Saturday, December 31, 2016

Many Happys 2016-2017

Happy New Year to my treasured readers.
You will be required to have a very happy, safe, and healthy new year.



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Speaking of New Years, I occasionally performed on New Years Eve, both with my band and my musical comedy act.

I remember one year we played deep in the bowels of Philadelphia. It was so deep I could never find it again, nor would I have any reason to. Mrs lefty was there, long before she took the dive. I remember her particularly hot leather skirt. It was accompanied by a particular cold. The cold came with the Cough of Death. The poor girl sounded like she was coughing up a lung, at one minute intervals. As she was a nurse, she didn't have the good sense to stay home when she was quite ill and quite contagious. Plus she wanted to be with her sweetheart, for which I can forgive her. 

I remember doing reasonably well and jiggering the set around to ring in the Happy New Year at midnight. Cough couch. And at four in the morning, Mrs lefty called a doc she knew, who met her at the office and prescribed Strong Antibiotics for her constant hacking. I think she got half the neighborhood and their pets sick.

I'm certain we did a few more celebrations over the years but we are talking quite a time ago so I can't be relied upon to remember stuff. Especially if it happened yesterday. We played in a place called King of Prussia, which is apparently hysterical if you're from anywhere that isn't Philly. There was a small chain of motor lodges off the Turnpike, and when I say motor lodge, I mean really run down motel with a weird layout, featuring some extremely low-rent restaurant-type place, perhaps for truckers (but definitely not regular people).

We were opening for a national act, whose name I could make up but let's agree that I don't remember. We were pretty excited, as we should have been. Nice money, nice exposure, nice equipment. Or so we thought.

The room had all the acoustical properties of a concrete gymnasium, largely because it was constructed exactly like a concrete gymnasium, out of cinderblocks. We hit the stage running, full of energy, and the crowd immediately took a dislike to us. We weren't always strangers to this phenomenon, but realized it wasn't our fault this time.  When you point large speaker stacks at a concrete wall, the sound shoots out, hits the wall, and rubber bands right back at you. So you sing a note and it comes back to you, almost a second later, completely confusing you as to what you're doing. It's like a bad cell phone call, where you can hear what you already said in the background. 

Somehow this got cleared up, although I don't know how, but it didn't involve tearing down the cinderblock walls or throwing paying guests against them. We did really well... so well that the national headliner couldn't follow us. This is the reason a lot of comics don't want to follow musical comedy acts.

We weren't too far from home but we got rooms so we decided to stay. This was before Mrs lefty (no, really), so the adventurous lady and I decided to head to the room. Picture many rows of rooms, with about ten per row, all laid out at strange angles to each other. The door key was one degree off skeleton key, and I got a really weird feeling as we opened the door. It was right out of a horror movie, when the innocent couple inherits a large, dark castle and goes to see it for the first time. I expected cobwebs, everything covered in sheets, dust, and perhaps a dead body. Fortunately we escaped those tragedies, although we both avoided checking the bathroom just in case.

After the Mad Celebratory Sex (that I don't remember), we drifted off. Or tried to drift off. This was made somewhat difficult by the creaking dripping sound emanating from the bathroom. The one we were terrified to check for bodies. Being by far the braver of us two, She got up to check on things. The area was completely free of (human) bodies but the plumbing was similar to the plumbing in the large, dark castle; held together with string and spit. Several minutes later, we were safely in the car, on our way home. We decided it wasn't all that interesting to stay in a different bed for the night. 

I would like to repeat some of my successes but don't have a band currently. I thought the Mad Celebratory Sex thing would be fine but she's in the bedroom, having a call and response snoring chat with the dog. Just to clarify, we're talking about Mrs lefty, not any of the previous ones, girlfriends, or blow up dolls.

Please be safe. If you're going to drink, stay where you are, take a cab, or use a Designated Driver. It's not worth the other lives you may ruin.  Also - this time of year is particularly bad for sufferers of depression. If you need help, please talk to someone.



Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Knock Someone Out for Boxing Day

A nice and considerate new reader pointed out that this blog hurt her eyes (which was only fifty percent of my intention when 'designing' it). That the image of ThermionicEmissions remained emblazoned on her retina, making it difficult to see the next site she went to. This is great news... everyone who leaves this blog will see it in front of them for a short (or long) period of time! If a reader trips and goes down on his eyes, heaven forbid, the image of ThermionicEmissions may be the last thing he sees. Or it might be the only thing he sees for the rest of his life.  Do I need to rethink this?


  • One way to introduce invasive new technology is to put it in sports stadiums; where fans have already proved they will swallow humongous ticket prices, fifty dollar parking, regular player strikes, and state money paying for the stadiums. Fingerprint and iris scanners are in place in several stadiums, as a kind of line-bypass, like our friends at the TSA offer pre-screened fliers (and now some stadiums) - because metal detectors and bag checks weren't enough. In addition to identification, this allows tracking of fan behavior and purchasing habits, raking in even more money for the stadiums. To add insult to injury, you will pay $179 for this privilege. Yo, sports fans... bend over... again. It's for the children.

A New York to France flight had to be diverted because the toilets on the 767 were all broken. With all of the in-flight backups airplanes have (all systems in triplicate), in the end it was toilets that grounded the plane. It's shit like this that makes passengers mad.

  • Last night was the Kennedy Honors. Among others, the Eagles were celebrated. At one point, Steve Vai joined others for a note-for-note rendition of Hotel California. As much fun as this was, the real attraction was watching the stone-faced Eagles and the outgoing president at times.

This past year has had no shortage of hilarity emanating from California. Guess what... the year isn't over yet! The San Francisco police union is suing the city for the right to choke citizens and kill fleeing drivers, citing the recent overseas attacks where vehicles were used. Because the "new policy will hinder officers' ability protect themselves and the public from killers behind the wheel."

They coulda just said It's for the children. Knowing California, it's a small miracle that they didn't outlaw trucks and cars.

The next piece of legislation will require police to identify lawbreakers and give them a ride home or to a Safe Space of their choosing because we wouldn't want to hurt their feelings or make assumptions as to their race, color, what species they identify as, or sexual orientation.


  • As if enough people had not left the planet in 2016 thus far, someone took advantage to hack Britney Spears' Twitter account to post a poorly-worded tweet, allegedly from Sony, that she expired. To back this up, they hacked Bob Dylan's Twitter account to send condolences. And just a few days left in 2016...
  • Speaking of death, there is a Kickstarter to raise money for a person to guard Betty White. He will guard her in any way necessary. If Mrs White decides this service is not necessary, all the money donated will go to a designated theater charity. Noting Betty's ability to stay alive thus far, I don't think she'll need any help.

A Tacoma, WA. Cheesecake Factory refused to serve some armed police officers recently. One of the officers posted this to Cheesecake's Faceyspaces page, prompting a statement from Corporate, apologizing for the mixup and blaming it on the restaurant manager's misunderstanding of the policy, which stated that uniformed and armed officers were allowed to possess arms. I guess the manager mixed up allowed to posess arms with not allowed to possess arms. Heh heh, simple mixup anyone could make. It's like celebrity death: Britney Spears is dead. Oh wait, we got that statement mixed up with Britney Spears is not dead. A simple mixup.

  • There is a place in Asia called Johor Baru. This is less important that the fact that a man there is seeking a refund for an exorcism, because the exorcist failed to drive off the spirits afflicting his father. Hey, do you suppose we can get refunds for wives and other relatives?

One cannot, and I can't emphasize this strongly enough, eat a steak sandwich with a straw. Along these same lines; no, I don't want to go to the doctor tomorrow to see your ear wax. These were two things that happened today and I am not going to say anything more.





First selfie with found object - 1940

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Just Return the Crap and Be Done with it

Wee Wee Water
At the risk of sounding like a very popular neurotic Jewish comic, what's this nonsense about running water and peeing?  I vaguely remember hearing that if a woman wanted to pee in the bathroom or for a medical test, she should run some water. Then I remember hearing about old men having to run water to pee in general.

After I hit a certain age, I noticed this effect in reverse, sorta. I'd do my Manly Duty, washing dishes, and a short way into it, I had to pee. It sometimes takes me a while to catch on (to most things) and in a while, I noticed it.  It was a sad day for me, like maybe I should celebrate by signing up for AARP or Medicare.  Whenever I washed dishes. Whenever I got water from a faucet. And yesterday, was the final insult (I hope): while pouring Marshall's personally refrigerated Special Spaniel Water into his dish, the Pee Alarm went off again. What's happening to me?

BUT WAIT!!! If you keep reading, we'll spell out an even more absurd point, and we'll send it to you for nothing! Not even an additional handling or reading charge!  One day when filling up Marshall's water container for his refrigerated Special Spaniel Water, I felt the Urge. I thought I had outsmarted my body by going to the bathroom before I filled the container. But POOF - there it was. Only I didn't really have anything to give... yes, it was Phantom Pee Urge. This brand new diagnosis will be rushed through committee and will appear in an interim diagnosis supplement for all physicians.



  • After weeks of sex with a transexual, a man kills her for "that sick thing between her legs." I'm thinking the guy must have had a small vision issue. Did he possibly miss the superfluous genitalia? For a few weeks? Is it THAT dark where he does it?


I hope your holidays were nice. 
I got a rock.

Speaking of the holidays, I thought it might be a good time to stand around the menorah, light some candles, and sing Jewish folk songs. Then I remembered I'm not Jewish.  Ok, I'm an ex-Jew... I gave it up for lent.



  • The best quote of xmas had to come from my nephew, who asked the wife a question: "Do you get gift cards?" Yes. "Well, if you get any from Toys R Us, would you give them to me?"


There were a few neato mob brawls at malls over the holidays, including one in Ohio that resulted in a mall closing down. Hmmm... organized mobs.. at about a dozen malls... who's doing the organizing?

  • Men are from Mars, women are from Betelguese. We had some communication issues in our marriage that we straightened out, to great relief. However, my coworker and I are going to require 145 intensive sessions of Communication Marriage Therapy to be able to work just poorly with each other. The more we talk, the more my eyeballs try to look at each other and end up rolling like a slot machine. [this takes place over text messages]:
  • ME: put the red one on the green peg
  • HER: all I have is green
  • ME: yes, the green one. put it on the red peg
  • HER: ok. what about the fact that the peg is wood?
  • ME: they're all wood
  • HER: I'm so stupid
  • ME: why are you stupid?
  • HER: because I couldn't do yesterday's work
  • ME: the machine was down yesterday
  • HER: nobody told ME
  • ME: then you're not stupid, are you
  • HER: that's ok, I'm stupid about other things
  • ME: don't worry about it
  • HER: I have to - it's my nature
  • ME: ok, try to keep yourself up all night, worrying about it
  • HER: I will, thanks. now I'll shut up.
  • and people wonder why I wander up and down the aisles, laughing maniacally, cursing randomly, and banging my phone on the desk, like some sort of new-age morse code.

I wanted to get some stuff done today but I'm having some difficulty. I have a bit of a medical condition that comes and goes, generally in the morning. I asked the doctor what to do and he said to drink some caffeine-containing beverages. The medical condition, by the way, is called Tired, or as we know it, Tired. My coworkers cannot drink Mt Dew because it makes them fly around the room, frequently bumping into ceiling fans. It's a ($&#ing mess to clean, especially when it gets on your clothes. I can drink Mt Dew and feel absolutely nothing, either from sugar or caffeine. So I drink a cup of coffee every morning. It helps me wake up to the horror that will become my day. The only problem is that I run the risk of falling back to sleep for a few hours, which tends to be frowned upon, even for my friends in government. Yes, the doctor is flummoxed as to how caffeine can take up to four hours to be effective. I'll get up from my desk, pick up a pen, and start shaking wildly. This starts my own bouncing off the walls. Fortunately, due to fear of heights, I do not bounce all the way to the ceiling fans, much to my wife's dismay.

Nobody seems to have even a halfway decent answer to this question (why I don't make it to the ceiling).  They also can't figure out why coffee takes so long to take effect. As you'd expect, I have a theory. I always have a theory; usually waaaay out there in left field, so far out of the box that no one can find it, even with satellite assistance.  You see, I am asleep most of the time. Only when the caffeine hits am I awake. While I think I'm falling asleep, I'm actually already asleep. Another one solved, Holmes.


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My wife just went for a nap. This causes some sort of quantum time warp where she sleeps but in our subjective reality, it can last anywhere from five minutes to sixteen hours (you think I'm kidding?). This is precisely why we cannot understand quantum physics, or Nap Physics, as we Nap Physicists prefer to call it.

After the subjective nap time has elapsed, she will emerge from her cave, looking 3/4 asleep, not having seen her shadow or me. If I say Good Morning, she may acknowledge me in a voice that would make a frog sound like Pavarotti. She'll tell me she came out for something to drink. When I ask if she's ready to get up, she tells me she's not done sleeping yet. This is either the most brilliant statement about sleep ever, or .....






Friday, December 23, 2016

Fa La La... Fa Lah Lah La.. Fackit.

As if exploding phones, terrorists, and screaming children weren't enough, this article comes along, talking about how In Flight Entertainment systems could be accessed in airplanes. These systems are not the plane control systems, which are kept apart from the entertainment systems. Hopefully. They can, however, be used to cause all sorts of mischief on the entertainment side, including capturing any information you enter into the system (using their wifi). In a nutshell, you and your information are perfectly safe when flying, provided you don't use the plane's wifi and provided the system is properly walled off from the flight system. And there are no screaming babies.  Feel better now?

In an immediate rebuttal from the manufacturer, they state that this is Not True. They do not offer anything in the way of concrete proof and the author of the article went on to explain, very slowly and comprehensively, for the manufacturer, his point again: that if you don't separate the entertainment system from the flight control system, some nefarious hacker might leap from one system to the other.  While this is a very true and logical statement, I can't imagine a hacker getting control of an airplane and making it do anything harmful to the hacker.


  • You're either giving or a giftee will be receiving an Internet of Things-enabled device. Either fail to give them one or strongly encourage them to secure the item. If they don't know how, ask a person significantly younger to help them with it. Also avoid those devices that listen to you, like the Echo or the dolls. No good can come of a device that hears and reports everything said in a household, or worse, everything a child says.

I don't know exactly what this new, Internet of Things washer downloads, but let's be positive for once: maybe it's porn! Washing just became FUN!

  • This whole iDevice earpod thing is way out of hand. In a few years, plastic surgeons will get rich(er) due to Sagging Earlobe Syndrome.

I'm still working on the logistics of this idea, but a South Carolina legislator (I'll give you one guess from which party, and Democrat ain't it) wants to mandate porn-blocking on all new computers sold in the state. If you don't want porn blocked, there will be a twenty dollar fee, please. Of all the idiot-brained schemes, this may win the computer (and Freedom from Religion Foundation and ACLU and Electronic Freedom Foundation) award for Most Stupid and Impossible Scheme. The many unconstitutional bits of this, of which none can be implemented, are beyond belief. A final thought on this: it would make the NSA and FBI's jobs so much easier. Instead of spying from down the line somewhere, we have just invited them inside our own computers. What could possibly go wrong?

  • In the You Knew It Was Coming department, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will be offering this bit of enlightened education: The Problem of Whiteness. Debate should be encouraged on campus, as in other places, but this looks a little skewed before the debate starts, if debate is even allowed in this class.  While it is often stated that groups that come up with This Sort of Thing will eventually eat themselves from within, it can't come fast enough.

RIP Zsa Zsa Gabor (99). Cause of death: lack of ratings.


  • If you're a Groupon user, there has been some sort of account fraud. Groupon claims there has been no breach; that the account information may have been purchased from external sites. Don't use your login and password for more than one site, ok?

Security site NakedSecurity has 12 Safety Tips of Christmas. Well done! Spoiler: there is nothing naked on the site.


  • Vice has killed its online comments section, like several other major sites. Apparently their viewers are not a polite bunch. The article is quite an eye-opener.. it's not just the Vice viewers, though.. the online space is now the Wild West, with everything from polite, thoughtful comments to death threats, with the polite stuff being difficult to find, due to the death threats and General Abuse. What a lovely group we are. Put a windshield or a keyboard between us and others and we become Total Assholes.

A Virgin flight was delayed when someone changed their phone's wifi name to 'Samsung Galaxy Note 7'. After threatening to ground the plane, the trickster came forward. No charges were filed but at least we got a snicker out of it. No word on whether the jokester in question got the stuffing knocked out of him by the rest of the plane's passengers.


  • In what had better be a joke, a three year old is getting a sex change.




Christmas with the ex-Jews

Some of you may remember our thirteen year struggle with a cat and a Christmas tree.  Ren, from about six weeks old, made it his life's work to disembowel (internal) Christmas trees. We have a kinda scrawny fake tree, which we decorated with great fanfare, to become a less-scrawny, well appointed sight. Ren got right up there and destroyed the display, one section at a time.  After he removed tinsel, he concentrated on a yearly Gravity Experiment, which consisted largely of making each and every ornament go straight to the ground. The really expensive and emotionally-valuable ones were particularly interesting to him, as if they somehow went to ground at a different pace.

One particularly bad year saw him disassembling the tree by knocking off the branches, one by one. Where does a cat learn to take apart a fake tree? Since we had him from six weeks, I can only conclude this information is genetic. As a final tribute to the Christmas Spirit, I took the top foot of the tree and hung it from the ceiling, so even he could not get it, unless he somehow schemed to get the dog to move the ladder over and open it for him. When I returned home from work, he had somehow managed to remove even the last nub from the ceiling. It's amazing he didn't get the hook too. I'm not even sure I want to know how he did it but the dog's not talking either.

Much to everyone's sadness, Ren passed this year. Marshall still hasn't gotten over losing his cat and is on medication (I'm not kidding). Even though our relationship was weird, to be polite, I'd rather have Ren than the tree.


So Certain Persons in the house decided we needed to have holiday decorations on the house. Considering the season, the mania surrounding multiple health issues, Normal Stuff, and our vast organizational skills, we have whittled decorations down to a two foot tree and a Seasons Greeting-type sign on the door. This is a large improvement over last year, when we were limited to a few cards over the door from previous years. My wife does this and to this day, I still don't understand why. The sign is delightfully understated (small and blends into the door) but it swings in the wind. So anyone in the house is treated to the sound of the sign BANGING against the door with the force of police knocking with five-cell flashlights.





Thanks for reading and sticking with ThermionicEmissions. Welcome to our new readers from antisocial media. Happy Whatever to you and yours.





May you be touched by the Noodly Goodness of the Flying Spaghetti Monster


Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Three Quarters Asleep - A Classical Concerto for Children and Octopi

The beauty of being without children is self-evident; not so with nieces and nephews. Twice a year, or something that feels like five times a year, one of the little blighters has a 'concert' at school. In English, this means that the school 'orchestra' is playing. Unfortunately it also means we run the very real risk of Christmas/holiday music and having to sit through it.

I recently had an 'animated' conversation with the child's mother about the entire musical question. Follow along here.. when is it a natural instinct for a child of late single-digit age to pick up a violin? For that matter, when is it a natural instinct for a child to pick up a violin for any part of his childhood? We know I don't have children, except for the kind who can't hold a violin, but I can claim some expertise in that I was a child at one point (a matter with which my mother will vehemently disagree - she says I emerged a small adult). I can at least speak for myself when stating categorically that it never occurred to me to pick up a violin for any purpose that involved anything but mischief. Wholesale destruction was off the table, as I couldn't afford to replace them. Granted, I am a rather extreme case (again, Mom will heartily agree), but I was always a guitar player, from the picture of me at 4, in front of the tree, playing a plastic guitar (left-handed), to the abortive try at about 8, to the almost fatal drive at 12.

At no point did I pick up an orchestra instrument, except for that one time that I wanted to see what would happen if I took a huge old bass, put it on my lap like an electric guitar, and try to play it upside-down. This almost worked, right up until the orchestra teacher caught me doing it. So our first item of confusion is why children pick up an orchestral instrument in the first place. After they pick the dratted thing up, what is the first thing they say to themselves? Gee, self, wouldn't it be cool to play some music that was written two hundred years or so before I was born? You know, instead of that music my parents or I listen to daily... Yes, there will be certain children, those children, who pick up an instrument because they're expected to and they excel at it. We're not talking about those children, we're talking about the normal children (welcome back to school, folks).

So during my animated conversation with my nephew's mother, I asked these questions.  Mom, being a rather single-minded person, managed to pull through this conversation unscathed, largely by completely ignoring any question I asked her. This is a technique that works impossibly well for anything from instrumental discussions to Congressional grilling. She kept talking about how well he was doing. At no point did I hear anything about asking the child if he wanted to play an instrument, particularly this instrument. The wife asked him, at some point, if he liked the violin and he stated categorically that he did not. Having been a child, I can guarantee that this is not the correct way to go about encouraging a child to pick up an instrument. The child needs to want to, plus the material needs to be relevant to make it interesting for the player.  Meanwhile, the kids rush to pick up my guitar when I bring it over - a sign of an instrument they want to play. Well, that and the drums - an instrument taken up solely to annoy those around them, especially their parents.

As it turns out, one child needed a better instrument and his old one got handed down to another. No word on whether that child wants a violin either but apparently this is not an issue. Bent on further destruction (for some reason I like to pull the tiger's tail), I asked the parent about left-handed violins, as one of the kids is a lefty. This caused a bit of confusion on Mom's part, but the kids set out to figure this out. It turns out at least one of them holds the violin left-handed, a fact that caused much laughter on the part of all involved, especially when they realized I was poking their mother. Mom, for her part, managed to skirt the discussion by employing her time-tested method of ignoring the question (and me, which is a popular pastime for many who know me).


THE CONCERT

We arrived thirty minutes early, in hopes of getting a parking spot. As I might have mentioned, this particular school has an interesting parking spot layout, which guarantees that anyone not arriving at least thirty minutes early will have to take a shuttle to the school, having parked in the next county. As this happened three times, I eventually learned my lesson. Sorta. Mrs lefty has a handicapped tag, so we looked for a handicapped spot. We found them, and we found all five of them full because no one told me you have to arrive a full sixty minutes early for a handicapped spot (so you can mill around uncomfortably inside). I hate this place but this is my nephew's show... so we parked a respectable distance from the building, in a spot not requiring additional transport to the venue. Mrs lefty wore her trademark antlers, designed solely to get a rise out of the children's mother. She always succeeds.

There were choruses. Again, choruses singing ancient music the children had never heard before, nor will they ever again. My guess is that their teacher decided on the songs to impress someone, possibly two hundred year dead composers, who would never weigh in on whether they liked the selection or not. If they do weigh in, I want to be there to hear it. The thought that never occurred to the teacher or the students is that the audience never heard the songs either. This is cruel, as the audience, there out of obligation (except for the parents, each with their own camcorder and phone), is made to endure children performing songs they don't know. Much squirming ensued.

As if ancient songs weren't enough, the children also sang songs from recent movies, Disney included. Assuming for the moment that Disney does not sue the entire school district, state board of education, and each student individually, what is the point of singing songs from popular movies? The kids might decide they'd rather sing two hundred year old songs instead, or rather the parents might decide they like hearing two hundred year old songs instead. This is complicated by what one would expect from a restaurant or airplane: a screaming child, alternating between loud screams of distress and loud screams of joy. Most people, except for those in restaurants and airplanes, know when their child is squalling like an entire room full of children with diaper rash, and remove them promptly. This parent apparently wanted to share the joy and distress with an auditorium of one hundred proud parents and several hundred more who showed up (or were dragged) out of obligation.

I'm sorry - my medicine hasn't kicked in yet.

After this stunning vocal treat, it was time for the Younger Concert: fifty children manhandling out-of-tune brown orchestral stringed instruments. The director was an obviously very talented individual, causing one to wonder how she managed to produce an orchestra in which forty percent of the members were inherently incapable of playing in tune.  Perhaps, like the proud parent of the screaming infant, she did not hear the out-of-tune children.  It is said that people who live near airports no longer hear the airplanes, so at least they have that going for them.

Let me step outside of the story for a second to state that I am not, in any way, allowing my many years in music compare to what these brave children were doing. That would be grossly unfair. Some children can't sing, so it's not fair to judge the chorus. Instrumentalists, however, merit a bit more scrutiny. One cannot expect famous talent from these kids, but one can expect them to be in tune, even if someone else tuned their instruments for them. One violin player can listen to the next player over and instantly know something is wrong when both are playing the 'same' note (trust me, this is fact). Obviously this did not bother the children, but, judging from some of the audience grimaces, bothered others. Still, it was evident that everyone got a trophy for participating.

After this, the Older Concert commenced. It was obvious that there was talent. It was also visually apparent that the kids were coming into their own as individuals. There was a child who looked like he could be blind but perhaps not, as everything he did seemed to occur half a beat behind the other children. The ones with more hair on one side than the other, and the children who would soon discover that their wiring was not like that of most of their friends. They too performed the songs of very dead composers, as well as horribly-arranged holiday tunes from ancient societies in languages no longer known to man.

After the chorus abated, it was time for the music. It became immediately apparent what an additional year could do for students on their pre-chosen instruments. Only twenty percent of these musicians were out of tune, as opposed to the previous forty. Unfortunately both sets of musicians featured some kids who seemed to be playing with the orchestra at the next school down the street. They did not necessarily play out of tune so much as out of time. They were like an echo of the kids who were playing in time, causing great commotion, mostly ignored by the audience.

After the show, I commented to my nephews' father that the child showed great improvement, with he group being nowhere near as out-of-tune as the other group (my nephew being perfectly in tune, of course). At this point, I heard a female voice behind me, talking to my nephew about some important fact or other. I turned around to find a male student, with too much hair on one side, who would soon discover that his wiring was not like that of most of his friends. Fortunately, no one would be surprised or care.






Monday, December 19, 2016

Here Comes the Noise Again

I like to tell people we live in a nice, quiet neighborhood, right up until we moved in, but that's not correct. We're pretty quiet too, surprisingly. We only have odd bursts of noise, like the TRASH TRUCKS. There are three of them, plus both sides of the street, so we get treated to six trucks stopping at every house, with all the noise involved, up and down the block, for as long as we can hear them. Plus the lady who blows her #*@&ing horn at 7:05 every morning for no known reason, perhaps rudely picking up some brat or other. And the mailman, who Marshall used to bark at. Marshall's getting older and isn't always aware that his mortal enemy is coming up the steps, but once a day or so, Marshall sits on his own steps and barks at someone or something I can't see.

I love Marshall but...

Speaking of trash, if you care to look, you can tell which neighbors are retired or not working by their Trash Patterns.  What are Trash Patterns, you ask?? Glad you asked. Trash Patterns are when they put the trash cans to the curb and when they move them back to the house.

It is said that good neighbors take care of each other but this was never more apparent than when my wife started to let loose that she knew an awful lot about the comings and goings of the neighbors. The guy across the street must be sick, because he goes to work every morning at 7:17 and his car has been in his garage all week. Next door usually goes to church every morning but hasn't the past two days - I hope she's ok. There's a Monty Python sketch about this (there's a Monty Python sketch about everything, as it should be), with two women running the equivalent of the early 1970's NSA in their apartment, one reporting what she sees and the other bringing it up on one of their monitors. My wife needs no monitors.. she can tell everything from sitting on the step or just looking out the window. She also catalogs the dogs that walk by and sometimes their owners. It's weird but consistent that people always remember the names of the dog but not always their owner.  "Hey, remember Max's mom? She's having surgery this week. I forget her name."

Let me wander back to Trash Patterns. The Crazy Lady, who recently celebrated her 439th birthday, puts her trash out the night before collection. My wife can tell you what time, but no doubt it's militarily consistent. In the span between 6.7 and 9.6 minutes after the trash trucks have left, The Crazy Lady emerges from her hole and drags each humongous can back to the safety of her Can Spot. I know she has a Can Spot but dare not make a note of where. Then there's the old retired dude across the street, who in spring and summer camps out on his lawn with coffee and a lounger, waiting for the trucks to come. As soon as they've driven down the street, he marches out, also with military precision, and puts them perfectly back in their place, because everything has a place to ensure Order. This dude either needs a hobby or is desperate to get away from his wife, thus turning trash into a multi-hour escapade, after which he goes back inside and cleans off his hand tools, that haven't been used since the last time he cleaned them.

But I digress. Always.




  • The doctor asked me if I have any trouble sleeping. NOPE. Sleeping is something I'm very good at. No problem there, Doc.

Yahoo announced another breach. This is in addition to the last breach they announced. Just in case, change any Yahoo passwords you have. Better yet, close them. Yahoo needs to get their act together, perhaps starting with some heads rolling.

  • In Merry Olde England, a Coca Cola delivery to a theater was canceled after a huge brawl. The truck (lorry in England) pulled up to the theater to deliver his soda and parked. A traffic warden objected to the parking location and let the driver know. The driver protested that he had all his paperwork. The warden said there would be no room for emergency vehicles, at which point the driver let him know that there was enough space on either side of the truck to park a small army. The warden was not impressed and started 'waving a finger with intent to scorn.' I love that phrase. The violence in the waving and scorning is most apparent. After this, the warden's hat was knocked off.
  • For some reason known only to the warden, the warden began throwing cans of soda out of the lorry. Within minutes, more wardens arrived. Glass started breaking. Four riot vans arrived. All in all, fourteen people were involved in The Great Soda Riot of 2016. Presumably it was difficult to purchase soda at the theater ($7.95 each) and the had to settle for tea ($6.95).

Continuing our International Flair, the Chileans are in an uproar because a Cabinet minister received a blowup doll as a present. I truly wish this was the United States' biggest issue. Blowup dolls for everyone!

  • Police in Mt Laurel, NJ, received a call about four suspicious donkeys behind a house. Apparently this was not a common sight, as the non-specific donkeys don't get reported.

Just in time for Christmas, a Tacoma, WA, elementary school's satan club opened. Naturally there were protests. The best quote from the protesters was, 
“These 5-year-old children are very impressionable; if you have an adult come in and talk about Satan, they’re going to be harmed by that."  
Make no mistake, the First Amendment states that this is a no-no. Period. But some judges decide on a 'compromise,' where all religions are allowed to participate. Lately this pattern ends right after the satanists put on their display. At this point, the Christians decide to tear the satanists' display down when nobody's looking and then reconsider their standpoint on anybody doing this on government grounds.


  • Hillary
  • huntin. Yes, women all over the neighborhood are going into the woods, hopeful for a Hillary sighting. Unconfirmed rumors state that the RNC is raising funds to lay bear traps. Here's Freddy, the largest dog in the world. The Great Dane stands 7'1" on his rear paws, which is a really silly way to measure a dog. Aside from being tall, Freddy also went through 23 couches. Although Guinness certifies Freddy as the largest dog, there is no word on whether he has the record for Couch Destruction.


  • Today's information breach occurred at PayAsUGym, further proving there's absolutely no value to exercise and in most cases, it's dangerous. 300,000 accounts were affected.
  • Academics at Oxford University are being offered therapy in case they've been disturbed by their research. Perhaps it's time to wall off a section of the blog, to be called The Snowflake Report.


    • For those of you considering a vacation this holiday season, here's a bit of text from an FAA.gov summary: Please reboot your Boeing 787 at most, every 21 days. Otherwise it might reboot while in flight. Do not run your plane on Windows.




    Tuesday, December 13, 2016

    UK Spying

    The UK government has voted itself a new spying bill that's positively draconian in scope. Nicknamed the Snooper's Charter, it requires providers to keep your browsing history for a year. The information will be available, without a warrant, to the Usual Suspects, plus such important State Security entities as the Gambling Commission.

    While this is another step in the lack of privacy landslide in the UK, the US and other countries would be well-served to keep their eyes on its progress. The UK seems to be a testing ground of sorts for Bad Anti-Privacy Laws.

    That said, this article features some really good information for everyone to protect their communications, like Signal messenger, Tor, and VPNs. Even if you're not planning to take security seriously, read it and familiarize yourself with the situation.


    • In case you were kept awake at night, wondering what is the cause for male homosexuality, your answer is here. [Hint: ghosts]

    I realize 2016 isn't over yet, but this headline is in the running for best of the year: Are White People Promoting Homosexuality as a Means of Undermining the Black Struggle?

    • Speaking of 2016, and I wish we weren't, we bid farewell to some larger than life people in their fields: Greg Lake and John Glenn. Remember the good old days, when rock stars would die of drug overdoses? Now it's cancer. Emerson, Lake and Palmer: and then there was one.

    With the rise in Utter Nonsense that is Fake News, remember this: Fake News is anything that particular person does not want you to read. The irony of Hillary warning about Fake News is strong: her administration fed Fake News to the media. In spite of this, Trump won.

    • This morning I asked the dog that since he's so smart, why doesn't he let himself outside and back in. He replied that he's so smart he has us do it for him.  Can't argue.

    Do you have a Netgear R6400, R7000, R8000 (go check - I'll wait). If you do, turn it the hell off and replace it or wait til Netgear releases a fix. The article linked will tell you how to check to see if your router is vulnerable. The routers look like little spaceships from some new space-horror movie, with lots of antennae.

    • Important Stuff you missed over the weekend: nothing.

    Remember the Colonial Theater? It's the place where The Blob was filmed. It's been totally redone and is a delightful place to see a movie or concert. They just let me know that if I'm 70 or older, my IRA distributions can benefit the theater, but only tax-deferred gifts of up to $100,000. Drat - if I were only 70 or older...


    • I need to stop this entry right now for a very important bulletin: the Opera browser was split off into another one called Vivaldi. In the latest version, you can now select themes! But wait... as if that weren't enough, you can schedule the time for the theme to change! Vivaldi works on most operating systems, for your convenience.


    I received an email, asking to evaluate a course I took. They asked fifteen minutes of my time. In acknowledging my time, they said that every tenth evaluator would win a t-shirt with their logo.  I was never a math star, but with their courses starting at $300, I'm thinking of holding out for maybe a t-shirt AND some pocket lint.


    • Kentucky Fried Chicken, hereafter referred to as KFC (or WTF), has admitted that their Colonel's Club has suffered a breach, 'possibly' exposing 1.2 million customers' details. WHAT? Did any of us know that there's a Colonel's Club at KFC? A loyalty program for greasy, heart attack inducing deep fried grease bits? No wonder this country's in trouble.


    Speaking of the Irrepressibly Stupid, the UN has declared Wonder Woman as the ambassador for empowering women. As if that weren't Stupid enough, feminist outrage stepped right in, within microseconds, and demanded a stop be put to this travesty for a few reasons: she is a fictional character who wears thigh high boots and exposed cleavage (because Mother Teresa was unavailable for the position), she is too white, closely associated with the American flag, and "not culturally sensitive." This proves that the UN is a ridiculous, useless organization (in case we didn't already know this) and that feminists are a ridiculous parody of themselves (in case we didn't already know this). Perhaps we should all get together, at KFC, and find common ground.













    I learned some Good Stuff growing up. My mother did a pretty good job. In grade school, I noticed some of my friends really didn't like black people. This was confusing and low-class to us, even in our mostly white neighborhood. It occurred to me that - hey... racism is learned. I also saw a small amount of antisemitism, also flowing down, but nowhere near as prevalent as the racism. The few Jewish kids in the 'hood were sometimes harangued by the parents of their friends, although it didn't seem to be a problem in school.

    Fast forward to The Online Age, where everyone you don't like is Literally Hitler. As a merrymaker, I have seen comics do really funny things with Hitler, especially Monty Python (who could make cardboard hilarious). There were a few features of his that invited poking and I do like to poke.

    Everything online is obviously a reflection of Real Life<tm>, to some degree; so I see a lot of Hitler references, 99.9% of them intended to beat down someone's speech or point. With the Hitler references are the Jew references. At first they were kinda funny. Then no so much. After a while I realized that there were groups of people who really, seriously did not like Jews, blaming them for everything from retail sales issues to a secret plot to ruin the world. The 'watchdog' agency, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), may have done some good in the past but right now they're a ridiculous parody of themselves, pointing their finger and screaming "ANTISEMITE" at everything and everyone. Kinda like the Black Lives Matter and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

    Recently I've run into some really bad examples of humanity online. They don't necessarily leap out, screaming, "JEWS! JEWS! JEWS DID IT!" but they're pretty close. It's a bit unnerving being around these people, even online. I see a lot more of this than overt racism, but it might be the places I visit.

    Also popping up is the White Genocide movement. These guys are also a bit different. They seem to feel that movements to let foreigners in the country is white genocide. I think. They'll be the first to say White Lives Matter (all lives matter, even the Stupid). I'm sure they have a few points in their favor but I haven't studied the platform.

    My first instinct is to block these people or not visit these sites. But Howard Stern, bastion of civility, taught everyone a lesson. One of his recurring guests was the KKK Guy. Howard kept him front and center and took a lot of heat for it. In my mind, Howard exposed his enemy and kept him front and center, where millions of people could see what he was up to and realize that, yes, this ugliness still exists.  So I no longer block any of this nonsense, preferring to see it for what it is. While the ADL has become a ridiculous parody of itself, I suppose some of it bears watching (by all of us).  And of course, this will be blamed on Trump, as if he personally gave out licenses to these folks. Regardless, we enjoy free speech and I'll fight for anyone's right to it.

    Watch where you hang out, virtually or in Real Life<tm>.

    Thursday, December 8, 2016

    Flibberjibbit

    Are you checking your store of explosives and coming up short? Need to refresh the stock?  Oil company Allied-Horizontal Wireline Services kinda screwed up the setup on one of their storage devices, exposing locations where it keeps its explosives.


    • If you have just the right model Epson printer, you probably can't print at this moment. Epson shipped some new firmware (instructions that reside in the device permanently) and it requires an internet connection to Google. Oddly enough, if you turn off internet, it works. They are working on the problem. I'm sure they have their Best People on it. Different people than the ones who didn't test the firmware before it got sent out.

    I have some equipment that sends me an alert when something happens that it doesn't like. So I go to the equipment to see what it's telling me and it refuses to tell me anything. There is no entry for the item that the equipment alerted me of. The equipment makes me wait 20-30 minutes before it will tell me what it didn't like. I have concluded that the machine is female.

    • Do you have an I-Que Intelligent Robot or My Friend Cayla doll? It sends your child's personal information to the manufacturer and a company that contracts with military and intelligence agencies. Privacy groups have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. Unfortunately, the FTC shares all its information with with non-intelligence agencies. All information is stored on the contractor's services and possibly Google's.  It's probably a good idea not to give these dolls to your kids or leave them on the table when the FBI calls to goad you into performing some terrorist act or other so they can 'catch' you at it.

    A perennial favorite of mine and candidate for vice-wife, Sofia Vergara, is being sued by her frozen embryos, Emma and Isabella. Ex-fiancee Nick Leob has already sued in California because they are being deprived of their inheritance (already in a trust fund) by not being born. But wait - it gets better (I am waaaay too amused by this): the new suit was filed in Louisiana, which offers special protections to frozen embryos (really? California only offers special protections to easily-triggered snowflakes). The legal paperwork stated that both parties had to agree not to use the embryos without the other's consent. The paperwork, however, did not stipulate what to do if the partners split.  Hey - leggo my embryo! This shit is hysterical and could not simply be made up by uber-amused  bloggers or headline-happy gossip rags.  

    "Hey Honey - let's make some embryos, name them, freeze them, provide for them, then file suit over them. Let's think about the legal ramifications for a moment, shall we? Since the embryos have legal standing and are being deprived of inheritance, we can say that they are also being abused horribly by being frozen, thus the parents are dually liable (don't you love playing lawyer?). Where it gets murky is not having language in the contract for the marriage dissolving. Let's throw the case out without bias (meaning it can be brought again with proper information) or perhaps without prejudice or llamas. Or have the legal system remind these overprivileged whiners to just have the damn child or children just like the rest of the world does: by swapping underwear and squatting in the fields. Why DID they freeze embryos? Because Sofia didn't want to ruin her figure. I volunteered to ruin her figure a long time ago but her legal representatives contacted me and mentioned that it would not be a good idea to come within 500 feet of her or communicate with her ever again.

    Or we could just take the lefty Approach and encourage them not to reproduce. Do we really want another generation of these people on the planet? I expected this from Mariah Carey - in fact, I don't think we're done with her for a good long time.

    • Somewhere the butts of the fellows from Monty Python are twitching horribly. A man from England opened up a British Shop, featuring all British goods. Complaints were swift, accusing him of going against the 'international nature' of England. Threatened were boycotts and protests. The complaints are not coming from foreigners, who love the shop. They are coming from neighbors. One stated that calling the shop Really British somehow implied that the other stores weren't. The shop's owner referred to the fracas as being like banning pizzas in Italy. While these people will eventually eat themselves, it is not happening quickly enough.
    • Speaking of Limeys, the producers of a nature show called Planet Earth II are defending themselves against criticism that the scenes are too brutal. And we thought politics was ugly...
    • Not to be outdone by the sheer stupidity of American universities, 32 British schools have banned tabloid newspapers. Read it again... banned.. newspapers. In every disaster area, there is at least one pocket of resistance, this being a school which just voted to ban orange juice with 'bits' in it because it's "hateful" and students cannot be trusted to consume it. Also banned: Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" and Mexican hats.


    During Career Day at school, they probably neglected to include the noble profession of Bluetooth antenna design for adult toys. Apparently this is not only a job, but a very difficult one. Where the hell do you put the antenna? Another job they overlooked is the testing lab for adult toys.

    • No matter what I really love, and there are two or three things in this category,  I will never be a fanboy of it. Fanboy reeks of a cape and/or high heels, neither of which I pull off well.

    Trumpie is coming under scrutiny again (really?), this time over his insistence on using his android phone, instead of a specially-built Blackberry, like Obama was forced to use. Making Android Great Again. But seriously, Donald, you have to be as secure as possible - take my word for it. I'm surprised that the team hasn't reached out to me for the CIO position. Can you imagine?

    • Keira Knightly (UK) revealed that her daughter said "F..." when Trump won the election. This is yet another reason I don't have children, yet this time it's pure stupidity on the part of the parent. How many of us are politically aware at 19 months? She didn't just invent that word - she had to hear it somewhere.  From the stories my parents told me, there was not a single one involving my expletives when (Margaret Thatcher?) won in the UK.

    Greg Lake, 69, of Emerson Lake & Palmer and King Crimson, has passed from cancer. 2016 has not been kind to us.


    • Sir Michael (Mick) Jagger has become a father for the eighth time. We all strive to be like Mick, only with the potential, not the realization.

    Heart disease and dementia deaths contribute to the first drop in US life expectancy for 20 years. Somehow this will be Trump's fault.

    • The US Surgeon General has stated that e-cigarettes are a public threat to young people. Not to old people? One in six high school students stated they used an e-cig in the past month. Is that not an important statistic? I was all for punishing the tobacco companies for lying but it's no longer a secret that tobacco is bad for you. Why do children pick this up?






    Tuesday, December 6, 2016

    Yes, Pastor, Those Are Your Wife's Nudes

    You think you're having a bad day.. and you just might be.. but this guy might win an award. He filed a suit against a Texas Toyota dealership alleging nude photos of his wife were sent to a swingers' site while he was buying a Toyota last year.

    Hmmm..... I think I'm getting a feeling....

    The allegations are quite serious under the law and the pastor and his wife have retained famous lawyer Gloria Allred (parodied on Family Guy as Gloria Ironbox). The salesman did maintain an account on the swingers' site and there's some electronic proof of hijinks, so I wouldn't want to be him at this point.

    This blog would be doing a disservice to its readers if it didn't, at some point, say that pastors NEVER join swinging sites or take naked pictures of their wives or girlfriends or boyfriends or small furry rodents. And after they never submit these pictures, they also never blame anybody else because they would never have done such a thing. Unfortunately, the name of the swinging site was not released. Because we need to do our due diligence to discover facts in this case.


    • although it has been joked about before and although it is doubted that this is correct, I wanted to share a small item of information on the combination of dogs and Roombas.

    So maybe I'm wrong about the whole Internet of Things concept. A certain Whirlpool dryer will post a tweet when its drying cycle is finished. Because you need this in your life.

    • My stomach is growling, which isn't all that odd. What IS odd is that there's a call and response thing happening between one side and the other. With different pitch growls. Do I ignore it or call an exorcist?


    Thought for the day: it's way too early this morning.

    • An Italian actress who pledged to perform sex acts upon people who voted no in a referendum is poised to become a woman of her word, scheduling appearances in many cities. We do not have this kind of stand-up behavior in the US: Madonna offered blowjobs to people voting for Hillary and an adult actress called Mia Kalifa offered the same for Trump voters. Neither came through.  America will never be the Best Country until we are all people of our word.

    This poor British dude lost his penis in a childhood accident and recently got it replaced at tremendous cost. When word of his eight inch appliance, which could go forever, got out, he was deluged with offers. This far he has only used it with a local working girl and says he's too busy to take anyone else up on their offers.  I dunno.. I suspect we have different priorities....

    Along related lines, a man was found, dead, with his penis cut off, in an NYC rest room. At this point all my male readers are bent over, crossing their legs involuntarily.

    • Southwest Airlines had to make an unscheduled stop yesterday due to an additional passenger. A woman gave birth on the place. A representative for Southwest said they were overjoyed that everybody was ok and they would only charge the newborn half the going rate.

    A man fatally shot his wife for urging him to kill himself. I suspect he would have gotten the better deal either way.

    • Nancy Pelosi, stalwart silly person and California's recurring nightmare, just said, "I don't think people want new direction." There is also talk of California seceding from the US.  I think this is a perfect idea, especially if they appoint Pelosi as their representative. This way, no one will have to do anything and nothing will ever get done. 

    Here's a well-written beginner's guide to beefing up your privacy and security online.


    • Be careful of what you say at Virginia Tech: there is now a list of 50 expressions to be considered microaggressions. This joyous celebration of free speech came from meetings that included such stalwarts of independent thinking as the NAACP, the Muslim Student Association, and the Jewish Student Union.

    A thief was recently apprehended with the aid of a BMW. The remote access system kept the doors locked until the police arrived. Yay - one for the good guys. Hang on... car doors being locked remotely? Remote control of many car functions, including acceleration and braking (already hacked on some cars)? All of this overriding the driver's actions?  Perhaps not.  Remember this when you buy a car.


    • Mrs lefty and I were discussing her recent revulsion for the coming cold, as well as her revulsion for the heat/humidity as she gets older. I'm no great fan of either but I don't complain - it means I don't have to MOW anymore!



    NOTE to anyone considering a blog on this platform: the spell checker does not recognize yay, ok, or blowjob.





    Don't forget your Christmas shopping!

    Friday, December 2, 2016

    We're Gonna Do Something DIFFRENT Tonight

    The head of Germany's spy agency claims that Russian hackers will disrupt the upcoming election. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a potential winner. Whenever you don't want something to happen, claim that the Russians are going to hack it. This should be useful for everything from local elections to presidential elections to getting out of tests in school.


    • Are you enjoying Uber? Know that with the latest software upgrade, the app is tracking your location, regardless of whether you're in an Uber or not, so long as you have it running in the background. And it wants access to your address book.  Take a moment and ponder what this means... your location, 24 hours per day, plus your contacts... that would be the end for me but I celebrate by not using Uber in the first place.

    Kelloggs, the cereal people, has decided to pull its advertising from Breitbart, a right-wing news network. As soon as the news hit, Breitbart users initiated a boycott against Kelloggs. Things are shaping up to be interesting, with existing boycotts against other companies. I'm not exactly a Breitbart reader but this is shaping up to be an active season. There is actually a list of active boycotts, which becomes ridiculous as you have to check it every five minutes if you're shopping. Fortunately I'm already boycotting the NFL (I don't do sports), Pepsi ( you couldn't pay me to drink it), and various others.  The one that really confuses me is a potential banning of Trump's Twitter account. Do you really want to 'censor' the president's account? And what does this say about the media in general?

    • The FBI has, through no surprise, gotten the legal OK to spy on any computer, anywhere in the world. All they need is a handy judge to approve things and they're off. Somehow I don't think this is the type of government the Founding Fathers had in mind. I urge you to read this.

    Yes, it's the appliance you've been waiting for: the wifi-enabled 6-quart slow cooker. Walmart has it for a great price. The only problem is that it doesn't work if wifi is down and you can't hook it to your wifi anyway. Aside from that, it's a handy device and a bargain.

    • Reminder not to wait to update Firefox and Tor browser. Do not put it off. Nasty hack available for it makes it unsafe to run. Period. If it asks you to upgrade, do so. If it doesn't ask, download the new version. Or don't, but your system might be used to hack something and you don't want the nice people at the FBI to stop by your place for a nice visit.

    Most computer infections these days come from removable USB devices. With that in mind, you need to protect your systems, particularly the USB devices. No need to worry, folks, because now there's a USB Condom. The device technically disconnects the data pins of your device, allowing only electricity to flow. I'm not entirely sure you'd want to use a device without data, only to charge, but we are assured that this is THE device to have. I think I'll wait a bit.

    • As if Faceyspaces weren't enough to get your Really Good Social Media Juices<tm> going, one can now be a Social Media Influencer. As best I can tell, if you have a Metric Shitload<tm> of followers, they apparently hang on your every word and will be influenced by the things you say (type). As if this weren't Boffo enough, you can add Social Media Influencer to your profile. This may encourage companies to give you Free Shit<tm>. It might also cause potential followers to laugh hysterically at you and all of your offspring, born or potential.  Amongst other things, the Influencers are generally good-looking, which rules me (and most of social media) out. Companies will PAY you for your influence. If there were only a commercial platform for sarcasm, I'd be rich beyond my wildest dreams.


    One of the disadvantages of buying concert tickets online is the targeted ads from the ticket vendors. One sends me 'hand-picked suggestions'. After Rick Astley and Sarah Silverman, I unsubscribed. Apparently their algorithms are what we refer to as really f-d up. Also recommended was the For Today Farewell Tour. I didn't even know there was a First Tour.

    • The inventor of the Big Mac has left the planet. I said I'd be nice to McDonalds, as they closed their Gaitlinberg store to provide food to residents and firefighters - a Fine Gesture. If I hadn't promised to be nice, I'd have said something like "arteries across the world have started unclogging," but I'm a man of my word.


    Hey, have you been on the Adult Friend Finder site? They were hacked in October, alerted, and finally have their Best People on it. Just so you know, they also kept data on deleted accounts. Their passwords were not protected either.  Just don't, ok?





    I sure picked a bad day to stop taking amphetamines. No, wait.. to sleep late. It's been a while since I got to sleep late. I didn't get to last weekend because of some work on a space project which I cannot divulge. Today was a day or pure joy - sleep until I was done. Then nap.

    Almost on cue, the neighbor's company arrived. And when I say company, I mean the guys who showed up to cut down her tree.  I'm sure they were delightful guys (they were guys, or at least chicks with really deep voices) but I try not to mix tree-cutting with sleep. The neighbor called, bless her, to tell us to move our car out of the driveway, lest we have to submit a rather large insurance claim.  Can you imagine trying to figure out which insurance company is supposed to handle this? They could successfully keep this in the legal system so long that our estate would have to handle it. We'll have to leave instructions to disburse the money to the dog(s).

    The actual tree-cutting wasn't all that bad, but the trucks were insane. I kept banging my head on the headboard and cursing the tree-downing profession. As if that weren't pleasant enough, they were disposing of the tree's remains on the spot, which meant a chipper. For those of you not familiar, it's a wheeled device into which they feed tree bits. It has a whirly chopping blade-thingy inside, which renders the tree bits to sawdust. One would think this would also be a great aid for disposing of bodies, but one would be incorrect. The evidence, as it were, would be all over the place. You need a device that will properly (and untraceably) dispose of the evidence (but don't tell anyone you read it here).

    Wife warned me in advance not to let Marshall outside, as he'd want to stand there, like an idiot, barking his head off at them, not moving. Again, as if precisely on time, Marshall had to go outside. I think the wife knew before she left and was counting on my semi-dead state to not question and laugh hysterically at me once she left. Marshall used to bark when he wanted to go out. Now he stands there, whining pitifully. If that fails, he approaches, puts his head on my arm and whines. This will go on until he gets what he wants. This is also how he runs the entire house. He's now getting medically special dog food that he hates. So we located medically special dog food in varieties, like chicken and vegetables and beef stew. Let me tell you, there isn't a whine to be heard when he goes face-down into his food bowl. It's cleaned, so well that you couldn't tell it was a dog food bowl approximately 90 seconds ago. And a family of four could eat cheaper than one can of this food.

    Half dead, I donned my shoes, checking to see if my pants were already in-place (they were - it was a good morning) and prepared to drag myself outside so I could watch him go to the bathroom (like he does to us every day) and keep him from barking like a loon at the tree guys. But Marshall, being much smarter than me, saw me putting on my shoes and decided that this meant I was going somewhere without him. He assumed his Sad Perch on the steps and prepared to look pitiful and alone. It took five minutes to convince him I was taking him outside. Once outside, he immediately rushed to the side of the house and started barking at the tree guys like a loon. This was confusing, as this is the same spot he uses to bark once at the neighbor so she will bring him a treat.

    He thought he would evade my please to return to the house by hiding in the bushes. What he failed to realize was that it's almost winter and there are no leaves on the bushes under which to hide. I finally got him in the house, but not until after he discovered a convenient muddy puddle and stood in it for a bit, obviously contemplating the meaning of life or other Spaniel Mysteries. We now know why he comes in the house with wet paws and leaves sticking to him.

    Good thing we made it into the house when we did, because Drama had just broken out with the tree guys. One guy, who we'll assume was the boss, was yelling at his minions, telling them not to come to work until they were ready to work. This progressed to how he was going to get two new minions because these two were nothing but grief. At this point, the smarter minion (we'll call him Leroy for no particular reason at all) fired up one of the heavy pieces of equipment, as if to signal to Boss that he couldn't hear him - he was too busy working.

    I desperately wanted to go back to bed but couldn't. I wasn't too upset, though, as the unstable compound I slipped into the chipping device while they were arguing would combust the next time they turned it on.





    Wednesday, November 30, 2016

    Happy Hendrix Holiday

    Every day is a Hendrix day but November 27 is Jimi's birthday.  Many Happys, Jimi.


    • San Francisco's Municipal Railway system was hit by a ransomware attack. This allowed the passengers to ride free, as the ticket system was down. Insert joke about malware not always being bad. The hackers demanded $73,000. The Railway folks vow not to pay ransom. From my reading, they might want to tighten up the system in one or 1,000 places.
    • Just in - in a Monty Python-esque bit of news, the hacker was hacked. Yes, the fine gentleman responsible for the Muni ransomware hack had his email address hacked by a security researcher. How? He guessed the security question, allowing him to reset the password on the email account. Let that be a lesson to you, whatever that means. Oh yeah, strong account security, on everything including throwaway email accounts.


    2016 hasn't been too good a year, what with the election nonsense, musicians and others dying, and over 900 recorded security breaches. And those are the recorded ones. Not counted are the hushed and the as-yet-undiscovered ones. There are two types of businesses: the types who have been hacked and the types that don't know they've been hacked. Read the link or just take my word for it. Pass the tissues, please.


    • if you have any sort of iCloud account and are receiving calendar or sharing spam, do not reply or decline. If you do, the account will be flagged as live and you'll get more spam. 

    Over in the UK, vegetarians and vegans have discovered that the five pound notes are made with a substance derived from animal fat. My singular (identified) vegan reader is going to be glad they fled the UK. How do I know I have a vegan reader? These Google blogger controls are very sophisticated.

    • Russia is a funny place. A holocaust-themed ice dance is drawing condemnation. Hmm... ice... probably not Springtime for Hitler then... Hitler on Ice? That's Not my Nazi? Six Million Jews Can't be Wrong?

    A giant shield built to cover the damaged nuclear reactor in Chernobyl has been moved into place.  In other news, the Kremlin has announced that Lenin's death certificate has been filed.


    • If you're thinking about a night out in Brussels, be aware of a Dancing Tax. Yes, a tax on dancing. And by all means, do NOT go to the bathroom.

    Are you, by chance, a Canadian who was caught drunk driving? Those wacky Canuck lawmakers have a punishment for you.. worse than death.. you may be forced to listen to Nickelback. I thought this was against the Geneva Convention but what do I know...

    • Who's got time to watch the 37 Harry Potter films? Watch this shortcut instead.

    Today's Helpful Tip: How to stop feeling guilty about everything.
    * Shoot yourself.

    Next week: World Peace
    If you're looking for somewhat less deadly suggestions, although I can't imagine why, try here.

    • Equality strikes again! Congress, bastion of rationality, has taken women being required to sign up for the draft off the table. Oddly enough, no feminists demanding equality has complained about this. Equality means equality in everything. Or rather, equality when it suits them.
    • Having said that, I don't think men should register either.


    If you use Firefox through Tor, turn off javascript (like we do anyway) or use another browser until a patch is released. This is for Windows only. Try using the NoScript addin.

    • The New York Times asks the question: Can tv be fair to Muslims? ThermionicEmissions answers: not til long after they're fair to the left-handed.

    The FDA has agreed to Ecstasy trials for PTSD patients. It's an exciting time for those with PTSD. And before you ask, you can't just go out and get some PTSD. You can sign up to serve in Afghanistan but I don't recommend it.

    • An Australian man handed over a breast implant to police, thinking it was evidence of a crime. The 'evidence' was revealed to be a jellyfish. Australian breast implant manufacturers call foul and demand jellyfish alter their appearance to look less like implants.

    Hillary Clinton presented a humanitarian award to Katy Perry the other night. Dubbed 'The Axis of Incompetence Tour,' no one can figure out why. A failed politician known for corruption and lying, presenting an award to a singer known for her breasts.

    • President-elect Donald 'Me' Trump has announced he is cutting ties with his businesses to focus on running the country, leaving them to his children. Ivanka is excited, hoping for a salary rivaling Chelsea Clinton's.

    To no one's surprise, Marshall the cocker is running the house, to an unprecedented degree. He used to bark to go outside. Now he makes a pitiful whining noise. Having discovered whining works, he is now doing a full scale study on Human Behavioral Patterns and whining most of the time, just to see how many times he can make the humans do things until they start refusing. By 9:15am, he has gotten fed twice, been served cold bottled water, and gone outside four times. He counts the experiment as a success and it will be peer-reviewed and written up in Dog Psychology magazine. The humans, out of their minds from constantly being bossed around by a quadruped, are looking into a doggie door, which will not work, due to other quadrupeds possibly using it.






    Tuesday, November 29, 2016

    I Told You So. Again.

    According to my Special Blogger Dashboard, readership has gone up. No, really, I was as surprised as you. Instead of six per day, I'm up to twenty two. In what must be New Math, the counter says twenty two, but the bar graph says seven. Maybe it's a graphics thing - I never understood graphics. If I had my way, email would still be text-based, with no pictures or backgrounds or, heaven forbid, emojis. It would also be virus-free, but what do I know?


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    I have maintained that exercise will kill you and that housework is exercise. Everybody laughs.
    Well, I just proved it.

    Mrs lefty has gone on a cleaning spree, the likes of which have not been seen since before we moved in. In fact, this is our 20th anniversary in the house, so to celebrate, we're cleaning. Ok, be fair, she's cleaning. I'm holding down the couch, which is quite a valuable and respected job. What if the couch were to get away on its own? That would be ugly, and we don't want that sort of ugliness in the place. We prefer other, more ugly, sorts of ugliness.

    Mrs lefty is a very patient woman. We've been married for about twenty-some years, so that explains a lot about her patience and tolerance and sense of humor. But I can try the patience of the pope (Judge Judy can make the pope antisemitic) and I have tried (and succeeded) my wife's patience past the breaking point. She very politely 'suggested' that I assist with her Grand Cleaning Scheme. She would not hear of my successes in holding down the couch, not the dangers of it defying gravity and escaping. Now when I say very politely, I mean the sheer volume of her request fired off nuclear alerts in four countries on the other side of the globe. She was even so bold as to ignore my statements about exercise and cleaning.

    Realizing that I wanted to sleep in my own bed, I 'decided' to join her in her quest.

    One of my first tasks was to get the trash out. Now this is an stunningly mundane and ordinary task. Except in my house. Due to a very peculiar trash can, in a very peculiar house, inhabited by peculiar people and their very peculiar dog, we use peculiar trash bags, which are a bit larger than the can. When I go to pull the bags out, they refuse to come out. If I listen closely I can hear the sound of them openly mocking me. So I do the only thing a man can do - curse and do the Trash Can Dance, where I yank on the bag with one hand and with the other hand I try to pry it loose from the inside, again, using a lot of screaming and cursing.  Screaming and cursing, by the way, is the only way to fix computers, cars, and most of the time, houses. Then I put my hand in the other side, dislodging it from the can. I repeat this in two inch increments until the can finally lets go of the bag (complete with final mocking noises). Sometimes this produces a sigh, sometimes I just fall back on my well-padded derriere. Buttocks. Bum. Bottom. Situpon. Ass.

    Having accomplished Trash, I got on to Carrying Things. In my wife's condition, it's best that I carry things up and down steps, as some days she can't carry herself up the steps. This particular device needed to be relocated to the basement, as the singing and dancing interrupted midnight chocolate runs. Down the steps I went, unable to see the steps or my feet, when I got the warning to watch the large storage box by the bottom of the steps. We, for some reason, have rather a large quantity of storage boxes, perhaps for storing things. The part that makes this situation unique is that we can never find the correct lid for the box, much like the 3,000 piece Tupperware set we have. While it might hurt to count, I'd say most of the house is in plastic storage boxes in the basement.

    Down the steps I went, under my own power, careful to notice the storage box by the bottom of the steps.  I was so careful that I performed what I was told was a very amusing, slow-motion, sideways triple lindy onto said storage box. I performed this feat while saving the device I was carrying, as opposed to saving any part of my body, which was apparently unimportant to me at the moment. Oddly enough, I managed to survive this adventure without any screaming at all. In fact, I might perform it again with screaming, just to make sure I got it right the first time.

    So I submit to you proof that [exercise = cleaning = injury]. I told you so. Again.