Coffee heat rising

Scams & crooks

UN-Be-LIEV-able!

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Literally unbelievable, as it happens today.

This afternoon, in came a hustling piece of snail-mail, trying to get me to Send Money Now and HURRY to sign up for that wondrous product. It looked like BS to me…sort of. But..but…sort of NOT.

Actually, it seemed to be trying to say my homeowner’s insurance is expiring and I need to renew a policy…right now!

Fortunately, the WonderAccountants were home. They live right across the street.

So I took the wad of paper over there. They looked at it and shortly decided it was a scam. Out with it!

Actually, it took them a few minutes of studying the thing to come to that conclusion. You can be sure that if they were given pause, I would never have been able to figure out that it was a scam.

Lordie! This stuff just comes avalanching in on us! When you need a professional to assess the validity of a piece of junk mail…ohhhh gawd! What kind of world DO we live in???

What incredible luck that those two wonderful folks moved into the house across the road! They’ve saved my tail feathers more than once!

Morning Has Broken…

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Like the first day…
Blackbird has spoken,
Like the first bird…

Actually, we don’t have blackbirds here in the lovely Sonoran desert. We have telephone solicitors.

The ba*tards start calling you as dawn cracks. Ringy-dingy-dingy Ringy dingy dingy ringy…. If you have any fantasy about sleeping in, fuhgeddaboudit!

We’re told phone soliciting is a prison industry. Apparently, a large portion of these nuisance phone calls are coming from convicts, placed from inside local and regional prisons. Makes you wanna just hurry right out and buy whatever they’re peddling, right?

I used to blast a horn into the phone whenever the ba*tards would jangle me up. Now…well..that seems like more trouble than it’s worth. And really: if the job is being done by people who are forced to it by their prison guards, I suppose it’s not every nice to try to blow out their eardrums.

I suppose.

On the other hand, it’s not very nice to jangle me out of bed by dawn’s early light, either.

I’d disconnect the phone at night, if I felt safe doing so. But…I don’t. I’m here by myself, and if anything happens that I need to call 911, then…yeah: I’ll NEED to call 911. Now, not after fiddling indefinitely with the damn phone.

What a gorgeous morning!! 

Guess Ruby and I had better head out on our morning walk, before the day heats up. And so…

A-WAAAAYYY

Nothin’ Better to Do….

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Jeez. Can you imagine? The locals have got nothin’ better to do than to sneak onto my front porch and steal my bird feeders!  They did it again this afternoon.

What bastards!

Welp: after this, the birds will have to repair to the back yard — behind locked, six-foot-high gates — to snack on their birdseed and their hummingbird juice.  Guess I could booby-trap the front patio with cameras…but really…. That does seem like it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Literally: even if I catch them in the act, the cops aren’t likely to do much (or anything) about it. Like there weren’t better things to fill a police officer’s time?

It’s stupid and it’s petty. But it sure pisses me off!

Never a Dull Moment

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Every time you turn around, here’s some new shenanigan or headache to contend with. It’s getting old…very old…

This morning, in comes an email from a co-religionist down at the church. She and I used to work the front desk in the office, among other things. Soo…I go to answer this message and find it’s FAKE. It’s a spamming, scamming message sent under her name and email address.

Jeez. Don’t you know the mere act of opening that message has now invited that scammer to exploit and hassle me.

Goodie! I can hardly wait.

Just one more thing to pile atop the Handcart to Hell. 

  • My son is ill and pretty much on the outs.
  • I ain’t what you’d call “well,” either.
  • The pool appears to need some (expensive!) work
  • The park is infested with coyotes, so I can’t take Ruby the Corgi over there safely. That park is her favorite doggy-walk venue.
  • The peripheral neuropathy I’ve been enjoying, as it develops, can be a sign of a very serious ailment.
  • And on…and on…and on…

Part of the trouble here is that I’m now sick enough myself that I can’t handle all the stupid little ditz of daily life. And as you my recognize, most of this stuff is the ditz of daily life. One fukkin’ thing after another!

Garbage of that ilk, of course, flows in a steady stream. There’s never any end to it.

But gosh! I’m tired of it!!

Ruminations on Ruination

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Egad! Get up and close that damn back door…NOW!

Seriously: the Dawg and the Human just sat down to take in the morning slack — coffee mug in hand, computer atop lap — and it dawns on the Human: Do not sit there with the back door hanging open, dammit!!!  Nay verily, not even if the screen door is closed and locked.

‘Cause, as we know, any clown and his/her little brother can kick or yank that screen open.

Sounds paranoid, eh? But I do hafta say: it feels more and more unsafe to me, living here in lovely Arizona. Especially in its (un)lovely cities.

Day or two ago, a Tucson woman was murdered at her home, apparently by a nut case. So…sitting around your house or patio taking in the morning air is decidedly NOT advised. Surely not around here.

So many of our fellow citizens are off the rails here in this crazy-making 21st Century — and it’s so easy for them (and us) to stock up on firearms — that really: You’d be nuts to loaf in your family room with the back door hanging open.

I never used to feel especially unsafe in my home, certainly not in the daylight hours. But lately that has changed…and I don’t think the change is a function of age.

No. It’s a function of the steadily growing insanity and violence around us. Not that humans haven’t always been crazy…but really, it does seem a lot more pronounced than it was, say, 20 or 30 years ago.

Sometimes I think I should move out of uptown Phoenix — surely the suburbs would be safer. When I mentioned that to a cop during the great home invasion adventure, he remarked that there aren’t any places in the Phoenix metropolitan area that can be regarded as safe.

Really…when you re-read the post I put up at Funny after that little adventure, you hafta ask yourself: Why am I still living here???

What the HELL is the matter with me that I haven’t moved somewhere else? Somewhere far, far from here! Really: this house should have been on the market the next day after that episode…

But…but…WHERE would I go that’s any better?

Sun City, that fine mausoleum on the west side? 

Well, no: this kind of stuff happens out there. My mother lived in white-lipped terror all the time she and my father owned their Sun City manse. And I’m not interested in living in a ghetto for the aged and the cranky. No, thanks.

A box in the sky? One of the high-rise apartments along Central Avenue or in Scottsdale?

Well…I’ve lived in such a place. And…no thanks. Don’t wanna do that again. I’m just not in to communal living.

No communal living, eh? Well, then: how about back out to the ranch, just outside the wide spot in the road called Yarnell? Right up on the Rim…cool weather, lots of cows and sheep, plenty of room for the burglars to spread out comfortably?

Hm. Yeah, I did love the ranch. BUT: we didn’t live there 24/7. It was more of a weekend retreat for us. And y’know: I don’t think I would want to live out in the middle of nowhere 24/7. Besides, if a burglar/rapist/murderer can visit you in your city subdivision, what’s to keep him from visiting you on your remote ranch?

Basically…where there be humans, you be not safe.

Yeah: I’m afraid that’s a fact.

Or, alternatively:  I’m afraid. That’s a fact.

😀

 

 

Egad! Who’d’ve Thunk it?

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Woo HOOO!  I’m IN!!

Yeah: Seriously, I thought there was NO WAY I could get back into Funny about Money, not without hauling the laptop over to the computer guys and begging them to fix it.

But mysteriously: here we are! 

At least I think so… We’ll find out when we try t…JANGLE JANGLE JANGLE!!!!!

Another goddamn nuisance phone call! From area code 160

Where the Hell is 160???

WTF: INDIA?

DAMN these pests.

Honest to Gawd! Sometimes (more and more oftentimes…) I think it’s not worth it to have a phone. Certainly not a land line.

Y’know, a cell phone that you can leave in your car so you don’t hear it when every moron and scam artist on the planet jangles you up?  Ohh-kayyyy…. But these days, a land line is just too much of a hub of scams to make it worth paying for the thing.

Especially when you’re ailing. Like now. It’s…

HURT HURT HURT HURT HURT HURT HURT….

Ohhh gawd,, do I hurt! 

My right hip is mightily spavined, And it’s not getting better. Every day is the same as the last: nonstop hurting. Can barely dodder around the house.

So…dammit! If it doesn’t get better within the next week, it’s BACK out to the accursed Mayo Clinic: there, presumably to sign up for surgery on the damn thing. Just what I need to make life perfect!

Huh! India: area code 160. 😀  By now, wouldn’tcha think I’d have enough sense not to pick up the phone for a caller whose number I don’t recognize?

Just too much a creature of the 1950s, I guess.

Really, I do need to come into the 21st Century!  I haven’t…because I haven’t wanted to. Too much hassle, too many headaches, too little return on investment in hassle. But…pretty soon I’m gonna hafta.

Dammit.