Coffee heat rising

Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

Ohhh yeah: AGAIN!

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Cop copter buzzes the neighborhood, as we scribble. Again.

Goddammit! What a PLACE this is. Every time you turn around: cop copters, burglars, prowlers, sh!theads… Lordie, but I am tired of lovely uptown Phoenix.

Alas, though, as one of the cops remarked after the Great Home Invasion Episode, this sh!t goes on all over the county.

I’d said to him, “Maybe I should move to Scottsdale or Fountain Hills to get away from this sh!t.”

“Don’t do that!” said he. “You can’ t get away from it. We go to these things all over the Valley.”

Ugh. What a world we live in.

Even in somnolent Sun City, this kinda crap goes on all the time. My mother lived in terror out there…and not for no reason.

I need a shotgun, not a mere pistol…

Idle Essay of the Day

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Hmmm….  Apparently SCREAMING into the phone does indeed hurt a nuisance phone solicitor’s ears enough that the word spreads: don’t call THAT number. 😀  It’s almost 11:00 a.m. and I have yet to receive a pestering phone call this morning.

Well. Waitaminit: can’t guarantee that. The phone has been set to block incoming calls. So…some pests may have tried to call and not been able to get through.

This is why I argue that telephone soliciting should be illegal. You and I shouldn’t have to jam up our phones and waylay calls from our friends and business associates to stop jerks from pestering us with unwanted calls.

But…with that feature engaged, my handset says it has blocked dozens of nuisance calls. I gave up counting when the thing showed call #20.

Problem is, it also blocks calls from people I want to hear from. It apparently has blocked calls from my son, for example. And no, I can NOT figure out how to change that.

Yes, I have told folks they need to e-mail me to reach me. But…why would my son have called this number when he could’ve emailed me? That sounds…ominous.

***

Nope: He reports that there are no problems on his end. Sounds like he’s working. His employer escapes the cost of office rent by making all its staff work from home. That, IMHO, is nice enough for the workers who want to make their home double as their workplace. But…not everyone does.

One should, IMHO, have a choice in the matter.

{sigh}  I was not born to live in the 21st century!

G*d-D***ed PHONE

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Y’know, I’m just about at the point where I can imagine not having a phone at all. Not ANY phone!

These days a phone — especially a land line — is more of a nuisance than a convenience. This morning the f*kin land line jangled for the third time — BEFORE 9:00 A.M.! — with a**holes trying to hustle me. Last time, I took a DEEEEEP breath and SHRIEKED INTO THE GODDAM PHONE as loud as I could manage:

G-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-H…..

The convicts hired to hustle you over the phone are wearing headphones.

So when you SCREAM into the phone at the top of your voice, that actually hurts the bastards’ ears. And interestingly, the SHRIEK-a-thon technique has cut the number of pestering nuisance calls. Quite a lot: I’d say by about 80 percent.

Telephone soliciting should be against the law.

But that would put a dent in our “freedom of speech,” right? Free to bug you and me….

Seriously, though: if you blast each ba*tard who calls with the loudest noise you can muster, that DOES bite into the flood of phone solicitations. An air horn would do the job, if screaming is not your preference.

Many of the jerks calling you in the early hours of the day (and all the rest of the hours…) are calling from inside prisons.

Yes. Phone soliciting is a prison enterprise. Check it out: just google phone soliciting prison industry, and you learn all about a gigantic scam tailored for convicted scammers and other criminals.

Hey…you’ve got a crew of crooks. Why not put ’em to work doing what they do best?

LOL! and MORE Skeetifying!

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No kidding! WEIRD noise emanates in through the back window. WHAT THE DICKENS!??

Roll out of the sack, stagger out to the kitchen, throw open the door, listen….

Forgawdsake!

It’s the neighbor’s rooftop wind  bonnet, whirring around and around in this evening’s rather brisk breeze. Woooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Jeez. Ever think of lubricating the damn thing, folks? 😀

Welp. Next time I have a roof or AC workman over here, I’ll ask if they’ll let me send him up on top of their house to fix that thing.

Meanwhile, we have tonight….which promises to be a bit on the sleepless side.

Jobs We’re Glad We Don’t Have…

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Oh, my goodness!!!!!  How DO some folks survive?

Just visited by a lovely plumber, employed by the City of Phoenix. The guy is going around working on the water meters, which reside in holes in the ground in our front yards. As we scribble, Wunderground says it’s a chilly 85 degrees out there (and yeah: that IS chilly for this time of year…), overcast with a 32% chance of rain.

My water meter is installed underground. So the guy has gotta grunt and groan around to get at it. Then do the job. Then put the thing back together. Then get everything re-installed…underground.

Am I impressed by these guys? Lemme tellya impressed. 

He took the contraption apart. Did the work on it. Put it back together. I trotted out to tell him the terlet didn’t seem to be working right. He trudged inside the house. Tested everything. Saw to it that the system was indeed working. And…yeah: trudged back into the heat.

Man! Do I appreciate the work that guy does! Looks like the whole thing is now working perfectly.

Amazing!