Giving Darwin a Little Push

So I'm driving along, minding my own business, and everybody else's because none of them can drive, and there's a biker, biking in my lane, outside of a bike lane. I would be the bad guy if I ran him over.

A little later there was a person walking in the street on a tiny two lane road. I remember thinking it was getting late and maybe he should have tried in an hour, when no one could see him. I would not be the bad guy then.

• If you're a Snapchatter, and who among us is, you should turn off SnapMap yesterday, especially on your children's phones. It's a new location tracker, letting everyone know where they are. You know.. everyone. Friends. bullies, neighbors, child abusers, etc...

Ever have an earworm? No, not that thing in the Star Trek movies that eats into your brain. An earworm is a song that gets into your head and won't leave (kinda like that thing in the Star Trek movies). 

You know you've raised a great kid when they come up with creative, personal gifts for your birthday. My friend's son picked up his ukulele (stop it) and belted out a Foo Fighters song, her favorite band. She was joyful and sent copies to everyone. And now I've got "Learning to Fly" stuck in my brain. On ukulele.

• I stll can't type.

Among the most interesting(?) facts I learned in the past few days is that Patti Smyth ("Goodbye to You") married John McEnroe and gave up music until recently. In addition to being a great lefty tennis player, he's a lefty guitar player. Another fact is that he said Serena Williams is a great tennis player, but would be ranked 700 on the men's circuit. I smell war.

• A Southwest Air flight was diverted after a passenger tried to open the door while in the air. She was subdued. Those of us who have seen a season or two of Air Crash Investigation know it's physically impossible to open a plane door in flight because of pressurization.

My laptop power cord has a problem with me: second day in a row, it has disconnected itself. Either that or it feels it's due a vacation. I wouldn't want me pounding on me either.

• We are enduring some sort of cosmic mess starting with plumbing. The small lake in the basement was caused by a broken pipe. A temporary patch was applied, with the warning that we really need to get the pipe replaced. So we're saving. As we get close to the Magic Number, Marshall's vet bills and the new windshield arrived.
• The new small lake in the basement was caused by a brand new break in the pipe, about a foot or two down from the first break, whose repair has held up wonderfully.
• The toilets are no longer talking to each other, but have developed an allergy to solid matter being flushed. 
• I was looking for an excuse to stop eating fiber and now it's here!

You heard it here first: the National Endowment for the Arts is spending $20,000 on a film about an illegal immigrant lesbian who falls for a TSA agent. I'm against federal funding for all arts, but this time the Motion Picture Agency of America is on my side, of all people. They are terrified of the public discovering that movies can be made on a $20,000 budget.

• The University of Arizona wants to set the record straight: they have no relationship with a visiting scholar from France who identifies as a hippopotamus.
• To set the matter even straighter, the hippo is an alter-ego.
• This week I identify as a fire truck. Let me know what you identify as...

Last week, Johnny Depp asked when the last time an actor assassinated a president was. This week on the Presidential Hit List, John Cusack put up a graphic that states "You are dead. Get yourself buried."

You know me - I hold freedom of speech sacrosanct. I don't want to imply they shouldn't be allowed to say it. It's just pretty ugly. This didn't happen when Hollywood's Hero, the Obamachrist, was in office. I sure didn't wish for his death in public (or private), although I don't exactly have the reach of celebrity.

Predictably, the right is going mental about actors issuing death threats.
Predictably, the left is as quiet as the press was on Obama.
Do I believe that actors are issuing death threats? Please.
Do we need to look at what's happening upstream and who's trying to divide us? You tell me.

• Mozilla has a new privacy-focused browser called Focus. It was already available for iOS and now you can get it for android, both from the usual places. It's a very fast, stipped down browser that blocks ads and all sorts of trackers. If any of this breaks the site you're viewing, you can turn it off.
• I just installed it. It's very fast. Give it a shot.
• Having said that, I'll have to look into how this is different from Firefox with proper blocking extensions installed. I'm guessing the extensions are just integrated.

This is why we can't have safe things: Britain's latest aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth (3.5 billion pounds, which is Very Heavy in dollars), is vulnerable to cyber attacks because some of its systems run Windows XP.  The latest aircraft carrier. Runs an absolutely ancient version of an operating system. That operating system is Windows. Do you see where I'm going with this? Isn't it obvious to any first grader that you don't use ancient, no-longer-supported operating systems for anything, no less a new aircraft carrier? The ship actually has a team of people checking for cyber attacks. HMS stands for Hack My Ship.

It would be much easier to just paint HACK ME, I USE XP on the sides.

My Eyebrows Hurt

Mrs lefty hands me a paper from the state. There's some sort of Tax Amnesty thing happening and perhaps, since this is the last day, I should call.

Why?

Because the paper says I own lots of hundreds of dollars for something and if I pay now, I'll get a discount. Mrs lefty says we should make payment arrangements. Mr lefty says we should have a look at this.

The paper, which looks legitimate, says we own money for Voluntary Fair Use Tax.  Well, taking the obvious road; if it's voluntary, we don't have to pay it. This is apparently not a useful answer and the state has no sense of humor.

So I call the state to try and figure out what all of this is. Being the state, I get a recording, reminding me how important my call is to them. It's so important, the recording reminds me at one minute intervals. During the hold, I get four calls from Mrs lefty about Very Important Stuff, plus a few texts from friends and family, and a whole lot of email.

I also get to look up Fair Use Tax. This is such an obscure item, it barely appears in search engines. A few pages later I have a grasp on this tax. It's very clever: this is a tax-grab. The state, upset that one can purchase things out of state and avoid sales tax, has rectified the problem by enacting a Voluntary Fair Use Tax. Any time legislation or tax has a positive name, you had better watch out. The trick here is that they have decided that the tax-free purchase has to hit state transportation, thus you owe tax. Even if you think of buying something from a different state, you owe the tax. To make matters more amusing, the tax is even higher in two cities.

Forty five minutes later, I reach a very cheerful state worker, who proceeds to explain to me that I owe hundreds of dollars and can get amnesty if I pay now. Like most reasonable humans, I ask what the tax is for, or on. Like most state workers, she has absolutely no idea. Her best suggestion was to dig up our tax return from 2000. Ummm.... no. Even if I could unearth the return, there would be no item that required hundreds of dollars of tax, or I would have paid it. Statie then says she's not a tax professional. So I ask again, can she tell me where it's from. She tries to sell me on paying today but still cannot tell me why I own the tax or even what the tax is.

Let me lay this out for you... we receive a tax document that says we owe hundreds of dollars for something that happened seventeen years ago. We can get a discount if we pay today, but no one can tell us why we allegedly owe the money.  I have a feeling I'll have to dispute this. I hope it doesn't involve a phone call.

• There is snoring coming from the bathroom. I'm torn between curiosity, inertia, and the realization that it's not going to be the weirdest thing to happen today.

Honda (yes, that Honda) was forced to shut down a manufacturing plant on Tokyo after the WannaCry virus made a return. Are these the people you trust with making you car 'connected' in the computer age? This is a preview of what's to come, this time, in your car.

• In reference to the Department of Defense Inspector General's report on the NSA, well, the NSA doesn't come off so well. After Snowden, there were steps recommended, which were performed in a rather half-assed way. Rest assured, your data is not collected in a half-assed way.

What's faster to transfer a terabyte of data from San Francisco to London: a 100mbps internet connection or a British Airways 747? This is an interesting explanation of how data moves across the net (and on a plane). The best line from the article is "If airlines experienced aircraft loss at the rate the Internet sees packet loss there'd be 28 crashes per day in the US alone."

• A police officer at the airport in Flint, Michigan, was stabbed and is in critical condition. The airport was closed down and the perp is in custody. The talking head news person said there was no apparent cause for the stabbing. I beg to differ - the apparent cause was the guy with the knife. I should probably avoid getting into tv news.
• On the other hand, imagine how interesting tv news would get if I were on it.
• On the third hand, my career would last just under a week, with Las Vegas giving me very poor odds.
• On any remaining hands, the Canadian-born knife-wielder shouted "Allahu Akbar" before stabbing the policeman. Who could have seen that coming?

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, wants to offer amnesty for the illegal aliens who lived in the Grenfell Tower, the building that just experienced a tragic fire. This is his priority.

• Followup: Evergreen State College, coming off a protest around a day without white people, has had so much of this going on that they have been forced to hold graduation off-campus. Because nothing is being done to correct the matter. The professor who disagreed with day without white people was forced to teach off-campus for his own safety. He and his family have been forced to move. Anyone who disagrees with antifa is branded a fascist and is a target for violence. A Daily Caller author has suggested antifa be considered a terrorist group. Nothing is being done.

I don't claim to understand and am not sure I want to, but an Instagram model was killed the other day by an exploding whipped cream dispenser. It's hardcore when one dies for one's ice cream (if that's what was involved). Your can of whipped cream is still safe - this is a high-end, CO2 injected, high-performance cream whipping machine. The local news brough in an expert who said the blunt force looked like when hockey players take a puck to the chest. This household will stick with a can of non-leathal Redi-Whip.

• Two twenty-something British men were arrested for planning to hack into Microsoft and steal user data. After further examination and testing, the case was dropped because they were just trying to use Windows 10 and the behavior was normal.

Today is National Take Your Dog to Work Day. What could possibly go wrong? All of my coworkers were astounded to see someone attractive walking anywhere near me. Then it was time for Trashcan Inspection, followed by Desk Inspection, followed by Search for Snacks and Maybe Attention. It's a full day's work for Marshall. If I can keep him from defecating on the boss' desk, I will consider it a complete success.

• In what could be the only good news ever produced by a computer virus, traffic cameras in Australia were hit with the WannaCry ransomware.

Today's best psychology journal title: Vegan Sexuality: Challenging Heteronormative Masculinity through Meat-free Sex. You can't make this shit up.

There might be a name for this and if there isn't, we need one.

I just offered Marshall a bacon-like treat. He groggily looked up at me, sniffed the morsel, and put his head back down. I threw the thing on the ground, he sniffed it, then ate it. Does it taste better from the carpet than my hand?

Note to British Porn Watchers

This is for our British readers (we don't have any - I just like saying it): the Queen has rubberstamped legislation requiring sites to age-verify. If this is not done, and payment providers and third parties will be required to intervene. If this fails, the site can be cut off, even though it's perfectly legal to view it. And speaking of perfectly legal, there will be censorship of 'extreme sex acts'.

Of course there are a whole bunch of improvements listed (it's for the children). Short story: watch your porn through a VPN. Less short story: more intrusive government, in the name of improvement and safety, can watch you watching porn. This is an early volley into controlling what you can see. England should be up in arms, although it's probably wrapped up in something the royals are wearing or the Department of Silly Hats, measuring one of the more fashionable chapeaus, which can range from six to sixty feet tall. You can tell this is a serious item, because the British are my favorite people. I may well be a Brit in the body of an American (trans-continental?).

Oh yeah, there will be social media fines for Terror Content also.

• Something is up again, as in more of the Shadow Broker releases of NSA weapons. Microsoft is releasing a second set of updates for Windows XP, an incredibly long-dead version, as well as Server 2003, a somewhat less-dead version. Regardless, if you run any version of Windows (or anything else), keep up to date. This is not a suggestion.

Someone brought to my attention that this blog has no cat gifs or blinky graphics. That is all.

• Why are lunatics shooting government officials? There has been a lot of noise made about the violent rhetoric of the left, and some of it is disgraceful, but we cannot blame words, as the right claims. This is the result of action by an unstable human, unable to tell right from wrong and clearly a danger to others. This alone is grounds for involuntary commitment (a topic close to my heart).
• After his name was released, the Internet Detectives went into action and located his Faceyspaces page, complete with all sorts of organizations and 'radical' comments. He was a Bernie supporter. It's amazing that, with all this information in the open, he still went right ahead and shot. FB is the front page of the NSA, fer chrissake. Yes, omnipresent government surveillance will keep us all safe.
• The representative's ten year old son was present at the game.
• The local news is running a segment on how to apply a tourniquet. Local news viewers are always so well-prepared.

in China, Kentucky Fried Chicken is using facial recognition software to predict what the customer will order. It is doing so with the Baidu search engine, the Chinese Google. It's faulty, it's privacy invasive, and it's being rolled out to 5,000 restaurants now. They should post pictures and shame everyone who eats there.. maybe a little blackmail as a new earnings strategy.

• We were behind someone in a BMW the other day. While cutting off another driver, he used his turn signal. No, really! Then out of the blue, he used it again to make a turn. He must've been going to the Happy Place. If the police caught him, it would be a beating for sure.

Another van-related incident in London, this time an anti-Muslim attack. A reportedly drunk man ran down some Muslims, on the way out of mosque. This is unacceptable. Common sense laws must be enacted to battle this sort of thing. Did you know anyone can walk into a dealership and leave with a van? In addition, there will obviously be calls for censorship of the internet, banning encryption, and more cameras, perhaps in everyone's houses.

• Happy Fathers Day to all who fit the profile. Marshall looked up at me and wished me one. I also get a lot of points for not reproducing. It fills my heart with joy when I realize what I haven't unleashed on the world.

Apparently some of us were wrong all along: it was not the Russians hacking the election, it was the Moroccans! They attempted to hijack the election via phishing emails at a school and although they were able to deface a website, they failed Hijacking 101. So the next time someone says Russia did it, you can tell them with authority that it was the Moroccans. Mo Rocca not available for comment.

• This is week two of my brand new auto glass, courtesy of Safelite. A bird pooped on it so I had him shot, but Safelite gets an A and a hearty recommendation.

If you use Firefox, make sure the new speed feature is enabled. If you don't use Firefox, pretend you never read this.

• On social media, you have these 'experts' popping up and referring to themselves as Social Media Influencers. Or Social Media Thought Leaders. What a ridiculous set of titles. Because of the way they want to be my friend and follower, my new title is Social Media Influencer Attractor. But wait - we also have the foodies and travel bloggers. Yes, you can now spend your valuable time (stick with me on this) watching others eat and vacation! We live in great times.

Marshall further enhanced my Fathers Day by 'processing' some paperwork for me. Apparently in Pet World, anything on the floor is fair game, so that stack of neatly-arranged paper to file of shred becomes a former pile of widely-spread papers, sometimes shredded, for good measure. This week's special modification involves water.  The neat pile will sit there, minding its own business, when Marshall appears, soaked from head to tail from a dip in his pool. He positions himself right over the pile and plops right down on top of it. At some point in the future, I will wonder why all my paperwork is brown and/or was waterlogged in the past.

Since the weather has been ridiculously bad lately, Marshall's pool hasn't seen a lot of action. Not to be outdone, he will walk to his water bowl, drink a bit, then proceed to take a paw and paw at the water until most of it is on the floor outside of his bowl. Everybody's a critic. Then he comes over to the paperwork and continues the important task of wetting every piece of paper I own.

Normal people, who don't have blogs, might simply decide not to leave paper on the floor. In this house, we have the organizational skills of a room full of five year olds, so this is not even a remote possibility.

You Had a WHAT?

Many have given thought to aging and technology. Today's kids will never know

• the joys of trying to get the little yellow plastic thingie into the 45 so it will play on your record player
• pay phones
• 8 track tapes and sometimes cassettes
• a bigass home stereo system with huge speakers and Serious Wattage
• dial phones
• home phones
• watches
• alarm clocks
• cars without seatbelts
• leaded gas
• vacuum tube appliances that had to warm up before coming on
• non-flat screen televisions
• purchasing porn, music, and movies
• (relative) privacy

Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.  - Ben Franklin

• Veterans Memorial Park, in Belle Plaine, Minnesota has a controversial monument with a cross. The Freedom from Religion Foundation is at the head of a movement to have it removed, as it goes counter to the First Amendment. City officials voted to keep it in the park (because apparently cities can vote to approve unconstitutional things).
• You know what happened next, right? The satanists submitted a proposal for their own display. In almost every case, this is enough to get the original item removed, but Belle Plain is apparently special.  The priest started Panic Mode<tm>, about how this will encourage children to try satanism and will bring the end of morality to the world.
• The satanic display will go up as scheduled. 
• Quite frankly, I'd be more scared of the priest and his buddies. A lot of their shenanigans have come to light lately....

GAB, the right-leaning, zero-censorship Twitter replacement cannot get a mobile app going on iOS. The developers have worked tirelessly but Apple will not approve the app for their store. Excuses aside, take one guess why... I mentioned to the GAB folks that it would be a badge of pride not having an iOS app, but for some unknown reason, they didn't share my enthusiasm.

• The election in England is over. Many hands are wringing. There are new and old office holders. And I understand absolutely none of it. The one bright side is that Monty Python prepared me for the election by introducing the Silly Party and the Very Silly Party. They are actual candidates, one with a bucket on his head. Yes, this is part of their elections, and a welcome part, as far as we're concerned.
• I would like our friends in the UK to note that absolutely no one in the US protested, burned flags, burned people, or rioted over their elections, unlike their mad, unruly protests over our election. This point would be much better made if I had any UK readers.

One of the most controversial tweets in the history of Twitter.

• Gender Studies is basically an exercise in observing a penis only once, and blaming it for everything bad.

In case you were bored, we just sent up a spy satellite to spy on spy satellites. Funny as this is, we really don't want to know what that cost. And we won't.

• It got somewhat less boring over the weekend. Started with a new medicine that made the wife nuts. Then a 2am trip to the emergency vet because Marshall was whining constantly. Nothing was found. Then a crack in the windshield most of the way across. Today we get to watch that service that comes to your house and installs the glass. Fortunately we have so much money that this won't be an issue.

Mrs lefty says to me she saw it raining. Well, not raining, but leaking from the telephone pole.  Leaking?  Yeah, the pickle bucket at the top of the pole.

Uh-oh.

I called the electrical utility's "You better check this out" hotline and they assured me they'd get their best people on this soonest.

You see, the pickle bucket is a transformer. Surrounding the transformer is vegetable oil (you think I'm being silly, but this one time I'm not). The oil was leaking from the transformer case, which really isn't a good thing. There's really a frightening amount of voltage and current up there and we only need a small fraction down here.

Within hours, the utility rushed some of their best people to the area to swiftly knock out the power to the entire block. An hour later, we were back in business. Yay repair guys!

A utility person we know told us this has been a problem forever and they never fixed it. Apparently the load from everybody using their air conditioners in the 95 degree high-humidity heat set it over the edge.

This, of course, brings up very important side effects of power loss: OMG - THE INTERNET! Even on a laptop or phone, if your router/wireless doesn't have battery backup, you're screwed. The phone can use 3G/4G/4.796G, the computer is black, and the laptop will last as long as its battery.  Remember this. Some providers install a backup battery for the modem/router.  Never mind air conditioning or breathing - we need internet!

I formally apologize for that.

She Looks Like Peter Tork

Just to get this thing kicked off with a bang, over 8,600 vulnerabilities have been found in pacemakers. Don't leave the frigging house.

• So there was only one act of terror over the weekend (that got any press) and that was another van running into people in England, on the London Bridge. There were fatalities.
• There's an awful lot of this going on. I get a strange feeling we're being manipulated. Last time England claimed they needed net censorship. This time they claimed they need worldwide net control (censorship). BINGO. False flag operation, designed to obtain control of the (mostly) free internet. Let's watch closely. Nothing happens out of a vacuum.
• Speaking of which, the policeman who shot and killed three of the terrorists has been suspended.

Your cell provider knows where you are at any moment. Is it ok for the police to know, without a warrant? The Supreme Court will rule. Watch this case, if Ginsburg can stay awake that long.

• This is not new, but the Secret Service got color printer manufacturers to have printers encode date and serial number of the printer on each document you print. This was initially for counterfeiting measures, but now it's for the children. Yet more collusion with government. This is how they outed the latest NSA leaker.
• The leaker, a white woman, stated online that 'Being White is Terrorism.'

Thought for the day: I commit terrorism every day by deliberately being white.

I read that Dickey Betts recently made peace with Gregg Allman. Good timing. This is not the burden you wish to carry for the rest of your life. Please remember this.

• British Airways' IT Glitch, that took down the entire airline last week, was caused, as previously typed here, by a power surge that knocked even the backup system offline. Additionally, outsourcing made it worse, with the foreign workers not having the knowledge to restart the systems. A brand new cause has been found... a systems engineer switched off the power to the IT systems. It was switched back on, which allegedly caused physical damaged to the systems.
• Just a note: switching the power off to the systems is not the same as a large surge or offshore contractors not being able to power up the systems.

Another thing learned from COPS: meth chicks are skinny. I like skinny.

Latest on the students of Evergreen State College: protesters are running around with baseball bats. An administrator released a memo, instructing students to get rid of the bats immediately (or he'd release an even more stern memo).

• Memo to London: Those three men in a van who just ran into people on the London Bridge? They were known to authorities. People called with concerns about them. One was in a jihad film. With all this knowledge, they completed their mission. With one camera for every eleven people, your government couldn't protect you. MI5 says it will be a generation before they catch up - they're woefully understaffed.
• Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.  -Ben Franklin
• Your government isn't going to protect you. You will simply give away your rights, like after 9-11. This applies to all countries.
• In related news, Welsh police have picked up a man with automated facial recognition for the first time. Automated facial recognition is built into US drivers licenses.

Canada's Minister Freeland stood up and gave a rather stunning speech on global leadership, suggesting that Canada should not take a free ride on the US train and step up to take the mantle of Global Leader.

Naturally my Skepticism Meter<tm> ran off the scale, first wondering how much of his family is in the defense industry. But I really like the tone of the speech and how Canada wants to Do The Canadian Thing: Step Up.

With this in mind, we present our Global Leadership Trophy and T-shirt to Canada, with three cheers. Huzzah! (eh?)

And I dare you to read his speech in a voice other than South Park's Canadian accent.

• Rod Stewart is touring with Cyndi Lauper. Concert starts at 8:00. Be there at 9:00.

Just remember: to a dyslexic, bowling is blowing.

Much as I despise phones ringing, I finally found a good use for them: I spent the last week trying to locate a bunch of phones by calling them from other phones. Otherwise I ignore them or shut off the ringer, which makes them even more difficult to find. I wonder if they travel when I'm not looking.

STIGMA

Somebody asked me how to be a good friend/supporter/family member when someone goes to the Happy Place (Booby Hatch, Loony Bin, mental hospital). There are no absolutes, but here are some suggestions:

• find out what the patient wants. If they'd like visits or calls, do so. If they want no contact, don't contact them.
• the family or whoever is home when the patient goes in might need some support or a hand or a burger. Are there kids?
• even if nothing is wanted, it helps to be a solid, supportive friend, in whatever way you can - just being you.
• don't go beyond what is requested, if anything.

'Crazy' is relative. It has been treated poorly since the beginning of time. When Mrs lefty got her bipolar diagnosis, many years ago, she was shunned at work, as if it were contagious. Interestingly, she was shunned by people who spent nights and weekends getting so blasted, you couldn't talk to them.

My Dog Has Fleas

He doesn't, really.
He has diarrhea. Ask me how I found this out.
No, wait, don't ask.

Twenty eight gigabytes of sensitive intelligence agency files were left on a public Amazon server by one of the nation's top intelligence contractors without a password, according to a new report.

Twenty eight gigabytes (60,000 documents - rather a large amount) were left, exposed to anyone, on a public cloud server. With no password. Including a passwords to a government system containing sensitive information and the security credentials of a senior employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the country's top defense contractors. This means no hacking was required-you could have Top Secret Department of Defense access, for the taking.

The list of what is wrong with this is endless, even for first-year computer security students (and possibly their dogs).  This doesn't look good for Booz Allen, the same firm where Edward Snowden worked.

My prediction is that this will disappear quietly, if it even gets out of the gate. If it were to ever surface again, there will be an announcement that the federal government is very unhappy with Booz Allen, and have given them a stiffly-worded letter saying so and urging them to never do it again. Plus a several-million dollar fine, which will be of no consequence against their next humongous government contract.

• EMERGENCY warning, ladies, from England's Daily Star: Don't put wasp nests up your vagina. That is all.

A motorcycle gang stole Jeeps by accessing the secret database of replacement key codes. They stole them out of parking lots or wherever they could find them, started them via the stolen codes, then drove them to Mexico. Never underestimate the power of Motas, Chi Chi, Guero, Guerito, and Edwin, among others. On your way out, don't forget to make fun of me for having an older car that won't remote-start.

• Kmart is dealing with its second credit card breach in less than three years. They could have planned this at a more convenient time, with Sears closing both stores.
• It is my observation that hacking Kmart didn't have to be such a laborious project. They could just hack it from the inside. One or two guys with t-shirts that say HACKER, in bright yellow letters, just walk up to a register and install the malware. Kmart is such an unholy, understaffed mess (at least mine are), that no one would notice.
• When asked for comment, Kmart said to wait in one of two lines with ten people in front of you and two cashiers running all over the store for unpriced items.

Piper Harron, a professor at the University of Hawaii has said that white men should be banned from teaching. She wrote an article saying 'If you are a white cis man, you almost certainly should resign from your position of power. Thats right, please quit. Too difficult? Well, as a first step, at least get off your hiring committee, your curriculum committee, and make sure you're replaced by a woman of color or trans person.'  It's good to know that in 2017, it's perfectly ok to come out and make this statement. It's a very good thing that it was not made by a caucasian, or the shitstorm would be monumental.

• One of Jerry Garcia's guitars (named Wolf for its wolf inlay) just sold for $1.9 million at auction. Next month, his body will be auctioned. It is expected to fetch between $900k and $3billion.

Earlier I told you about Evergreen State College, where leftist students demanded all white people take a day off. The college was evacuated and closed today due to a "direct threat to campus safety". I'm sure they will launch an immediate investigation (into how to make the lives of the threateners more comfortable and listen intently to their demands).

The world continues to get weirder by the day, just when you think it can't get any more weird. What's worse, you couldn't possibly make this stuff up in the wildest of literary satire.

• One of those nice Muslim men claimed to have explosives with him, as he tried to enter the cockpit of a Malaysia Airlines flight. He was tackled by eleven passengers and did not make it to the cockpit. The industry could save a lot of money on air marshals because travelers are FED UP with this and will use it as an excuse to act out. I predict hijackings will stop as the hijackers realize they're more likely to get the stuffing beat out of them than hijack the plane.