Second the nail knot.
When the aurora is tilted just right I can wing that fishing sinker precisely through the fork of the very branch I want to use.
When propagation is poor, I let go of the drawn back fishing sinker, it impacts the rubber covered Y-fork of the wrist rocket and bounces back to belt me in the face.
I think I am pulling it to one side or the other instead of straight back.
Either that or I need to hire the neighbor kid to do my slingshot work for me.
As far as humor, aye, I had my good friend the padre chuckling over my account of rebuilding my antenna.
Wind storms up this-a-way (Yankee flat country, south shore of Lake Erie, flat as a file and nothing between here and there to break the wind but a bobwarr fence with two strands broke) ... last winds we had gusted over 78 miles an hour, which politely removed my stealthy magnet wire vertical.
I ran a diagonal across my little postage stamp of a back yard, tied off on an oak branch thick as my thigh, ran a 132 ft horizontal delta loop at 8 ft above the sod; ran reflector wire under it by unzipping lamp cord, laid it 24" apart under the delta and staked down with wire staples in the belief that other correspondents haven't been pulling my leg ... supposedly grass will thatch over it and the rotary mower won't grab it.
So far it hasn't.
Anyway.
I told the good Parson that if he ever set up a step ladder in the back yard, and it was the least little bit tippy, teetery or rocky, to stop operations until he had it rock solid and steady.
Then I described how this misbegotten spawn of a spavined, pig eared, big nosed, sway backed, ill tempered, intemperate son of a bucking bronco (alias stepladder) not only kicked out from under me, but fell on top of me and wallowed me about on the ground: how this fiberglass beast tried to pin me, pummel me and bruise my dignity, along with other choice portions of my long tall and rotund anatomy, and how I finally fought out from under it, kicked it a good one, hopped about the yard on one foot holding the other, and finally addressed it (the ladder, not my foot!) briskly with a tree branch, screaming vile imprecations on its recycled soul, to the mirth and merriment of the next door neighbor, who was leaning against his yard shed wiping his eyes he was laughing so hard.
The Parson and I regularly meet for coffee and I think he keeps these meetings for the same reason my doc schedules me as the last appointment of the day: so he can get a good laugh before he goes home.
Can't imagine why.
Maybe it's because a co-worker called me a commodion ... he said I was so full of it I needed flushed ...