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Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

Annals of the Floored and Flabbergasted: Gun owners should have to pass an IQ test…

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Winchester_1897Long-time readers here know that Funny is a left-wing crazy who happens to stand up for the Second Amendment and is prepared to defend herself inside her own shack. Uhm. Castle. While I do think that certifiably sane, nonfelonious American citizens have a right to own a gun, the fact is that gun ownership bears with it the same burden as car ownership. A certain degree of responsibility is required. And as we know every time we have to share the streets with our fellow homicidal drivers, whether your weapon weighs 12 ounces or two tons, a healthy number of IQ points should be required of operators.

Did you read the story from Montana about the moron homeowner who shot the moron kid for poking around in an open garage? Here is a case in point — no, make that “in spades!” — about the IQ points. One early report said the homeowners left their garage door open because they wanted to be able to pop out for a smoke. Right there, we have an IQ issue: it being well-nigh impossible to dwell in ignorance of what tobacco does to your body, you’d have to be a mite on the stupid side to be smoking at all. Then we were told they had a baby-room video monitor set up in the garage, because there had been a few burglaries in the neighborhood. Knock off a few more IQ points…you leave your garage door hanging open when you know prowlers are roaming the ’hood stealing stuff? Right. Then — oh, yes, it gets better! — the chucklehead blasts the kid not once, not twice, not three times, but four times with a shotgun.

Stupidity on that order should be a capital offense. You shouldn’t even have to kill someone to be convicted of capital stupidity.

More recent reports say the door was hanging open because the chucklehead and his airhead wife had deliberately set a trap for the supposed perps. One wonders exactly what they were smoking.

But let’s be fair and share the stupidity points.

We have the kid. What is he doing? Sneaking into an open garage, after dark, using his cell phone as a flashlight. At least you can’t shoot someone with a cell. Good thing the Germans are into disarmament; otherwise we would have had two fools dead on the concrete floor. And we are told, ostensibly by his pal, an Ecuadorian exchange student who has fled back home, that the young men were “garage-hopping” at the time they got themselves into this mess.

“Garage-hopping”? Would that be a euphemism for “burgling”?

Stupid layered atop stupid.

Welp, I have this to say about that:

The guy who owned the gun is the guy who should have been tested for IQ points. He was the adult, and he was the fellow with the deadly weapon. Given the idiocy of the circumstances and the fact that the kid did not represent a serious threat to life or limb, the gun owner bears the greater responsibility for the outcome.

One question for the gun owner’s IQ test:

What is the most effective way to deter burglars?

a. Shoot them on sight.
b. Engage them in friendly conversation and offer them oatmeal cookies.
c. Bribe them to move on to the neighbor’s house.
d. Close and lock the door.

Image: Winchester Model 1897 Pump-Action Shotgun. Asams10 at en.wikipedia. Released into the public domain (by the author).

The Gruesome Execution Jive: Am I altogether too savage?

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Is it just me? Or are you, too, getting tired of listening to the moaning, groaning, wailing, and gnashing of teeth over the grimly botched execution of an animal named Clayton Lockwood, down in Oklahoma? It’s all over the front page again, with a jump to a page  filled with sidebars on the subject.

How rarely in all this tearing of hair and rending of clothes do we hear any empathy for the young woman this creep raped and murdered, in front of a man, a nine-month-old infant, and another woman (whom he also raped), by filling her with shotgun pellets and burying her alive?

Nor do we seem to be hearing much about his colleague, one Charles Warner. That would be the guy who raped an 11-month-old infant and then beat the child to death.

Maybe I’m not a nice lady, but this strikes me as a kind of karma: what goes around comes around.

No. I don’t think craven murderers should be tortured to death. But — here’s the personal finance angle, at last — neither do I care, as a taxpayer, to support monsters like these two in prison for the rest of their natural lives.

These are men who should be removed from this world. Now, not later.

If we want to remove them quickly and with relatively little suffering, we should quit messing around with pharmaceuticals and do what the Chinese do: take the creep out and apply the business end of a pistol to the side of his head.

 

McCutcheon: Funny Takes Out a Loan

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The Supreme Court’s ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission has engendered another of Funny’s inspired entrepreneurial schemes. By golly, this may be my best idea yet! But first I’ll need a little seed money. Hence, it was off to the credit union for a loan.

FUNNY: I’d like to borrow ten million dollars, please, to support my new business enterprise. Here’s the business plan. [FUNNY hands a sheaf of paper to LOAN OFFICER.] You’ll see the profit this will turn within the next four years.

LOAN OFFICER: Ten million? That’s quite a lot for a start-up. Would you mind summarizing this 150-page document and telling me exactly what the ten mill will be used for?

FUNNY: I wish to purchase a United States senator.

L.O.: Ah! Well, that’s a very fine idea. But you’re not the first to apply for a loan for this purpose. Which of our Congressional delegation do you propose to buy?

FUNNY: Actually, none of them. I wouldn’t have any of those dunderheads. My plan is to run a candidate that has a brain.

L.O.: Now there’s a unique idea.

FUNNY: Yes. I thought so, too.

L.O.: What do you propose to put up for collateral?

FUNNY: The proceeds from five defense contracts should cover it, wouldn’t you think?

L.O.: Oh, I should say so. Do you suppose you could throw in a little easing of the new mortgage regulations?

FUNNY: We’ll definitely look into that.

L.O.: [Studies gigantic sheaf of paper presented by FUNNY] Hm. This is very interesting. But…

FUNNY: “But…”???

L.O.: Well, I wonder if maybe you’re not thinking big enough.

FUNNY: How much bigger can you think? We’re talking about a Senator of the United States of America, the vastest hegemony in the history of the entire human race!

L.O.: What if you were to purchase a United States President? We would consider fronting you about 8 billion dollars for that purpose.

FUNNY: My goodness. I’m not sure I could afford a loan of that size. What would the interest be?

L.O.: 4.325 percent.

FUNNY: Four percent on 8 billion dollars? The credit union will be rolling in ill-gotten gains. How about 3 percent?

L.O.: Okay, okay: 3.586 percent. That’s our best offer.

FUNNY: What kind of collateral can we come up with for an 8 billion-dollar loan?

L.O.: Fifteen defense contracts, the new president’s first-born son, and your eternal soul.

FUNNY: Excellent! Done! We’re in business.

L.O.: Sign here, please.

 

Huge Rip-off Narrowly Averted

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Review freshly posted, by me, of Leslie’s Swimming Pool Service, on Angie’s List:

My pool pump stopped working about a week ago. It’s one of the old single-cycle pumps, and I’ve expected it to go out  sooner or later, but this could NOT have happened at a worse time: one  unexpected expense after another, starting in early January, has drained my emergency savings and then some.

I tried to reach my go-to service, Swimming Pool Service and Repair, but when I called the number I have — and that’s still posted on the Web — I got a “no longer in service” message. So fell back on Leslie’s.

On Saturday they sent a guy over. He took one look at the thing, listened to the “hummmmm” it made when power was turned on, and announced I needed to buy a new pump…to the tune of $1500!!!!!

This is $1500 I don’t happen to have. I explained that I’m trying to live on Social Security and that I’ve had a series of burdensome unexpected expenses. I asked if he was sure  he couldn’t fix it. He said no, it couldn’t be fixed. I said I’d seen a pump like it at Leslie’s website for $625, so why can’t I have that? He said our lovely legislators had passed a law stating that only the new power-saving multicycle pumps can be installed. That sounded a little fishy — you can say many things about Arizona’s elected representatives, but “environmentally sensitive” is not one of them.

As it developed, the soonest the new pump would be in was today, Tuesday, but this particular service dude was going to be off work today. So, he said, they’d send another guy.

Thank heaven for small favors!

This morning, a young man named Chris shows up.

In the course of conversation, I happen to mention that $1500 is a hit I can’t afford. He says, “Well, do you mean you don’t want the pump?” I say, “Well, I’ve gotta keep the pool running — it would cost more than fifteen hundred bucks to fill it in.” He says, “I think all it needs is a capacitor.”

Say what?

I say, the guy who was here last week said it couldn’t be fixed. He says, I’m sure I can fix it. I say, will you get in trouble? He says his boss will be mad. I say, I don’t want you to get canned. He says, no problem. He goes off to acquire the part.

Not counting the junket to get the part, it took Chris all of about 10 minutes to replace the thing and get the pump running happily. Total cost: $141.97.

The part itself cost $32.29. Leslie’s gouged me $85 for the “service call” (what d’you bet Chris never sees much of that?) and $22 for the “trip charge”: that would be $107 just to drive over to my house.

Chris obviously is worth a great deal more than that, since an honest man seems to be hard to come by these days.

I’m hugely relieved to save $1400 that was needed to cover food bills. But on the other hand, I’m not pleased that at the outset Leslie’s sent a guy who obviously tried to cheat me. I don’t think I would do business with Leslie’s again: evidently their business model is such that their workers are treated in a way that tempts them to rip off customers. Next time I’ll come back to Angie’s List and look for some other provider.

Does that take the cake, or does that take the cake?

Tales from the Crypt…uhm…the ’Hood

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Now that was an entertaining dog walk!

Last night along about sunset, Cassie and I were headed homeward through the more upscale neighborhood to the west of us. It’s an area of old 1950s ranch houses, some of them very large, on large, irrigated lots: classic North Central. And as neighborhoods go, it’s seen better days.

The properties are tired, and a few need major, major fix-up. Some in fact have been purchased by affluent folks who want to live in a central location and who like large, grassy, shady lots in the center of the city. The houses lend themselves to upgrading, and because of their size and location, once a place has been spiffed up, it can be worth a lot. Values in the area hover in the $500,000 range.  Within steps, right around the corner are houses on the market for over a million dollars.

But. It’s mixed: some owners have been there for decades, and so a few places are a shade on the decrepit side.

In the middle of this small part of the ’hood is an old abandoned house, a place that must once have been a very nice property, indeed. It’s on a pie-shaped lot with a huge front yard, shaded by vast, once spectacular orchid trees. It’s been running down for years; of late it has been abandoned. The old guy who lived there alone disappeared — I assumed he’d been shipped off to the nursing home. The house is a real wreck.

So the hound and I are strolling past this pile when we come across a couple of the neighbors. I notice someone has hacked limbs off the overgrown trees and shrubbery in front and left the debris laying there, so I ask, while chatting, what’s the deal.

And from this chatty, chatty woman comes a story:

The house  is foreclosed, and it’s taken years to get that way.

The old guy was not the owner. He was living there rent-free and had been, for years. One day he just up and disappeared.

The owner himself was a tax protester, of the BAT-SH!T CRAZY variety. This guy carried one of those “sovereign citizen” cards around and proclaimed that the US gummint had no authority over him and therefore he did not owe it (that would be “us”) any taxes. He had his own bank in a DYI basement under the structure, where he would hide money. He gave out fake addresses — including a fake address for the house — so when revenooers and other creditors would come around looking for him, they couldn’t find the place. When last heard from, he hadn’t paid taxes — or lived in the house — in over 10 years.

In the attic, which you access by a trap door over the carport (rather common in these parts), there is a hidden closet. God only knows what’s in there. From that closet, you can access the interior of the house through another, hidden trap door.

Somebody recently bought the house out of bankruptcy, but they are apparently raving idiots. They hacked back the plants but have done nothing more, except they tried to get into the house through the attic. They failed to find the closet and so did not find the door into the house from the attic. So they took an ax and chopped their way through the ceiling.

The chatty lady with whom I was speaking, it develops, is a cat lady. She has eight cats that she allows to roam around the neighborhood, stinking up people’s yards and killing the wildlife. When it was observed that cats are very destructive and make a mess in the neighbors’ yards (yes…I did actually say that), she said oh, no, her kitties are good. Then she remarked that one had just killed a hummingbird. They also have several dogs, rabbits, chickens and the like. Her husband said they have 18 animals. Godlmighty.

She is enraged at one of the neighbors, who called an exterminator to remove a hive of Africanized bees that had taken up residence in the haunted house’s front yard. Just because they were swarming her koi pond, Chatty Lady thinks, was no excuse to murder all the little thangs.

He’s a retired lawyer. They’re graduates of Pomona and Claremont.

Heee! Money doesn’t buy good sense, eh?

Several of the places on the street where the haunted house stands have been fixed up handsomely. One of them was recently purchased by a young family with a cute young boy, who was playing outside when the dog and I strolled past. This is always good: more young families are moving in, and they’re exactly what an older neighborhood like this needs. The parents settle in and fix up the houses, and the young adults and their children are just grand to have around.

Heh. Betcha they don’t know they moved in next door to a level 2 sex offender.

That guy lives in another run-down house, right next door to the haunted manse. He appears to be living with his mother.

Across the street from him is yet another run-down house occupied by two young men and another elderly woman, presumably their mother. The gents have converted the carport into an automotive shop, and a fine mess that is, indeed! When you walk by at night, you can see into the front room and see that the interior of the house seems tidy and rather nice. But that garage! Lordie!!

Chatty Lady said one of the guys who lives there likes to work outside at two in the morning.

That’s good, I suppose. Keeps an eye on the sex offender, and also on the various wandering burglars who come through after dark.

The High Cost of Changing Your Life

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Okay, so now that I’ve succeeded in losing 30 pounds, thereby dropping the blood pressure back into the more or less “normal” range, the celebrating is done and reality sets in.

This weight-loss glorioski is costing a lot of money. Videlicet: none of  my clothes fit anymore. And I mean none of them. Underwear included.

Costco sells chintzy little made-in-Asia women’s underpants cheaply enough. But their excuse for a bra? Definitely not worth the (low) price. And, I’d come to realize, now that I was skinny I didn’t even know what size I am now!

If I knew the size, I could order my favorite brand online. But I had no clue.

This meant…oh yes!

The sheer unadulterated horror of a shopping trip for bras!

The male contingent may not be aware of this, but the way most women figure out what size fits, in brassieres, is to go to a fairly upscale store that has a decent lingerie department and have a trained saleslady measure the bod’ and then to try on, with her supervision, a whole bunch of bras in different sizes. It is a “trying” experience in more ways than one. I hate it.

So, it was off to Saks, which carries the preferred brand and often puts it on sale.

Or so it once did. No more!

Saks has gutted its lingerie department. Not only do they no longer carry the pricey brand that is the only brand known to fit me, they no longer carry much of anything. They didn’t have the store’s only two, count’em TWO wire-free bras in the size the saleslady and I figured I would probably fit into.

Wire-free bras are now apparently pretty much a thing of the past.

I hate underwires even more than I hate shopping for bras. They are SO. Fucking. Uncomfortable!!!!!

Those things with the plastic Dixie-cup arrangements are now more ubiquitous than underwires. Hideous AND sofuckinguncomfortable!

HOW do women get bamboozled into wearing this stuff? Why??? What sadist in New York gets away with designing miserable crap like this? Nay, gets PAID to design it?

You should’ve seen the gawdawful high heels I saw on an expensive-looking woman in church this weekend, as long as we’re on the subject of sadistic design. One false step, and she’d break her ankle. And a false step was highly likely, since the poor creature could barely hobble around in the damn things.

Back on topic: The only other store in Biltmore Fashion Square – i.e., the only other upscale department store this side of Scottsdale – that carries the desired brand is Macy’s.

I hate shopping at Macy’s. And of all the departments I hate shopping in at Macy’s, I hate their lingerie department most.

Yes. They did have the coveted brand. After searching high and low, I could not find one single wireless bra in that brand. Or in any other brand. The saleslady was too busy yakking away with her friends about personal matters to be bothered to sell anything – she didn’t even notice a customer was there. Pretty typical Macy’s customer disservice, in my experience.

Biltmore Fashion Square hosts a bra shop. The last time I went there, the stupid saleswoman informed me that brassieres are supposed to be uncomfortable.

No joke. It really happened.

Well, I figured I could at least get measured, though I wasn’t planning to buy anything.

There I found a competent brassiere saleslady – she actually seemed to know what she was doing. This poor soul, about my age, was laid off her administrative job at a nonprofit and thrown out on the street to spend the rest of her life selling underwear (probably at minimum wage) to unhappy women forced to shop for bras. Lucky her.

Ah well. Gives the shopper some perspective: when the landscape starts to look like you’re arriving in Hell, there’s always someone else who’s deeper in Hell than you are.

This store, called Soma, is associated with Chico’s. True to Chico’s form, the saleslady immediately started asking a lot of nosy questions, demanding my name, address, phone number, date of birth(!), and e-mail address and promising a few pennies back on the sale if I would just reveal all my personal information. She was not pleased when I informed her that a) I do not give out my phone number or e-mail address to retailers and b) I do not shop at Chico’s because I don’t like being high-pressured by their aggressive sales staff. I’m sure she’d be even less pleased if she knew the address they had in their system was fake.

At any rate, she toned down the sales pitch a bit when she heard the business about how much I dislike being strong-armed at Chico’s and how much I hate their mirrors that distort your image to persuade you that you look better in their bizarrely sized rags than you really do.

Hilariously, she knew about the mirrors.

Moving on, she also finds all of two underwire-free bras in the entire store. And since of course all their stock comes from the same place Chico’s gets its stuff – points far east – no two models in the same size fit the same way. She ends up getting me into a 32A in one model and a 34C in another.

At the risk of repeating myself: No joke. It really happened.

Oh well. We did arrive at a reasonable consensus on the actual size, meaning that the next time I have some money (which at this rate will not be in our lifetime), I can order a Wacoal from Amazon.

Meanwhile, I bought the 32A and the 34C because they were less uncomfortable than most and because they both created the illusion that my boobs do not reside around my waistline. Good enough for government work. I suppose. One was reasonably priced; the other cost as much as a Wacoal, a bra whose manufacturers expect you to ransom your first-born to scare up the purchase price.

Eighty-five bucks plus damn near 10% tax for two bras, neither one of which is in the theoretical size.

More annoying than life, isn’t it?

This lifestyle change that’s supposed to be so good for me is shaping up to cost me a lot of money…

Image: Soutien des seine par une brassiere. 1900. Public domain.