Category Archives: Farce

August 24, 2020 · 23:30

An Ancient Magik

How was your Monday?

I was busier than god, deadlines for work shooting by me like a biker gang in the slow lane of the 405 Freeway, when I got up to get a soda. When I came into the kitchen…

Why is there water all over the floor? Where’s it coming from? This seems “off nominal.”

Oh, the water runs all the way down to the other end of the kitchen and under the stove. This seems “way, WAY off nominal.”

It turns out that something in the fridge, where the water feed line comes in to supply water to the ice maker and cold water dispenser, had committed suicide and was spraying water all over. Couldn’t find a shutoff, couldn’t move the fridge, but I could hear water running back there, so the short term solution was to turn off the water main to the house.

In the end it got fixed, the water’s back on – but we have no ice maker for a while.

Oh! NO!

Worry not, my friendly readers. I am a practitioner of an ancient Magik, a dark lore handed down from father to son for generation on generation.

I… (insert drum roll!) …can make ice without an ice making machine.

It’s complex, involves incantations and ancient artifacts, relics from an older, gentler age. (The Sixties – work with me here!) The ice will be in a different form than you are used to, a manifestation of my ice making abilities which will leave you in awe.

The cult’s rules forbid me from revealing all, but I can give you a glimpse into the mystic realm…

Use this ancient wisdom carefully and wisely!

(Now, wasn’t reading this drivel better than watching the RNC tonight? You’re welcome!!)

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Filed under Disasters, Farce, Photography

August 5, 2020 · 23:50

Twelve Hours

I stumbled on a large can of worms a little over twelve hours ago and have spent the day, shuffling fairly large data files into order to figure out how many worms, how big, how wiggly, and training them to tap dance.

Another hour or so to go but the clock’s ticking and I haven’t posted today, so have a picture from a couple weeks ago when I was set up to catch a comet from my front yard.

Back to the tap dancing worms! It’s so hard to get them into those teeny, tiny, little tuxedos and top hats!

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Filed under Astronomy, Farce, Photography

July 27, 2020 · 21:27

My Letter From Hogwarts

Or at least, its equivalent.

IT’S FROM KENNEDY SPACE CENTER!!! TO **ME**!!!

It MUST be the letter telling me that I’ve been picked to be an astronaut, RIGHT??!!

Or maybe they’ve heard about how I want to go to Mars and they want me to join NASA and head up that project, RIGHT??!!

It’s too thin and flat to actually be the keys to my very own space shuttle – but, hey, they probably don’t use keys, they probably use a credit card like ID thingie, and that will fit in here so that MUST be it, RIGHT??!!

Oh…

It’s those masks that I ordered from the KSC gift shop.

Oh…

Sniffle…

Deep, shuddering breath…

A single tear…

Well, they’re very nice NASA face masks. I’m sure they’re exactly like the ones the astronauts wear…

 

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Filed under Farce, Space

June 30, 2020 · 23:22

The Apple

I have a bad brain. Sometimes it just goes off on its own. Sometimes it amuses me.

Today I got a bad apple. The combination…

I bit into the apple, which seemed absolutely fine from the outside, only to find that it was mushy and brown in a spot on the inside. Since most of it seemed fine, I got a knife and figured I would just core it and slice it up, taking out the tiny bad part.

The bad part was not tiny.

A solid third of the apple wasn’t all that solid. It was very strange since there was no sign of any bruising on the outside and no sign of any little critter that might have invaded and made a home there, but there was a lot of apple bits that went into the trash.

As I was eating the parts that weren’t brown and mushy, I noticed a teensy, tiny, minuscule, almost unnoticeable, pinhead sized bit of something dark on a piece just as I was popping it into my mouth. By the time its presence had registered I had already started chewing, so instead of spitting it out I just kept chewing. (“YOLO!!”)

And my brain, my bad brain, was off to the races!

THIS was how the alien xenomorph would get inside me! I would be distracted by the big chunks of brown and mushy stuff, but the almost infinitesimally small bit was the real danger, surviving my vigorous chomping like that liquid metal shit in “Terminator 2,” recombining down inside me and starting to grow, feeding, preparing for my big chest-burster scene without even the benefit of Sigourney Weaver being there to comfort me as I bled out! I was no longer a mere apple eater, I was now a HOST!

But was I the Host-est with the most-est?

With that idiotic question surfacing in direct response to the horrific black fantasy that had erupted full blown from my bad brain in mere seconds, I was now attempting to hold in hysterical gales of laughter and choking on the apple. (Maybe the alien was really fast and ready to come out and this was part of the plot? Unlikely, a good horror story needs far more time to marinate and lurk and build tension.)

It wasn’t bad enough that I could envision such a fate from something as mundane as an apple. It was the stupid joke as a response that made it all mine.

Bad brain.

Thinking about it, at first I was tempted to write it off as too much time (103 days now?) in COVID quarantine. One trip out to the store per week, one quick trip to the hangar to pick up mail, and the odd trip through a fast food line is starting to be a bit of a drag.

Later it occurred to me that an equally good explanation was that I have a “Calvin brain,” as in the “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip. Calvin could become Spaceman Spiff in a heartbeat, or take trips to the Jurassic to get photos of dinosaurs in a get rich quick scheme. I’ve just added the snappy punchline. Which, granted, only seems to amuse ME, but you take what you can get. (Feel free to chime in if anyone has actually read this far… Extra special bonus points if you thought the punchline was funny.)

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Filed under Farce

June 5, 2020 · 17:35

A Red-Letter Day!

There won’t be photos of tonight’s pretty decent ISS pass – it’s cloudy with a 20% chance of rain out there. If you know anything about SoCal it’s that we get rain in June about once every other blue moon. Fate, man, it’s a bitch.

But it’s a red-letter day!

I needed to use shampoo on my hair this morning! Granted, not a lot given the circumstances, more like I just sort of opened the bottle and let some of the fumes waft over my scalp – but it’s a start!! And I can now use a towel to dry it again instead of using a squeegee!

Big doings here!

What are your plans for the weekend?

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Filed under Farce, Paul

May 28, 2020 · 18:00

Ridiculous – Part Deux

Yesterday I wrote about an unexpected side effect of shaving my head. This morning, thirty-six hours after the initial event, it caught me off guard again, but this time I realized what it reminded me of:

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I also realized what the proper tool is now for “drying my hair”:

12 in. Window Squeegee without Handle

Thank you! I’ll be here all week! Tip your waitress!

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Filed under Farce, Paul

March 24, 2020 · 23:37

Planning Ahead

Given ALL that’s going on right now, you know, that whole “worst case it’s the end of the world” sort of thing, it’s often a serious roller coaster of emotions. It’s also tough to tell when you’ve come up with a truly funny idea or if you’re just borderline hysterical. (And about to slip over the border.)

Tonight, talking to a dear friend (as opposed to a “deaf rriend”) on social media I mentioned the new NEJM ethical guidelines that came out today. In short, when this COVID shit hits the proverbial health care fan in a few days (see Italy and Spain for example) there are going to be X number of ICU beds and respirators and X*Y dying patients, where Y could be a very, very large number.

It’s called “triage” and it means that the doctors and nurses will literally have to decide on the spot who lives and who dies. You. Can’t. Save. Everyone. So you have to figure out how to best utilize your available resources (time, ICU beds, respirators, drugs, medications) to save as many as possible as efficiently as possible.

It’s horrible. It’s not fair. It’s obscene. And it’s coming soon to an emergency room near you.

Having reached a certain middle age, I’m in a gray area at best when those decisions get made. To be blunt, if I’m a 64 year old with grown kids and I’m in a bed next to an otherwise healthy 24 year old who has young kids, the 24 year old is going to get a respirator and I’m going to get morphine to make me feel better, or not care.

(Time to really hop on that old hand washing routine with some enthusiasm, eh?!)

These thoughts and discussions in turn lead to filling out advance directives “just in case.”

So my thought was, “Where’s the box that says ‘either give me a fucking respirator and drugs or aerosolize me and spritz me into the HVAC system at the White House’?”

Maybe it’s the word “spritz.” Maybe it’s just been a really long couple of days. But that line is hilarious!

I’m not planning on going anywhere. But if I get dragged off by fate, I’m going to go kicking, screaming, and (hopefully) laughing. And wishing I could take a few of those evil GOP MFers with me.

No more fucks to give.

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Filed under CoronaVirus, Farce, Health, Politics

March 5, 2020 · 23:24

A Symptom

There is much that ails us as a society. There are many diseases, both literal and figurative, that rot us from the core.

I ran across something that I see not as one of those diseases, but merely a symptom. I don’t know how to solve it.

Charity auction, among the items are concert tickets with meet & greets with the artists.

When the winning bid on the Jonas Brothers concert is almost ten times the winning bid on the Incubus concert, we might not deserve to survive.

Just sayin’.

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Filed under Farce, Music

January 9, 2020 · 22:54

Penalty Flag

I found this on the floor behind the desk in my office this morning.

A dropped cleaning rag from the night crew? NAH! It’s yellow, that’s a penalty flag!

But what did I do?

Illegal motion? The only motion I wanted last night was to go home, and there’s nothing illegal about that!

Illegal procedure? I’ll have you know that my accounting records are 100%, strictly above board!

Holding? Um, not in the office, thanks. Nothing good can come of that in the long run.

Illegal touching? My favorite penalty – but see “Holding,” above. Besides, the best touching is always consensual, not illegal. (Remember kids, don’t settle for consent – hold out for enthusiasm!)

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Filed under Farce, Photography

October 9, 2019 · 23:36

I, For One, Welcome Our AI Overlords…

Some time late last week, while sitting on my ass and perusing the internet as is my wont when I’m trying to unwind a bit, I had a question enter my mind about the weather for Saturday when I would be out at the CAF hangar in Camarillo.

Being a savvy, hip, handsome, intelligent, completely not full of shit, modern sort of guy, I said, “Siri, what’s the forecast for tomorrow’s weather in Camarillo, California?”

Simple, eh?

Until my phone, my iPad, and my watch ALL ANSWERED AT THE SAME TIME.

And all had slightly different answers.

I’m really, really looking forward to when they start arguing among themselves about those different answers.

When it gets to physical violence, or trying to infect each other with computer viruses in retaliation, then I’m turning them all off and moving to a cave in Alberta that’s 100 miles from the nearest cell phone tower.

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Filed under Computers, Farce