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?