrees. Mrs. lefty likes when the air conditioner blows her lips back and her tongue flaps around in the breeze. Oddly enough, the dog does too.

After finally getting a car with a dongle(?) that allows the car to start when it's in my pocket, it was weird to have to put it in the ignition, like a regular old key. The most fun of driving it home was shifting. The outside of the car said "3 Wheel Drive 5 Speed Automatic Transmission," so I knew I was in for a treat. I banged my hand right into my Snapple, looking for the shifter. That's because it wasn't there. It had somehow migrated back to the column. But this particular spaceship had some sort of electronic transmission because you moved the small lever and watched the gear change on the display. This meant every time I tried to run the wipers, I shifted into reverse, which is a bit of a surprise at 60mph (97 euros).

I asked Mrs. lefty if she wanted to know anything about the car and got poo-pooed. "I raced cars and bikes. I think I've got this."  Ok, you've got this. Ten minutes after she left, she came through the front door and asked how to drive the damn thing. She hadn't figured out how to shift it. So the guy who didn't race cars or bikes or much of anything else besides couches, had to tell her how to do it. It's moments like this that make marriage worthwhile. I'm always right, but never tire of hearing it.

The seats were incredible on their own. It was scary after they started asking me if I needed more lumbar support and was I close enough. I told it to save my preferences under codename lefty. It laser-measured so the wheel and mirrors automatically adjusted themselves. It wanted to know if I was up to driving, as I looked a little depressed (Dave). I fooled the system by telling it I was just overwhelmed by all the choices to operate the car. I'm surprised it let Mrs. lefty drive at all, if it was checking mental health. Think about it... a mental health car sensor that comes across a bipolar with multiple personalities... "How many of you will be driving? Don't tap your foot on the pedal so fast. I cannot adjust the seat for each one of you." At last check, the car wasn't in the driveway, so I guess it let her take off.

It was a... SUV? Station wagon, sorta. Regardless of which, cars aren't built to carry things anymore. No matter how large, they're still short of room. Plus Mrs. lefty travels light, with 17 jumbo cases and 27 hanging garments, for a weekend away. By the time she was done packing, by which I mean I was done packing, the dog was wondering where she'd sit. 

It will be interesting to get her impressions of the car after her trip (Mrs. lefty, not the dog). I hope she doesn't fall in love with it, because it's probably about $100,000 more than our new one. She'll have to get her own corner to pay for it. And I get my 1957 left handed Stratocaster first.

• Study finds crayfish treated with antidepressants become more outgoing, adventurous
• side effects include not being able to get their claw up...

Definition of scum?

The subhuman in Lowes that stole Mrs. lefty's cane.

Today I identify as someone who is going to ram a cane so far up someone's ass that even surgery will not remove it

• apparently I have sprouted a gray eyelash. One.
• I can't find it, but I always see a reflection off it.
• it's driving me so crazy - I may stab my eye to stop it

Didja ever have someone call you for directions?

When they're lost.

And you have no idea where those roads are.

And no one seems capable of typing "google maps" into a browser.

And the people in the car are talking across each other.

And family calls them to give them weird directions.

And a nice person gives them correct directions.

And you hang up.

And they call you back, to give you a running description of what turns they're making to get back to the main road.

And they ask you if they're supposed to make a right or left at the 7-11?

Me either.

• It occurs that, if left alone, I'd just sit, with my laptop, reading and churning out blog entries, until I eventually wound up as a pile of dust on the couch. I guess my question would be if the couch still sat in the house, or if it wound up on a heap somewhere. At that point, I suspect I wouldn't care.

• Second FBI Agent in Two Months Arrested for Raping, Molesting Children
• where do they find the time, after setting up crimes so they can bust them?

I woke up with the chickens, at 1:00(pm) and surveyed the house. There's a lot to be done, so my immediate instinct was to go back to sleep. It's probably 90-something outside, so that rules out mowing  Let's face it - anything rules out mowing.

There's a huge box in the living room. This isn't really a surprise, as Fedex has a daily stop at the house. This one isn't quite as large as the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey, but I'm content to leave it there until it becomes part of the landscape. Unfortunately, a certain spousal unit will not let it sit there, so I guess it's my job to do something about it. I thought I already did something about it by moving it into the house, after the very amused driver left it outside on half the plants Mrs. lefty just put in. The box weighs about as much as a Toyota, so I'm not going to be swinging it around the room. I desperately need a hobby. Not sure why swinging heavy boxes about the place would be a good hobby, or that I'd even swing things around the house in the first place. They always tell me I should get out more, but have yet to provide a good enough justification for their claim.

I'm guessing the box is a specialized recliner, as there's a picture of a recliner and the word RECLINER on it. I didn't get this far without a healthy intellect.

Before I go further, every now and then when a large box shows up, I ask about it. I feel entitled to question it every 12 boxes or so. Wife explains that once a year, she buys a House Gift. The funny thing about this is that I'm never consulted about this alleged House Gift, and it never seems to have anything to do with me, or anything I can use. I am going to put my foot down next year and buy the house a left handed vintage guitar. The house has gone about 50 years without one, and I think you'll agree that it's time. 

Now we don't actually need a recliner, hence my confusion. Checking the fine print on the box, it has some sort of assistive technology, meaning it helps you stand up after you're done sitting. Mrs. lefty could really use something like this, as fibromyalgia and other ailments are taking their toll on her. 

So I have an idea.

If 120 volts gently helps her get up, imagine what 220 volts will do! I've always wanted to see an Ejector Seat, haven't you? I'm going to put one in the car, but I have to find out if we're getting our car back from the shop or we have to get another one. So far I figure I need a moon roof, so I have my trusty can opener ready. No sense ejecting someone when there's a roof there. The only issue I see is that I have to make sure I'm driving when it's activated. That could cause major difficulty and I don't want to have to explain it to the police.

The seat will theoretically sit next to my tiny little living room amplifier, so I'll have to make sure I point it her way. They payoff for me, aside from it ejecting her through the house's roof, is that it will put her next to the tv. This will cut down the earth-shaking volume she prefers. When a phone rings on tv, I immediately reach for my phone, get it? It's really bad when someone screams... this is why she's not allowed to watch horror films. I was going to run the tv through headphones, but haven't figured that out yet, plus we don't know of any phones that will put out enough volume for her. She can also trip over wireless headphones, a fact that's slowing down the effort. She's particularly bad on flat surfaces, which is why our carpet is made of rubber and all furniture has bumpers. I trip too, but it doesn't have quite the comic potential of hers.

I plan to have this recliner in place before she returns from visiting some relatives. It will be a pleasant surprise, and will hopefully cover for not mowing the lawn. As it's a smallish box, I guess it will have to be assembled. That should be fun. At least it's not from Ikea.

Mrs. lefty's absence is made twice as bad as she takes the dog with her. So I walk around the house, talking to the dog who isn't there. Maybe I can borrow a dog next time. Mrs. lefty tells me that if I talk to the dog who isn't here and the dog talks back, it's a bad thing and I should call the doctors.

I figure this would be a good time to do those things I can't do while Wife is home, then realize I can do whatever I want, with the possible exception of sleeping with Linda Fiorentino. When I think about it, I will actually do less, because I won't be doing things just to piss her off. This takes up a lot of my time. A previous girlfriend said my parents were so generous with gifts because they were thankful she took me off their hands.

Three Hours Later...  

It's here. Well, it was here, but it's put together and sitting in its place. It's chocolate colored, which damn near almost matches the other chair, but not really. I guess the color swatches didn't arrive in time. 

Before you pick on me for getting furniture that comes in a box and has to be assembled.... ummm... I didn't do it - SHE did. Nyah nyah. So I'm white trash... it ain't duh foist time youz called me dat.

Perhaps I get points for the fact it only came in two pieces. The problem, now that I look at it, is that when sitting, her chair is a few inches taller than my chair, which will cause a problem. For me, of course. My phone was bigger than hers until she got a new one. At least I still had more megapixels. Phew.

When you move old furniture to make room, you vacuum, because there's no telling what you'll find under there.... dust, fish, scraps of paper, a Wankel rotary engine, and the cast of Hamilton. This was the good vacuum, so it got everything up, except for a few of the musicians for Hamilton. I could use a drummer anyway.

Like any man, I ignored the instructions and proceeded right to assembly. Well, I didn't so much ignore them as not see them. They hide them inside the stuffing of one of the armrests and it's your job to figure out which. I told myself to proceed slowly, and that the red plugs probably plugged into the red jacks. Same with the white ones. Naturally there was one left. There is a flap on the rear to cover up all the workings and it wouldn't stay put, so I had to use my forehead to keep it in place, while I pushed the chair up on its front legs so I could see what I was doing and find the errant red plug. Eventually I located it, hidden way up in the front of the chair, while I was, strangely enough, way back in the back of the chair. When I eventually found the instructions, one of the Frequently Asked Questions was "Where are all the wires?"  Well, if that's a FAQ, you've obviously screwed up on your manufacturing or quality control. Or quality control was busy making sure there were two pieces in the box before it went out.

So it's all together (I hope). Speaking of being impressed with little things, it has a usb port on the side. I'm going to guess it's there to power a device. The other option is that this is an Internet of Things device, which will count the number of times Wife sits on it and relay that information to the Big Server in the Cloud. This is why I'm into safety and privacy - to prevent this kind of egregious invasion into our butts.

I must tell you that, after it was done, the strangest thing happened: there was water on my forehead, dripping down my body. I called a friend with nursing experience and she told me there was no need to worry, this was perfectly normal, and called 'sweat.' This didn't sit well with me and it's obviously not perfectly normal, as I had to call her to find out what it was. I don't like it. I plan to do whatever is necessary to avoid it in the future. It took a lot of lemon Snapple and our industrial warehouse fan, pointed exclusively at me, to get things down to a few drops. I'm a knowledge worker, dammit! If you are a fan of M*A*S*H, remember Charles saying, "A Winchester does not sweat; a Winchester perspires."

I'm holding the first seating for Mrs. lefty's return. I suppose I should plug it in too, in order to get the Ejection Seat feature working. To save roofing tiles, I'm going to have it eject forward, so she flies into the dining room table - it's very well built, obviously not by me.

The Unemployment Follies (#5)

Well, it's been a real whirlwind since I last wrote.  And when I say a whirlwind, I mean that much effort has been put forth for absolutely nothing of any consequence in terms of gain.  Oh sure, I've been solicited for jobs halfway across the state, in the next state over, the state on the other side, up north of the next state over; for security guard, software engineer, governance manager (?), relationship director, project manager, and of course, my monthly offer for insurance sales.

I even had a call from a recruiter who was excited about a position, wanted to send my resume and references right over, set up a lunch for us, and never called back or responded to emails.  I specifically avoided references to his mother or family members and farm animals, as I'm told this could be considered offensive by some people.

As I type this, I just discovered that my Linked-In picture was taken down for violation of their terms. When you consider that the picture is of my pets, I fail to get this alleged violation.  Let's face it, a large number of Linked-In pictures are not pictures of the account owner.

HOUSE

My wife has gone on a house cleaning spree. This came as a shock to both of us, causing me to join her.   We've taken untold amounts of bags to the curb, freeing untold amounts of space inside the house. I even discovered there is carpet next to my bed.  While I will cop to being a slob, I'm not claiming responsibility for this, instead preferring to blame it on the dog.  I tidied and arranged all reading material on the side of the bed. The dog proceeded to untidy every single page, in addition to tearing the trash apart on a nightly basis.  After two or three times, I gave up and let him rearrange things to his liking.  Even after we got a flip-top trash can, he still goes there first, every single evening, to see if there is any more tasty trash that needs to be shredded (all over the bed).

With all of this wonderful new-found space, the items in my house are having a difficult time adjusting.  In fact, they're having such a difficult time, they're acting out.  I just watched my wife carry some wash downstairs and a vacuum randomly put itself in her way and got knocked over as a result.  Whenver I reach for something on a clean table, something else falls off.  It's only a matter of time until things start leaping about the house on their own.  One guest swore a cup hurled itself at her.  She was probably correct.


CAR

You know what's coming, right?

It's been quite a few weeks.

Our insurer has missed us.

Yes, someone hit the car. Again.  In fact, I stopped counting a while ago.  Guitar players can't count past four anyway (and I know my limitations.. 1-2-3-4!).  I can only estimate and I refuse to estimate, as it would make me sad(der).  We didn't even report the last time it happened.

This time, some idiot stopped short, caused my wife to stop short, causing the brand new black Mercedes behind her to slam right into her. He tried to avoid the car, managing to only ruin one rear corner of the Target Hyundai.  This being Philthydelphia, they had to wait two hours for the police. I suppose she was lucky, as the Philthy cops don't usually respond to anything that doesn't involve a gun. Did I mention that the idiot who caused the accident drove away?

This morning I am yanked out of bed at some horrid hour (before noon) because someone's coming over.  Why should I care?  Because something happened and the bank account needs money or we won't be able to pick up a rental car.  So someone's coming over with money, bless them.

I am horrified.

I got into the car for the first time, post-accident, this morning.  As we're driving down the street, I hear a really bad rubbing of some sort.  Turning to the wife with that look, she explained that she told me about this.

Huh?

Yeah, it's ok.

Huh?  The horrible rubbing noise is ok?

Yeah, the guy(?) said it was ok.

What guy?

The guy from the accident.

Ah.

So I'm driving, my heart (and wallet) pounding due to the rubbing noise (that's ok). When we parked, I took a look for the root of the rubbing.  No problem, I said... it's only the broken, very hot exhaust pipe, sitting against a rear tire.  No, it's ok.

Is your skull coming apart at the seams yet?  Mine is.

Finally we managed to obtain a rental car.  It's a lot nicer than our car, even if we're just talking about the extreme lack of dents and parts hanging off it.  Since it's black, the polar opposite of white, our luck will be much better with this one.  And I say this because the last rental we got when the last bit of body work had to be done after the last accident, had to have its mirror replaced after someone hit that.  The cost of the Mirror Operation exceeded the amount I paid for each of my first three cars.

Following the wife to the dealer, I pulled in behind her. This was made more difficult by the random parking arrangements of the existing cars.  But all of this was no matter, as this was the wrong location. The correct body shop location was a few blocks down the road (it's all the same dealership).

After locating the correct body shop, we somehow managed to park (this place had the same Parking IQ as the last one).   Some lady, with an 'I just sucked on a lemon' look, came past me and drove our car to the garages.   A few minutes later my wife comes up to me and says we may have to cancel the entire operation, as they won't look at the car for a few weeks if it's driveable.  I point out that it's not driveable, given the rubbing (that's ok).  Lemon Face brought a mechanic out, pointing out the correct area of damage (differentiating it from the other areas of damage).  Mechanic agree with me.  As it turned out, the rubbing noise (that's ok) turned out to be not ok.

Wife explained that Lemon Face was agitated and didn't want to admit the car for repair. Regardless, the repair would take two to three weeks.  For some reason, business is good for the humongous dealer's body shop (with twenty bays or more).  And I thought it was just us....


GIMPY

I casually asked my wife why her walking was worse than normal.  She casually answered that her knee had been bothering her since the accident.

DING!

I didn't want to overstep my boundaries or appear parental but I suggested that she stop cleaning for a few moments and if her knee hurt, maybe, perhaps, she should get it looked at professionally.

I didn't want to bother you.

DING!



I want my wife back.

And my car.

And my typing, which has gotten extremely dyslexic lately.


Meanwhile, the dealer, body shop, car rental place and insurance person all know us on a first-name basis.

Happy Belated Birthday

to Graham Chapman, of Monty Python fame, who would have been seventy-two yesterday.


Urinus Interruptus

So I'm minding my own business, in the bathroom, when the door opens.  Of course the door opens - it's the cat, mortified by my human desire to eliminate alone and with the door closed.  I suspect this need of ours for solitude somehow offends felines, who are smart enough to figure out bi-fold doors.  We thought we had outsmarted him (and the dog) by installing the door backwards but this took only a day to figure out.  For both of them.


The Car is Back!

After only three weeks and a day, our beloved car is back from the collision shop, fully repaired.  For those of you keeping score, it's deer zero, us one, insurance four thousand, rental car seven hundred.  It's most fortunate that I'm independently wealthy.

The wife is beyond joyous; she loves her car.  I'm happy to not be paying for a rental, even if the seats were nicer.

Let me say something nice here about State Farm: they've been great and fast.  No crap, no fuss, it's done.  All insurance should work this way (take notice, health insurance).


A Word from the AntiSports

I don't usually bother but I came across this little factlet on the radio the other day: hockey is about to start again, after the lockout.  Philly is the city with the least amount of ticket refund requests, at two-hundred.

Seriously, Philly, you are a huge, dirty city of enablers.  You put up with crappy team performance and greedy millionaires.  What do you do?  You line up to pay them some more.  You deserve what you get.  You pay an egregious amount to simply park at football games, not to mention the now standard TSA-style groping.



In closing, I urge caution on the forced national panic about guns.  There is obviously an agenda here.

Good Riddance, I Say

It's still 2012 and we're all still alive.  There was no apocalypse and my crew somehow managed to survive.  It wasn't easy.

I have been struggling with a way to describe this past year.  The title of this post will serve for now.  We have been struggling in general.  This has not been a happy holiday season.

It would seem that there are but a few groups who aren't struggling now.  One of them is Congress; currently busy not struggling with a way to save us money and benefit its constituents.  Instead, the traitorous bastards struggle with ways to get us to pay for their misdeeds and usurp the Bill of Rights.

Another group not struggling is rental car centers, or at very least, the one near us.  We're on week two of our rental, with nary a word on the body work of our car after the deer committed suicide with it.

Deer are another topic entirely.  My friend, the deer hunter, told me he had a clear shot at a deer a few weeks back.  He shifted, the deer heard it and ran.  If their hearing is that good, how does a deer miss a loud 35mph Hyundai at night with lights?  I suspect it was suicidal after all.

Some tell me this is deer season and they're about.  They sure are - they're decorating hoods all over the place.  And trust me, you don't want that kind of hood ornament.  Last weekend we were near the scene of our accident and came upon someone else's fresh accident.

Do we need to aerially spray the neighborhood with Prozac for the deer?  Are they that depressed?  Others speculate that they're just horny.  I'm just horny too but I don't go leaping in front of moving vehicles (unless that vehicle is Eva Longoria).  Some organization or other is talking about deer contraceptives, which brings me to my next point... what in the world is the pope going to say about deer condoms?  He sure as hell doesn't like them for humans.  My only thought here is that since the pope doesn't believe animals have souls, perhaps it's all equal in the end.  Perhaps if we tell the pro-lifers that we're giving abortions to the deer, they'd guard the roadways.  This way we won't actually have to touch the deer and the deer won't be able to get to the roads to leap in front of random cars.  Everybody wins (if we assume the deer aren't depressed in the first place).

HOLIDAYS

Holiday time is supposed to be a happy time.  Supposed to.
It seems that happiness took a few days off during my recent break from work.  It had gotten so bad that I cancelled xmas entirely (for myself).  As for everybody else, depression crashed into bipolar disorder, which sideswiped dream therapy, causing horrible nightmares for children.  Neuroses played table tennis with grief.  Not to be outdone, multiplicity sulked behind the scenes and refused to effectively communicate.

That aside, everything else was fine.


SOMEONE ELSE'S MIRACLE

Bro and Sis-in-law's mom had to go to the hospital for tests.  She walked in, had tests and became half paralyzed.  Brain cancer.  Then full paralysis (I strongly suspect the hospital, not cancer).  Days later, with many diagnoses, she was alert, awake, and oriented.  A transfer to hospice that was a death sentence got commuted to extended care.  My wife (the nurse) proved to a doctor that he had no idea what he was talking about.

So my relatives are celebrating and my wife scored some dignity for a dying woman.


THE WIFE'S MIRACLE

I hate health insurance companies.  This is kind of like saying that we hate Hitler.
My wife has been on the same medication for chronic pain for three years.  Because the insurance company is invested in finding new and better ways not to pay for things, they introduced the review/precertification process.  Once a year, the prescribing physician has to jump through hoops to get the medicine recertified so the insurance will pay for it.  The last time was June.

So what happened when my wife went to pick up her December pain meds?  The insurer decided that one year between reviews was no good and decided on six months instead.  Yes, these thieving bastards required another review so my wife could receive the pain meds she's been on for three years. This was made all the more amusing by the fact that her doctor was on vacation for two weeks with no way to reach him and a full answering machine.

The pharmacist, bless him, sat on the phone for twenty minutes with the insurer and got an override for four days worth of medicine (with the full copay, of course).  We had the option of paying cash for the meds, at ten dollars per pill, which we could not do.

For anyone still following, the insurer decided it was perfectly ok to completely stop a patient's prescribed pain meds due to a precert that could not be reasonably performed in one day.  This would cause not only horrible pain, it would cause the patient to go into detox.  But it's ok - this is how the insurance lobbies got Congress to write insurance law.

My wife put on her asshole hat and called the insurance company.  They were quite sympathetic to her plight but checked all the way up the chain and couldn't do a thing for her.  Her only option was to pay cash for the meds, which they would reimburse after the fact, then tackle the doc when he returns and force him to make the paperwork right.

So we're out about two hundred for meds now.  Combined with weeks of car rental, our mortgage company hopefully has a forgiveness program.

Another slew of imaginary points to the wife for keeping herself out of detox.   Notice that I am not sending kudos for bettering herself - just for scraping to get the bare minimum.   Life should not be about scraping for bare minimum.


MY MIRACLE

A few days ago I ventured across the building in search of Coca Cola.  There, in the machine, shining out like brown gold, was an actual row of Coke.  In the Coke machine, which is usually filled with Pepsi.  An xmas miracle!

But luck refused to abandon me this week.  The next day, there were two rows of Coke in the Coke machine.  And as if that weren't enough, there was silverware in the silverware drawer.  I was on a roll.  If I played numbers, this was the week to play them.

Finding soda made me feel almost invincible.


AND IN THE END

The kids were upset.  The pets were clingy.  Gifts sat unopened.  No one was happy.

We decided to hold our own xmas, the night after the other one, perhaps sending out our own metaphorical finger to the universe.

The kids got excited.  The pets got in the way.  The Hess chopper was the star of the evening.
I participated, in spite of cancelling xmas, by giving.

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We wish you a very Happy Whatever, dear reader(s).  Strength to those who need it.  Good health for all.  Keep the deer away from us.  Have a safe and happy new year and may 2013 be much less apocalyptic and much more enriching.