lefty Exits the House -but not the Building

 After who knows how many weeks, we finally got outside the house (for more than taking out the trash or leaving presents for neighbors that are no longer with us). We did the right thing, going to the mall's page to check their hours. Then we were off the the place that rhymes with Billadelphia Mills Outlet Mart. Go ahead, laugh... it was much better when it was Franklin Mills. 

So many closed businesses. Large holes in the mall. Most new stores were low rent. You'd also be hard pressed to find stores that were there for more than a few years. We checked in advance for food. Out of two food courts, one shrunk down and absorbed all its stores, like a woman's private parts absorbing the man they eat. And then there was one food court. To call it a food court is to be generous. It had a lot of seating and looked like it wanted to be a food court when it grew up, but in order to be a true food court, and I shouldn't give away this business secret, you need actual food restaurants. There was a Sbarro, but there's a Sbarro in every food court - it's mandated by local law. After having tried Sbarro once or twice, I stopped because they violated one of the laws of physics: it came out faster than it went in. In fact, I don't know a single person who eats there, yet there they are. I have a theory.... Sbarros are a money laundering scheme. For the mafia or government, I don't know, but how could they stay open otherwise? There are damn near three other restaurants too, bringing the total to damn near four restaurants. So what I'm saying here is this does not constitute a food court. It barely constitutes a strip of shops. There were two fully-functioning food courts in years past. They got sucked up like your tax breaks.

Since the last time I was at the mall, they removed every bench, for our shopping convenience and pleasure. When you consider an average couple, one will find most of the stores irresistible and one won't. Take a guess at which is which. So I went outside to sit and BOOM - not a bench in sight. Handicapped people use the mall too, and might need to sit down now and again. So there's the entrance to a store, and ten men sitting on the floor outside because there's no benches anywhere. Mrs. lefty says it's because they don't want anybody sitting around because of the Flying AIDS. If so, certain mall people are in the cheap scotch again.

For the entire time there have been cell phones, there have been people walking around while looking at them. This is some sort of black magic to me. I have to be careful while sitting and looking at the phone. I'd be walking into things, like benches, if there were any.

There were two stores I wanted to see, in the one hundred stores present. Sam Ash music went all Guitar Center by halving its inventory. I guess it's the Flying AIDS economy.... I'm not blaming them, it just sucks as a customer. The other store was Cinnabon. Those things are so good, it's almost a sexual thrill. And BOOM - the store was closed. It was starting to get personal.

About half of the stores required a breathing arrestor (mask). Haven't we flattened the curve yet, Fauci? If you go to Philly restaurants, you have to provide PROOF of vaccination and wear a mask. The technical term for this is Shooting darts at a moving target in the dark.

Didn't expect a Victoria's Secret, but there it was. Guys - have you ever looked at the price tags on that stuff? Even on the half-off racks, it was too expensive. I know Victoria's Secret: it's how you can get so many people to pay so much for so little. Victoria's operates on the Fantasy Principle; if you buy this, you'll look just like the model in the picture. You'll find this in the cosmetic business (if I wear this, I'll look just like the model on the magazine), as well as the home repair business (if I buy lots of tools, I'll be able to build stuff). In all cases, you're going to be very disappointed (unless you already look like the model in the picture or can build stuff). I learned a very important thing: you should not yell out "Honey, are you still a 36C or did you put on weight again?" But Mrs. lefty is naturally smarter than me... while waiting in the interminable line for the lone cashier, she asked me if I saw anything I liked for her. Why yes, I did; I pointed them out while we stood in front of them. That way she could play stupid, and even if she went to get them, I wouldn't have the patience to stand in line. So she got what she wanted and made it look like I had been given the chance to get what I wanted. Major Wife Skills. Then there's the push-pull of What Women Want vs What Men Want. I noticed everything I looked at was full of holes and very small. She looked at things with no holes, that came to her knees. In the end, this is extremely confusing to the male of the species, because even if something is purchased, it's not likely he's going to see it much. In some cases, at all.

We're in another one of those God-Help-Me stores that are filled with women because all the men have taken their place in the hanging line right outside the store. Yes, they're voluntarily hanging themselves rather than go in the (candle) store. Being the nice guy I am (for the entire first of January) I went in. I have bags and drinks and bags. Both hands and arms are full. I looked like Kim Kardashian's valet on a small shopping trip. I have a pair of smoothies; tropical punch and strawberry, but the real issue here is that after tasting both, we can't figure out which is which. If you gave them to us randomly and asked what flavor they were, we couldn't tell you. All I could come up with is 'Ick.' The way to get past this problem is to redesignate them Cold Slushy Substance, then you expect nothing when you swallow them. It bears noting that we also have some fresh cookies too, of the Toll House variety, in our bags. But I can't tell you where we got them... you know.. Toll House in the mall.. or anything. She turns around to me and says "Hold this." At this point, I'm wondering which appendage she'd prefer I use, when it hit me: I need to invent the Prehensile Penis. Being hidden notwithstanding, the penis is not really useful as-is in a store. Well, unless you can find a spot where no one will see you, but it's not great in most normal retail situations, except possibly holding donuts, which also assumes certain things about the size and state of the penis in question. But if it were Prehensile, it could hold stuff, stiff or otherwise. This leaves the gentleman with another appendage to carry purchased items and the lady with more buying to do because there is now 25% more carrying capacity (are you listening, GMC?). Win-win! And then when you get home, there's no telling what other uses there are for a prehensile penis. Win-win-win!

After we got home, the bags got piled up on the floor for review, because nothing is technically purchased until it's reviewed (aka Booty Call). Beat to hell, she goes to bed. As it's time for dessert (it's always time for dessert), I want my cookie. Now.

AND THE FSCKING BAGS ARE NOT THERE ANYMORE.  I just located dirty pots that I didn't even know we had (probably someone else's) but I cannot find the bags I just put there 30 minutes ago. The honey for tea moves every few days. The crackers wander. The work boots generally hang out in a sink or two (the left one anyway). Even the exhaust systems for GMC cars from 1973-1975 take weeks to move. Yet the bag with who knows what she bought AND MY COOKIES is gone. If it were daytime, I'd do what I do 365 days of the year - ask her. But if I were stupid enough to try and wake her, I might return missing parts. It would be a sad day if I had finally gotten the prehensile penis thing going, knowwhatImean? 

Not having eaten all day and smart enough to avoid the Food Court Wannabe, we decided on our favorite Mexican place. Closed. Ok, time for barbecue. Closed. It was beginning to feel personal. Wendy's was closed. The One True Pizza - closed. Every one of our favorite restaurants and even more non-favorite restaurants were closed. It was New Year's Day - people tend to eat out. Everything used to be open. Did I miss the email? Should I have risked my GI system and gone to Sbarro? You have to drive fast after eating there, so you get home to your personal toilet before.. uhhh... things start happening. You know, before you look like something from Alien. You could use a mall toilet if you want. We checked the mall directory and located two toilets. That's two toilets for about a solid mile of mall. Perhaps they took the toilets AND the benches out for our shopping pleasure.

SO..... we got out after many many weeks. Every time we tried, there was something stopping us (snow, traffic, intestines, Large Japanese Monster Avoidance). Was it worth it? The answer can be stated in roughly two words: Not really. But if we continued to be trapped in the house, we'd never know. We need some sort of time travel visualizer (alternate phase inducer, string theory thingie). Not to time travel, but to see what would have happened had we actually gone. Then the two of us could sit there, shake our heads, and say geez, we're really glad we didn't do that.

So I don't have my cookies, but there's ice cream in the freezer - I can smell it. It cannot hide from me anymore - those days are gone. I wonder how much I'm going to lose it before I can't blog anymore. Maybe at that time I'll use voice dictation (the wife). Assuming she hasn't lost it first.

While shopping, I saw what could possibly be the greatest achievement of modern society ever: battery-powered fake candles. Not exciting, but they came with a remote control. Now you don't even have to get off your corpulent hairy buttocks to light your candles - you remain on the couch and press a button. This is life-changing. If your microwave could deliver your food to you or the delivery guy could bring the pizza to your couch, there would be no cause or reason to leave the couch. Ok, one.

I didn't have time to study the devices intimately, but all they needed to make them absolutely perfect was an auto-off feature. You know... after 8 hours, they turn themselves off. I know people who have auto-off curling irons, auto-off heaters, auto-off ovens and stoves, leading to auto-off houses. Some people cannot be trusted with electricity or heat, lest they burn the place down. Sometimes the insurance company requires you to purchase these items before they'll cover your house or apartment.

• Hey, you know those guys who were 'guarding' Jeffrey Epstein when he 'committed suicide'? The guards who were napping and doing other Important Stuff instead of their rounds? Federal charges were very quietly dropped against them on December 13, but not made public til December 30th. Lots of really shady, hidden decisions.
• Jeffrey Epstein was murdered and no one will answer for it. Regardless of charges against him, murder is a pretty serious crime and justice must be done.
• The only surprise in this travesty of justice is that Ghislane Maxwell is still alive.

I sat down in 'my chair' the other day and it had become.... fragile.... weak. I think it might be leaving the house, part by part. Either that or I will come down one morning to find it in a pile of its component parts. If I find it like this, it will be of great importance not to sit in it. I'd probably wind up with nails in places I shouldn't have nails. Or worse, splinters.

I don't want to go through this. The chair I sit on seems to do the job, except for constantly getting the laptop cord caught in it when I stop reclining. I'd have to go to actual furniture stores to look. I haven't spent much time in actual furniture stores in longer than the radio has been playing absolute crap. I just know when I go into one, some guy in a rug, with a really bad, mismatched plaid suit, named Herb (think WKRP), is going to assail me just upon my passing through the portal. Herb will ask me what I was looking for. Not knowing, I'll tell him I was looking for a good place to get a suit (now we know where to avoid). Maybe I'll look at him and keep making rug references. The problem here is that Herb will insist upon talking to me, which tends to really spoil my day.

 The thing is, I don't know what I want, aside from 'chair that moves backwards.' Since I have spent several dog lifetimes not being in a furniture store, I don't know what's available, and, heaven forbid, what it costs.  I don't know if there's a profile for people like me in Sales School. If there is, it's probably called AVOID AT ALL COSTS. Herb, I have a deal for you: LEAVE ME ALONE and if I buy a chair, I'll tell them you sold it to me. I'm sure all salesmen aren't like used car salesmen, but I don't want to deal with any of them. Herb, if you hover, I'll bite you.

The next problem is the chairs will cost more than guitars, which will set up an internal conflict. Guitar-recliner. Recliner-guitar. That's before we discuss Sofa. This is fraught with problems and will probably require a referee and an accountant. Possibly the bomb squad.

There is so much to do and so little of it getting done

This week in Tesla: we have absolutely nothing about fire or spontaneous explosions. Tesla is recalling 475,00 of its Model 3 and Model S because rearview camera and trunk issues 'increase risk of crashing.' I suppose we can say fire is involved if they crash. Although from some of the less than intelligent folks driving the cars, the rearview camera is faulty because they're using it to watch Taylor Swift videos.

As for the trunk, a faulty hood latch may lead to the trunk opening without warning. So if you're riding down the highway and see a car wandering over three lanes, with an open hood, the kids can now say, "Look, Mom, there's a Tesla!"

As violence rises against Jews in Germany, one group has a radically simple scheme to fight back - "Meet a Jew"

What could possibly go wrong?

You will be patted down at the gate for weapons and rotten fruit.

Meet a Jew follows on the failure of several similar programs:

• Meet an illegal immigrant
• Meet the boss' nephew who got promoted over you
• Meet a Fuhrer

The program will run all week, except of course Friday night and Saturday.

Isn't Antisemitism in Germany just a little disconcerting?

Flying AIDS News 

EXCLUSIVE: Are we on the brink of OVER-vaccinating in the fight against Covid? Experts warn dishing out fourth jabs in spring may be unnecessary - and Omicron may be world's 'natural' vaccine that finally ends pandemic

New York governor declares racism 'public health emergency' amid new anti-discrimination legislation

Right after this, the public health people announced they were going to take race into consideration for who to give Flying AIDS medicines that may be less available. Maybe the governor was right.

 

You Can't Get There From Here, So Die

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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