It's been a few months since I've posted here on the junk blog, but I've been gathering random pictures of minimal interest that I was hoping to make into another rousing blog post. Ahhh, but the thought of trying to tie all these random pics together to make a decent blog post just seemed impossible. Not to mention the sitting down and writing this crap for three-four hours all while getting up and doing laps around the living room every 15 minutes to keep limber . I sit in this chair for the day while I'm working, no sense in going into overtime at night. Well, here they are anyway. Random pictures, and random thoughts. I'll begin by saying, thank you Cleveland Plain Dealer. You always provide a circular filled paper for free on Thanksgiving. You bag it in plastic, but when it rains and rains and rains, I get a wonderful slab of wet newsprint. It made me so sad, I cried over spilled closed micro brew. Nice basement tile Doug!

Go Browns. I'm from Cleveland. Didja notice ova dey? This was the first sport I ever liked and watched intently and later drank myself silly while we were losing. I guess, even when I moved to Toledo or Louisville,  I remained a Browns fan. (Of course the three years the Browns were out of the league waiting to come back was when I lived in Toledo or Louisville...)  Here is a tribute to the team I love, home made gifted to me two years ago. It's also a tribute to the now closed Pat Catan's craft chain where they sold all of the things used. Glass block with plug at bottom. Check. Cheesy brown bunting. Check. Cheap ugly brown Christmas lights. Check.  I'm not sure about the Browns sticker. Point being, I'm leaving it as is rather than re-using the glass block as a bank. Maybe use the ugly brown bunting for straining a dozen clams? I don't know.

In the "I wish we could do that category", here is my current favorite band King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard in a screen shot from their latest video "Intrasport" from their new album "KG". It's the second volume of the Gizz guys doing music with "microtonal" instruments. It's been released in Australia, but in the US, we must wait a few extra weeks. However they were nice enough to release the tracks to the TOOB and on Bandcamp in net fidelity. I'll live with it. You know I have a tradition where I take a new album, pour myself a bourbon, put on my good Sennheisers and take the first listen. Well, I guess since every other tradition this year has gone by the boards, but I'll still do it when I get it.  Now, you're asking, "was this video done before the pansamatic?" Nope. Australia is one of the few where the cases are so low, they've resumed gathering in a efficiency apartment to drink, dance, and shoot a ...dance video??? Isn't this a rock band?  Now, if the US could follow, we'll be seeing the band LIVE in the US in 2021 and we can see... 

...Second lead guitarist Joey Walker rocking the electric microtonal leaf blower. Jethro Tull is jealous. Another goofy screen shot of another video from "KG" called "Straws In The Wind" (Is it all ending?)

Mom loves this pizza. It's from Donatos. Yes, they are the pizza joint that at one point was partially owned by McDonalds. They opened lots of restaurants in the 90's to early 'oughts and closed most of them a few years ago. Something to be said by using a thin crusted pizza, but more important, the deluxe toppings that they pile on these. Yeah, the veggies and the meats are tasty and the thin crust pizza is a great idea, but to me, it's  only good enough to be the top of the syndicated pizza places. Nothing is going to beat a pie from your local favorite. Also, just a personal aside, I like a slice of pizza, not a sliver as these are cut.  Wahhhhhhh. :)

In the "wow, that smells..." category, I finally made it through my back stocks of hand sanitizer. You know, the stuff that at least had a acceptable scent? In my last entry, I bought these.  Now, I'm into the second bottle and getting through it even though it's ranked so low it has to look up to see down. *skitch* *Welcome Back Kotter* Thanks. Crazy, but I think I'm going to buy another bottle. It was a fluke that I found gen-u-ine Purell because I haven't seen it since as our numbers are again going up and up and up. So, it's good to have another back up bottle. Maybe they've improved it? 

See? I can't keep buying these 1oz bottles at 1.49! That's $100 for 8 ounces. Do the math. Actually, the one ounce container that I've been carrying around is made from cheap plastic and likely will fail, so I bought this as a replacement. You can hook it to your belt and keep yourself sanitary until February. You decide. (A line I wrote 25 years ago for a bit on my old radio show Under The Shelf. High comedy, don't cha think?)

Now to the booze section of the blog. As you all know, this pansamatic has had odd effects on peeps. One of them is increased alcohol consumption. Check. In a way, I went sideways. I like beer beverage more than I like a whiskey drink or a vodka drink. When the bars were closed at the beginning of all of this, I decided to curb my beer drinking and, well, I also curbed my fast food eating as well. Those two items combined to make me a "LEAN, MEAN FIGHTIN' MACHINE" *skitch* *Dewey Oxburger (Friends call him Ox) from Stripes* Thanks. Well, let's say I lost weight rather than gaining because I curtailed my beer consumption. I went to the booze. When the bars reopened I still don't drink beer at home, but when I went to the bar, they had umbrellas on their patio with "Tito's Vodka" on them. Tito's has a reputation of being for dog lovers so I had to finally try it. It was..well...I usually don't drink vodka unless it's mixed with juice be it tomato or grapefruit or even iced tea. Nuff said. The Sheep Dog Peanut Butter Whiskey, these were two bottles I got for a buck apiece from a convenience store. It's only 42 proof but was a pretty decent shot. However, I haven't been able to find  bigger bottles and well, I'm not a huge fan of flavored spirits.

  Yes, but a new old friend on the block is bourbon. This one is corked rather than twist off. Big deal. However, I gotta have it with cola. I've tried drinking it straight with an ice cube like I used to do long ago, but I guess tastes change. I like the scotchy scotch plain and not in cola, It just seems to have more personality. Now a gin martini...cola is no tonic. Hey! I'm a bartender now. Gimmie a Pabst any day.

Now, the groceries and food portion. Deluxe pit sweetener. Plain oatmeal taste makers. DUCK tape. Yep. Genuine DUCK tape. More mask clips and Allen J. Stash ladies and gentlemen. Allen J. Stash. Earl Grey. Hot.

No it's not a dance from a band  called Attack! Attack! that fused metal with dance beats and shlocky vocals and did a dance that was dubbed "crabcore" .  No, these are Utz's brand of crab seasoning on potato chips. When these first came out (at least in my area), I bought them every time and thought these were great. Then one day while sharing a bag with a friend, I realized "this is pure salt!" Indeed when I bought another bag recently, they were the most salty ass chips of potato in the history of...I ate the bag anyway. That's what dips are for.

See? There's the cola. There's the fruit and vegetable drinks. Then the pasta night. Yes, taking pictures of food is getting a little old for this blog, but MMMMMMMM cheese and cellulose. Maybe I can combine the Thanksgiving newspaper with a chub pack for sharp cheddar and make a sharp cheddar cheese shaker for sharp cheddar cheese and cellulose goodness. On spaghetti and sauce? *URP*

We'll call this part of the blog "Adventures In Cheap Appliance Repair." I've shown my coffee maker on this blog before and professed the beauty of a pot'o with fresh ground coffee. About a month ago, it started to shut off early or even not come on. I tried taping the switch in the on position and plugging in/unplugging when I wanted to brew, but that also stopped working. I went to a local drug store and paid the premium for a new coffee maker with digital controls that I never use because I don't have the counter space to leave it plugged in. It's a Mr. Coffee and it brews a decent cuppo after getting the new water measure correct. Mom said "throw that thing away". Ahhh, but I knew if I opened the old one up, and replaced a switch, it would work for a few more years right? So, when I had a chance, I did take it apart and surprise! The switch had been bent against the plastic separator dividing it from the hot plate. I must have damaged it as I shake this coffee maker upside down after every pot and never had to clean it because of this. No quantity of water sits in the pipes after use. So, all I needed was to bend the contacts back in place and also re-seat one of the contacts. Put it back together and brewed away. So, I have a back up maker when the digital control maker fails.  Cheap Appliance Repair Tip #1: When the new version of something cheap has gotten cheaper, it may be worth fixing the old cheap one rather than tossing it. Plastic Boogie.

Here's the other one. I again told my mom that I has a cheap quartz heater fail and again her reply was "throw that thing away". I had bought this heater as a second heater when I was working in my home office in the basement. It was a $10 wally special so I was happy. It worked just like my Holmes brand heater that I've had for at least 15 years. When I moved back upstairs to work one winter when the temps were ten degrees for longer than a week, I put this one into service as my main heater. So, It got a lot of daily use for 2-3 months out of the year when I didn't want to heat the whole house. Well, it just failed. The power switch was really hard to turn on and then went into high heat mode and the knob spun. So, I took it apart. The knob had broken but didn't come off because of the way it was built. The switch could not be turned. Even with a vice grip. Plus there was evidence of aging and another wire popped off of the thermostat while I was looking at the salvage of.... 10 years. 10 bucks. High powered electrical device? (Of course, not a high powered electrical device that has water running through it, but the difference is, this one sits on the floor and usually runs for hours and uses tons of watts.) So, into the trash it went. Cheap Appliance Tip #2: It's TEN DOLLARS. Dimes worth of gas up your ass. I didn't need to replace the switch in my coffee maker...

Now here's a little bit of change because of the pansamatic. I've been using Mead 80 page Neat Books (note book paper with those micro perfs to tear out cleanly) to write with forever. Why? Because I've never really been a fan of writing stuff with a computer, yet I do it all the time for net consumption. When I produce something for radio, I prefer pen and paper and crossing out errors of pieces parts I think don't really fit the bit. Sure it's old hack, but then the money I've saved in toner through the years... Plus the bindings are thin, so they fit into a briefcase better.  I bought a ton of these years ago and I'm still working through them. So much that the glue that binds them has been failing so I've had to re-glue each one lately to keep all the pages in the book. On my most recent book, a new problem cropped up. Some of the pages were not perforated correctly. Really, this was the first time ever I have had trouble tearing the pages out of the book, so much that I decided to tear the book apart and place the pages in a regular three ring binder, I don't carry a briefcase with me during the pansamatic because I never find myself at a place where I sit and write and drink coffee for a few hours on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Oh yes, I have bought some spiral bound notebooks with the perforations when they started making them. I didn't like them because they were less than 80 pages and they had the spiral. So, I tore those books up and placed them in three ring binders as well. Now I have seven additional 80 page notebooks to go through before I go back to my old stock Neat books, Really. I made the effort. Really. The things we do during a pansamatic. Who knew. I could have done without.

Finally, the best product I've used for eliminating odors in carpet and upholstery.  Unfortunately it's no longer made or it's changed it's name, but such a generic name I couldn't find it when I searched. This goes back to Toledo when I lived there. The water heater in my apartment failed and made the carpet a little funky as it dried out. I went to the store and found something without too much perfume that said it was for tough jobs. Two treatments with this stuff and  all smells gone. Really.  Again, living in a Cleveland apartment when a joint on the radiator pipes went bad, this stuff stopped any long term smells. Plus, my car. When the seats had any kind of funk, like, oh I don't know, vomit or urine, (usually one or both) two treatments eliminated the phew. I tried using a spray bottle of the fabulous  trendy odor remover that was all natural and blah blah blah, but still, this stuff is the shizznit even after 24 years. Maybe we could find a way to use this internally....BOP! Junk Blog. -Ric