The musings of a madman...

       Despite roughly a year of shooting my shot, I am unfortunately still not rich…      The closest I have come was with my crypto bets, which if I had trusted more at the time, would have been more lucrative.  Who can forget when I was curb serving the city all the available Plan B back at Valentine's Day?  Beyond that, my lawn hustle is doing me pretty well. Live and learn, I know. I have been accosted by several police officers over the course of the ‘Rona year and I can only be thankful that the wife person was around to talk me out of an arrest or – more likely – roadside execution.      It’s been fun though.   I have been places (sort of) and met people (from six feet away) and somehow have come off with more money than I might have under other conditions.   Wait…   “somehow”?   There is no mystery involved.   I work from home, I am buying literally a third of the gas I would otherwise and I literally can’t go spending on outside the house things as I would if

       I have been contiguously employed since a week after my 16 th birthday and can count on one hand the number of times I have called in sick. I lost a whole-ass week of work (and True Story©) last week due to a damned misunderstanding behind my apparent myriad of side hustles and get-money schemes. Wait…      Y’all remember a few months ago when I tried to collect manholes and get the money for recycling?   If not, go read and come back. [ link ] Welcome back…      Now that we have established that it is absolutely NOT beneath me to employ crackhead labor to save a few bucks and/or maintain my own convenience in a situation, we can talk about what I have been up to.   This all started back when my stimmy checks finally started to hit (I was late AF filing my taxes) .   Following a surprise two-week hospital stay three years ago this past Monday, I was not in physical shape to continue to maintain my own lawn.   Coinciding with the fact that my own mower had just died, i

       For all of my discussion of how much I hate talking on the phone, there still remains a precious few people who I will actually call.   Usually it is because I know that person will be in a car and a text conversation will be disjointed as fuck or take longer than the time I have to deal with whatever needs to be discussed.   Or it is more business than can be conveyed via text. Worry not, though…   I can still only be counted on to make one or two calls a week to people I know.   Otherwise, it will be a text message or one of a constant barrage of memes on Facebook between my bouts with the FB filters.      So following last week’s kidnapping fiasco , I simply sat on my couch and spun through mid-afternoon on my lunch break instead of wandering outside back into danger.   Needless to say, I found this painfully boring.   When I get bored, I will either do something incredibly creative or something INCREDIBLY stupid. I grabbed up my phone, turned the TV off and prayed the do

       I love dogs…   To be completely honest, I enjoy doggies more than I do most people.   When out and about in the world, if I encounter someone with a dog I ask the owner if I can pet it, unless of course the dog decides to get close to me and be buddies. It drives my wife nuts when I do this, but she knows I live to make new four-legged friends.   Our own dogs here at the house are spoiled rotten because of it.      This isn’t (directly) about that though. This honestly starts about six weeks ago in early April.   The guy we’ve been paying to handle our lawn has been going through some things and had not yet gotten with us to start in on the yard and was already three weeks late, in addition to not having done the winter maintenance on the yard.   Wife person looks to me and asks “you think we should get a lawn mower again?” to which I excitedly exclaimed “fuuuck yeah!” See, in 2018 I had a big little heart health scare that sat me in the hospital for a week and a half, co

       There is a special level of shenanigous dipshittery to be gleaned from a proper lack of context in an all-of-a-sudden non sequitur element that was not non sequitur until you got involved. That was big (or big-in-nature) words…   Relax, it will all come up on the final test.      So I have been working from home since March 19, 2020 and the number of miles I have put on one car and the number of wrench time I have put on the one that hasn’t moved further than three feet in seven years serves it that I don’t even WANT to go back to the office. But I am bored. Apart from spending a week at a time cooking up 1k-3k words a week to grip five people in my mania here, I find myself looking for ways to entertain myself in my daily motions, even when those “motions” don’t involve venturing further than the driveway.      Although vaccines are slowly opening outside, we’re still healthily scared of the stupidity of people because we’ve been paying attention to America since someone w

       My brain is like a training exercise in just how much infinitely useless bullshit can fit into a tiny, tiny space.   I say that to say that I know a LOT about a LOT of things that do nothing in the interest in paying my bills. [ Phlip note : Speaking of bills…   Website renewal fees are next week Wednesday.   Anyone wanna pitch in?   The best nation is donation.   Please and thank you ! ]      Anyway…   I know a lot about a lot but one thing I cannot seem to avoid is unsolicited phone calls and, not those of the “extended car warranty” sort. As ever, this week’s tale begins with a phone call.   This time it was from an international number…   This should be fun. Me: “New phone, who dis?” Caller: “Good afternoon, sir.   Long time no hear from.” Me: “D-do I know you?” Caller: “You ask this every time you speak with one of us.” Me: “’one of us’ as in who the fuck?” Caller: “Well, sir…   I am the director of the International Supervillain’s Convention, and--…” Me

       Despite the utter 2020-ness of 2020 and the prayers of people who once SWORE they were on my side, I made it out of 2020 whole. Yes, I got a 6-week furlough that wound up being VERY productive in terms of what was done around the house and pushing me back to writing.   The bigger point of the “whole” assessment there is that there were no missed mortgage or car payments, nothing was in danger of being cut off or defaulting and we got a shaggy dog while I was home. I say all that to say that if I did so well on a summer vacation from Memorial to Independence days, I am hurting for nothing in the time since.      As some of you may recall, we went to Vegas before ‘Rona decided that the world need to chill the fuck down for 14 months (and counting because some assholes have no chill).   For those of you who DON’T, here is a reminder… [ link ]      Welcome back… As Nevada and Las Vegas come back open, hotels on and off the strip have been champing at the bit trying to ge