Okay, this may sound strange, but bear with me.  You should keep a can of Sardines in your car/messenger bag/Gucci hand-bag.  First, they are very good for you, with lots of stuff that people who care about food are saying is just plain good for you.  Also, this is a good fish to buy, as it is small and breeds a lot.  This seems to be important.

The best thing about a can of Sardines, is how you can apply it.

A)  Great for attracting stray or roaming animals.

B)  Great for a Power Snack.

C)  Great for slicing into bits, to place behind the hub-caps of the bastard in your life.

D)  Great bastard repellent.  Eat one fish and that SOB will back off like you are on fire.

The main problem with Sardines, is we have yet to figure out how to send them over the phone-lines to telemarketers.  Ideas, anyone?

I know, I've been a bit behind in my new series of helpful hints and solutions.  So I just wanted to give you a lovely idea that helped me handle those pesky telemarketers.  I don't have any trouble with them, as I have no "real life".  However, my best friend Cricket is inundated with 'em.

Now, I know that there are "Do not call" numbers that you can ring to fight these tedious folk, but that is not so much fun.  For example, I picked up Cricket's phone at the shore, to the lovely call from a stranger wanting to sell.  Now, I hate to leave a good opportunity to lie.  So I did.

I explained that I wasn't the home owner, didn't know them and in fact, I'd just broken in to this empty house.  I waited, but none of the local police force came.  Shame.  I love a man in a uniform.

Next unsolicited call you get, look at it as a chance to let your imagination free.  These people need to know that their calls are valued, for the great improv ground that they supply.  Let me know how it goes.

Hello Jack,

Look at me using fancy fonts and colours!  Nothing like blogging to make you learn useless stuff on the fly.

Wow, sounds like you are up to your knees in it.  So sorry.  I have a couple of ideas to throw your way, for what they are worth.

I am working on a big ole house up the street.  The kid (19) helped Doug Pxxxxx out quite a bit.  Doug has been using him where possible, also thinking to send him over to Steve at Kitchen Sink.  Anyway, he's a warm body at $10 an hour.  He's also a HS dropout with teenager issues.  You would probably like him.  But I digress.

Ya, we really haven't talked in a bit.  Warn your clients that one of your previous employees has papers and has just been released from the State Mental Hospital.  That she is grateful that you stood by her in her time of need, unlike her parents.  That she is unpredictable when upset and seems disturbed that you aren't getting paid.  Feel free to use my name and number.  Hell, I'd give you my green card number too, but it is still being replaced....eleven months after I filed.
 
I knew not of the duplex, but am happy to hear about it.  I guess you'll rent out the house until you find a better market?  As to your impoverished tenants, there are a couple of options.  In Philly we have something called Tenant/Landlord Action Bureau.  I suspect that you have something similar in Media.  Call them to chat.

Also, we have a friend Terry, who lost her job at one point.  Having left her slob of a husband and with two kids to support, she sprang into action.  She worked THREE jobs, all of them shitty.  Like WaWa, but with cooties.  I think it is admirable that you care for your tenants, but they need to return the favour.

They need to start paying some form of "good faith" rent to you, say half of the rent.  You'd need to draw up papers for this with your TLAB for everyone's protection.  I'd chat with the TLAB first, to see what they think, then approach your tenants.  I believe eviction takes at least two months, so you should move on this to avoid further potential losses.

Also, can they trade work on the duplex for rent?  Do they have family that your lunatic ex-employee could start harassing with a disposable phone?  Have you considered calling in the Evil One?  Margaret could have them signing away their first decade's bonus sign-on checks in under an hour.

This shit is serious.  The Big M may be your best option.  But don't take my word for it.  My father may be a banker, but I have yet to balance a check book.  Go get yourself one of those Magic 8 Balls, if yours has broken or been nicked.  It's going to tell you what you need to hear, scientifically.

Also, this is an unfailing way to know where your true heart and mind is.  First, get yourself a coin.  Second, flip it to make decisions about any of the above.  If you chose to make it Best Out Of Three, when it was only Heads Or Tails, you'll know where your gut tells you to go.

As to me, thanks to Cricket signing a loan, I am going to become a dog-trainer.  Hopefully in a year from now, the only painting I'll be doing will be in our house.  I have a show coming up on the first Friday of Feb, and I'll send you the info.  I did learn a couple of things last year:

How to retrieve a broken blade from a jig-saw.

How to drive stick-shift.

How to hack HTML.

How to change from a litter mate to a pack leader.

How to find the prison pod that I was holding an AA meeting in.

I did also make my bank crap available on-line, but still haven't figured out what I'm s'posed to type in as my ID.  So this year, starting this week, I am trying to keep track of my money.  You know, like every day and that.  Cocoa Puffs, right?

I think also I should revamp my American Sign Language and start seriously learning Spanish.  If I do end up working with service dogs, these will be useful.

Anyway, do give me a jingle.  I'll pick up for you, unless I'm driving, up a ladder, or socializing.  Hey, if you guys are super bored, Cricket and I were going to this School of Rock show on Saturday.  It's an awful program in that they encourage tone deaf kids to sing, but the music is good.  My friend Natalie's daughter, a Gory elfin, plays base.  She's in the first few sets, which means an early exit for once!  Cricket is coming because they are playing punk.  She has no idea.  One of the sick songs little Lydia is playing is by the Misfits.  They'll make Sid proud, that no-talent wonder!

I'll shut up now.  My number is 215-555-5555

Be sure and tell Michael about all this.  It'll drive him crazy that I didn't talk to him.

But only if you want to.  You can always flip the coin.

May your days be a paradise of love, light, butterflies and kisses and your nights filled with stars, passion, beauty and garden slugs.

Love, D

Always carry tweezers with you.  The light of day will illuminate a chin hair that grew an inch overnight.  Best seen when you are checking out yourself in your car's handy rear view mirror.

Be sure to pluck when you are not actually driving.

Okay, even the burning Bush administration has acknowledged that the Greenhouse Effect is maybe, even possibly a real, um, thing like, sorta, well, thingy.  Which doesn't mean that all those folks at Greenpeace are being crossed off the list of people to wire-tap.  But hey, it's time to shop, so who gives a flying endangered species!  Or endangered planets!  We've got a real problem.  Chaney is looking for a job.  Like the rest of us.  Anyway, I have a couple of nifty ideas that should solve the whole Greenhouse Effect.  Bear with me, because this is real Science.

Okay, so the the first idea has to do with the laws of Thermodynamics, which many of us may not recall from our education.  I offer you a quick cheat sheet, which isn't hard, because there are basically two laws of Thermodynamics.  In a nutshell:

1)  The first law of Thermodynamics:  Heat is work and work is heat.

2)  The second law of Thermodynamics:  You can't pass heat from the cooler to the hotter.

Failing that, I have second idea.   A concept which may at first seem a tad on the radical side,  even slightly maverick?  But please bear with me.  Walking on the moon was radical, putting rovers on Mars was radical, finding the Titanic was radical, even Google is bloody radical.  Are you with me so far?  Alright, here are some facts, first:


In 1815 the Indonesian volcano Tambora errupted, with ash spewing out of the thirteen-thousand-foot peak, plunging the area into utter darkness for days.  Around thirty-six cubic miles of ejecta spewed forth.


In 1816, the "year without summer" occurred.  In June, snow fell in the northeast of the US, sometimes as much as twenty inches, with flakes as large as two inches across.  Ruined crops resulted, thanks to blizzards and frost that were in effect for five days.  Although the farmers replanted, the freaky, frozen weather returned in July, August and September.


In 1920, they figured out that the blast of Mount Tambora had caused this cold summer.  They realized that the volcano blasted up into the stratosphere huge quantities of fine dust particles, which remained suspended there for years and reduced the amount of warming sunlight able to reach the earth's surface.  The opposite of the greenhouse effect. *





* The Pessimist's Guide to History. Doris Flexner & Stewart Berg Flexner.




Think about it.  This is a golden opportunity.  See, we think about some dirt that we are tired of having around.  Then we shoot it into space.  A couple of years later, we'll be feeling quite cold.  But we knew it was coming, so we've stocked up.  We'd have those clever light bulbs that mimic sunlight, saving us from Seasonal Depression, stockpiles of processed and canned foods and street salt out the wazoo.


A summer or two of cold and we could all be driving SUVs with no guilt.  We'd need SUVs to get over the big ole snow piles and frozen wildlife.  Details.  So, stop recycling and all that rot.  We need to stuff the landfills with crap to shoot into space, now!

In a miraculous world, some events are beyond comprehension.  Nano-technology, the popularity of grave "blankets", Taco Bell and tea-cup dog breeds.  That said, I have recently been gob-smacked by some new reader's comments.  Why?  Because even though they are from "Sarah" or "Susan", they say exactly the same thing!  How freaky is that?  Here's a comment from, um, "Sarah":

 I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

"Sarah";  (link to product I'd never buy).


OK, now here's one from her psychic twin, "Susan":

 I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

"Susan";  (link to product I'd never buy).


Now, I don't want you to get "Susan" confused with Susan, who is a really lovely woman, a talented writer and has probably never eaten Spam before in her life, unlike my new, thin fan "Alice".  "Alice" took the time to let me know that she'd lost some weight, in the comments area after I gave out the Arte Y Pico Awards:

I lost 13 lbs in only two weeks by obeying this one easy rule
http://www.You think I'm going to let you know what the silly cow linked?

....(Other comments omitted for the sake of time), so I replied:

ALICE~

I'm very happy to hear of your loss. Did that include part of your brain?

I'm just curious, because you shared about your diminished size in my comment forum, where the post had been about awards.

I think your weight loss was probably due to a diet consisting completely of SPAM.

....(Other comments omitted for the sake of time), so again, I give you "Alice":

I lost 13 lbs in only two weeks by obeying this one easy rule
http://www.I'm not going to give you the bloody link!
 
....(Other comments omitted for the sake of time), so I replied:
 
ALICE~

Alright already. You really need to stay away from those cans of Spam. You are clearly suffering from acute Spamaholia. You can't see the signs, but honey, we can

You are repetitive, self-absorbed and quite honestly, a tad rude. So, here's the deal. I'm going to delete any more comments that you post.

After all, it's not like you are saying anything new.
 
So, I guess I'm going to have to start moderating the comments.  Not because anyone writes anything hateful or malevolent.  But because evil breeds well in the banal.  So it may take time for your comments to appear, as I'm not always on top of things.  If you wish to register a complaint, stop by Alice's Spam Diner.

Once in a while, I get an email from a friend who never actually writes to me.  Instead she forwards to me and a bunch of others, various mass emails that she has received.  Recently, in a turn-about, I sent her one, which she forwarded to her group, myself included!

I was about to ask her to stop sending me crap, but then I opened one that showed a tiger nursing piglets.  Which made all the other soppy, sentimental stories, pleas for prayers, terrible jokes and overuse of exclamation marks worthwhile.  I have deleted the email, so from the folks at YouTube, I bring you the tiggerlets: