Saturday, March 31, 2018

I Love the Smell of Peanut Butter in the Morning

One of the symptoms of ADD/ADHD is when there is too much input at one time, one gets cranky, in an explosive kind of way.

While I'm doing some VIBW (Very Important Blog Work), my parents call. I know this because their ringtone is Zappa's Jewish Princess. It is their ringtone because they're neither Jewish nor princess. Suffice it to say that I can not discuss whose ringtone is Fat Bottom Girls, for my well being.

Since this is during working hours, nobody is supposed to call me, unless something is on fire. My sixth and seventh senses tell me nothing's on fire and my Special Training on Shitty New Software sold by the Boss' Daughter is about  to begin, I don't answer.

So I'm home from work, working. I'm talking to my workmate about something that was supposed to be clarified last week that is due tomorrow. My boss, bless him, is the nicest person I know. He does fourteen jobs at once. He asks for something, like a few slides on working environment, and we deliver. Before we deliver, we always have to nail him to his chair for five minutes to clarify that 'a few slides on working environment' means 'two full color PowerPoint slides for a presentation to a number of groups, on the topic of workflow in our specific little group.' He's truly the nicest person I know. Takes his kids to church three times a week. To synagogue twice a week. Every other week to a mosque.

My boss is not answering my workmate's pleas to clarify the last project, which has been going on for months, so we're less than optimistic about the project for tomorrow. We discuss this on our call, after working hours (which, as we know, may become illegal in New York). While we're talking, Marshall barks. He can always tell when there's work involved and it goes right to his bladder. So he barks and I start to growl.

Back on the phone, Workmate continues to talk, oblivious to the fact that I put the phone down 2 minutes ago. I get a few words in, when I hear silverware rattling. As I'm the only human home and Marshall can't open the door by himself, this is not good news. This is a rodent.

I'm horrified to admit this. But it's not my friggin fault. We're clean, don't leave food out, and wash dishes frequently. In the winter, they arrive all over the neighborhood, even in the antiseptic conditions of the (non-crazy) neighbor's house. If there's no food, what the hell attracts the little fuckers bastards? Warmth, probably. Apparently they like wires too. Aside from iron, I'm not sure why. We spent time over the winter mouse-proofing the house. Finally we found a hole and patched it. No more mice. Until today.

My growl is growing in volume and is starting to concern my workmate, who mentions it in an offhand way. I become aware of my overload just as I'm reaching through the phone to strangle him. No, I tell myself, that will have to wait til after the presentation tomorrow.

Back to our discussion, we're coming up with ideas and someone is knocking on the door. The schizophrenic with the guns knocks in morse code, so 'they' won't know he's here. This was a more defined, whimsical knock. It's a shame that the door doesn't have individual ringtones. Because of the whimsy, it could only be the wife. Last I heard, she had house keys, although the way things have been going lately, they're with everything else she lost. I say to myself CANT I GET A SIMPLE PHONE CALL DONE WITHOUT A FLYING TRAPEZE ACT SUDDENLY MATERIALIZING in the living room?

My wife does not simply walk into a room. Fran Drescher (more likely Joan Rivers') autobiography is called Enter Laughing. My wife's is called Enter Talking, Loudly. She does precisely this and it takes all sorts of hand signals and screaming to let her know I'm on a WORK CALL. Oh, sorry.

Back to my call. Three words in, Wife stands in front of me with a bag, like there's a tremendous surprise in it. She tries to hand it to me while I'm still taking. For some reason, I get REALLY MAD and try to convey, in hand signals, that I'M WORKING. STILL. NOTHING HAS CHANGED SINCE TWO MINUTES AGO, WHEN YOU WALKED THROUGH THE DOOR that I had to open because your keys fell into some sort of multi-dimensional vortex. Or you just think it's cute that I'll open the door for you.

There are all sorts of mouse traps. Glue (inhumane), regular old (not effective), variation on regular old, with a fake cheese-like step, and these White Things. The White Things are ferocious-looking beasts, with huge, pointy teeth, but all plastic. I have no idea how a mouse could get bait out of this thing, because it closes on my finger whenever I try to bait it. It's hair bloody triggered. Wife will not go within a ten foot radius of it when it's armed.

After my call, I go into the kitchen, where there is no mouse. This worked out well, as I don't like mice. I checked the trap. I'll give you one guess what I saw. Yes, the little #*@&er ate the peanut butter.  HA, I thought. I am going to win this war. I put fresh peanut butter in the trap, feeling like MacArthur. I love the smell of peanut butter in the morning.

On the way out of the kitchen, Wife wants to know where she put that bag, because she lost it.  It's now been fifteen minutes since she entered the house, and in that time, she has already misplaced the bag she carried in. Maybe it's in the car.... no, Dear, it's not in the car. I know this because you tried to give it to me repeatedly while I was on the phone. Oh. Did I?  I'm already through for the day and have given up rage, work, and looking for Stuff.

Apparently I had not given up grief, though.
My parents make a phone call and if no one answers, go right into Panic Mode<tm>. Because I didn't answer, they called Wife. Why hasn't she called in weeks? Does she no longer love them? [insert Charlie Brown teacher noises - wah wha wah wah.] When the first person fails to answer, they call the spouse, the kids, the landline, then the hospitals and police.

While she is regaling me with Tales of the Parents, I listen to their voicemail to me. "We were wondering what happened to Wife. She hasn't called in WEEKS and we thought something was wrong."

It's a good thing I didn't answer the phone.
'Weeks' actually means 'a few days'.
None of Wife's behavior, or for that matter, mine, is new.  So why is it a surprise every time? The parents are not 90 years old and they have their wits about them, or at least keep them in the trunk at all times.

Wife goes upstairs, probably to look for the previous item she lost, and I immediately find the bag she just lost. Friend texts from vacation, in Bangkok. I don't care how old you are, Bangkok is FUNNY. Try it with me: BANGKOK. BANGKOK. heh heh... he said Bangkok. I advised him that if he goes on any dates, he should check the plumbing first.

It is unnaturally quiet as I type this. I brace for imminent arrival of a train, in the living room, next to the Flying Trapeze Act, which is still packing up before going home.







Monday, March 26, 2018

Gorillas Gluing Tweed

Here it is, the day I've been waiting for.
THE SUN!
It's out and as bright as ever.
It is confusing the hell out of me.

It makes me want to do stuff.
I'm full of energy.
I should really clean.
Yup. Clean.
I feel like cleaning.
Like I feel like going outside in the 41 degree sunshine and dancing naked.



It's 2018.
Have you noticed how quickly things get into public domain after they happen? I'm talking politics and Bad Stuff in general.
Notice how long after a scandal breaks, we get the news and frequently the perp. Same with mass shootings (except Las Vegas).
Russian collusion in the election. Russians and Trump. Obama henchmen, entrenched in high positions. Leaking on a massive scale.

[Jay Leno voice]
Hey, what's with these mass shootings, especially in schools.
Before Columbine, it barely happened.
Now it's every few weeks.
Are the kids that mad about homework?




Faceyspaces has fired Cambridge Analytica for harvesting the demographics of 50 million subscribers, without their knowledge, and providing it to the Trump campaign. The cynical (you rang?) would say they were fired because they helped Trump. The slightly less cynical would notice that Faceyspaces said, "If there's anyone violating personal information, it's going to be US."



  • In case you missed the news, gay sex robots are on the rise, so to speak, at a brothel in Spain, allowing straight men to experiment with homosexuality. Among other features, the doll has a customizable penis. What is a customizable penis? Can you order colors, sizes, glowing, and monogrammed? Does it go limp and ask for Viagra?
  • I don't care what you want to do with/to the doll or what you do at brothels, or what you do at home - it's none of my business. My small question is how straight men experiment with homosexuality. Wouldn't they fail to be straight at that point? Do law-abiding citizens experiment with thievery?
  • At the brothel, the dolls are available for rental. In other news, businesses in Spain are hiring maintenance people to clean lifelike dolls at hourly intervals.


Pelosi Watch


To cheers from the masses, Nanci Pelosi announced her retirement in 2016. She decided to stay on to ensure Washington had at least one woman in power. The bar is pretty low, apparently. We used to vote for candidates based upon their lies qualifications. Now we vote for them based upon their plumbing.

Pelosi wanted to let everyone know she's not going anywhere. Some Democrats are running against her because she's politically toxic and they don't want her as  their leader. If I were a democrat, I'd vote for that senile old guy with the coke bottle glasses on the Sopranos. Oh wait, he's already there.

Highlights from Pelosi's speech to female congressional candidates:

They tell me my medicine isn't working, but I say HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOS.
We will not stop until California is 99% illegal aliens. Who among us hasn't had a gang bang with Mexicans and their horses - amirite, ladies?
I promise more rocks in salads.
And in closing, I say vote for Trump in 2020!


In a 6 minute video, Nancy has 23 brain glitches while giving a speech at the Office of Strategic Services. She's the perfect candidate to lead both political parties; old, frail, and failing.


Who's more unstable: Pelosi or the people who keep re-electing her?


On the other hand, she's a goldmine of material.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


  • best headline of the week: "Inked EVERYTHING at body art convention" Wait - are you trying to tell me that people.. have tattoos... at a tattoo convention? Wow - who could've seen that coming?


On hiatus from packing to leave the country after Trump was elected, Barbara Streisand said she was never sexually harassed and joked it might be because of her looks. Of course I'm kidding. It was her personality.



  • In England, a man kicked out of a club took revenge by ramming his Suzuki  into the club. Lives were saved when the Suzuki crashed into the front window of the club and immediately collapsed into a small plastic ball. Police escorted him away but declined to charge him, saying that the way people in the club laughed at his little thing was punishment enough.


Over in Kabul, parents named their child Donald Trump, hoping that he would be as successful as his namesake. This is not going over well for some reason. Some Faceyspaces users have issued death threats, forcing the parents to close their account.  I say anything that causes people to close Faceyspace accounts is a good thing, even death threats.

This poor child has no idea what awaits him as he meets other children. Other youngsters who had a rough childhood are Leslie Neilsen, Marion Morrison (who couldn't take it and eventually changed his name to John Wayne), and Bernie Schwartz, who changed his name to Tony Curtis, to make himself sound less Italian.



  • What flavor are white jellybeans?
  • speaking of which, I'm a huge fan of Jelly Belly cinnamon and hot cinnamon. It's been a while since I consumed an entire pound of them, so I went to Amazon, where everything's cheaper. A pound of frickin' Jelly Bellys runs $9-12. Sometime in the near future, people will abandon hard currency and bitcoins, trading instead in Jelly Bellys. The government will announce a War on Jelly Bellys. Every airport will contain Jelly Belly detecting dogs and air ionizer testing machines. China will start counterfeiting Jelly Bellys, some better than real ones. TSA agents will be retrained to check all possible hiding places for Jelly Bellys. You will be prohibited from carrying more than 3oz of Jelly Bellys on the plane. Shoe and crotch bombs will no longer be searched for, along with guns. Huge ships and little cigarette boats will be stopped. Illegal aliens will be pushed to the side, as customs agents swarm the boats, in search of the sugary little devils. Women will purchase $1,200 Coach bags, with a small, undetectable pouch for their Jelly Bellys. The underground trade in Jelly Bellys will far surpass all narcotics combined. Children with dead eyes will wander the streets, asking people, "hey man - got any Bellys?" The stock market will have trillions in activity on Belly futures.
  • what's that thing between Unfinished Idea and Beating a Dead Horse? Oh yeah - Just Enough. Can somebody explain that to me?



A gorilla at the Philadelphia Zoo has been walking around on two legs when carrying something. Keepers say he doesn't like to get his paws dirty. He even avoids mud.

It's not bad enough that our chemicals are turning frogs gay, growth hormone from cows is getting into our bodies, and there's Prozac in the water... now we have OCD gorillas. When he's not out gathering food, he's washing his paws.

* My mom said that when I was little, I came in and washed my hands every time they got dirty. My wife says I need to get out of the house and get my hands dirty. You cannot please women.



Upside Down World

  • A Democratic congressman from Long Island implied that Americans should grab weapons and oppose President Trump by force, if the commander-in-chief doesn’t follow the Constitution.
  • Rep. Tom Suozzi made the remark to constituents at a town hall last week, saying that folks opposed to Trump might resort to the “Second Amendment.” This guy essentially threatened a sitting president. Oddly enough, that's one of the things the Second is for.
  • This is the party that wants the Second Amendment destroyed. That doesn't want you to have guns. In unrelated news, republicans are urging women to have abortions if democrats don't pass anti-abortion legislation.




The pope condemned prostitution as torture and asked for forgiveness for the men who patronize them.
 -- no word on child molestation.





  • The Austin Bomber done blowed himself up, as police got close. It was rather considerate of him. He saved the city a lot of money in court costs
  • The police believe he is responsible for all the Austin bombings. This is slightly different than the previous evening, when the explosion at Goodwill was not related to the bombings at all.
  • The police accessed the bomber's Google search history and discovered that he was looking up other Austin addresses. This proves the need to use duckduckgo.com, which doesn't track you, plus set your browser to forget everything you do, or browse in private mode.
  • President Trump tweeted "AUSTIN BOMBING SUSPECT IT DEAD. Great job by law enforcement and all concerned!"
  • Twitter and Reddit exploded with the news that the president tweeted in all caps and condemned him as stupid and a dumb motherfucker.


A woman in Spain died from an allergic reaction to bee stings. While this isn't a rare phenomenon, she died during a live bee acupuncture procedure, where bee stings are used instead of needles. If the procedure hadn't worked, doctors were going to attempt the live elephant trampling procedure, which uses elephants instead of running the patient over with a car.




California's Stupid Backfires


  • One day after Orange County, California, supervisors voted to spend more than $70 million to house the homeless, residents in three rich cities expressed alarm about a proposal to set up "camp" shelters in their communities.
  • People in the communities are apoplectic. They're crying NIMBY! (not in my back yard).
  • Some homeless are currently in hotels. Since we haven't been able to afford a vacation since the Iraq War, we're flying to Orange County next week, and claiming to be homeless. We will demand a nicer hotel, in a better neighborhood. One with a view. Close to the beach.
  • To date, California has provided 80% of the country's GDP (Goofy Domestic Product, which measures the ridiculous and humors news).



Axe-throwing is gaining popularity. People are flocking to New Jersey to throw axes. They are going back home at record rates, when they discover that you have to throw the axe at a wood target.



  • New York City, in a desperate bid to out-stupid California, has proposed a bill that would disallow smoking while walking. This is the same city that protected people from the scourge of soda by banning containers over 24oz.
  • Next week, New York City will solve their burdensome traffic issue by banning cars.


In a desperate bid to out-stupid his entire party, Joe Biden said he would have 'beat the hell out' of Trump in high school. Trump really brings out the humanity in people.



  • The bad news: there's a box that unlocks up to date iPhones.
  • The really bad news: local police are buying them.
  • not that we have much of a Fourth Amendment as it is....



After the Faceyspaces debacle, if you're silly enough to remain connected, here are a few ways to protect the micron of information you have left.

And while we're on the subject, a fellow downloaded the data Faceyspaces has on him. There were two years' worth of phone call metadata from his Android phone, including names, phone numbers and the length of each call made or received. Is this ok with you? This is just the beginning.



  • According to Bloomberg, the music business is seeing its fastest growth in more than 20 years.  Don't encourage them.



The Wall Street Journal informs us that the demand for American sperm is skyrocketing in Brazil.  Wealthy single women and lesbian couples are the big buyers.  I've seen quite a few Brazilian women and I'd fly there to donate personally.



  • Video of the Las Vegas shooter has emerged. Six months after the tragic event. It doesn't take six months to edit video. Within a few days, the Austin bomber was identified and dead. This pattern repeats, almost unfailingly. 
  • I have no idea what anyone's up to, but it doesn't take a seasoned detective to notice something's off. Where there's smoke...





Thursday, March 22, 2018

It's the Thing. The THINGY Thing. Over by the Thing!

I hear that a lot at home. Also heard elsewhere.
The bizarre part is that two women know what the other is referring to.



  • We've decided to eat healthy. Just the other morning, I noticed a bowl of cut up vegetables. It was right on top of the chocolate cheesecake.



United, America's most bizarre, assaultive, and death-bringing airline, has done it again. After killing a dog by insisting it go in the overhead bin, today's rage-inducer is flying a dog from Kansas to Japan. While United has no comment thus far, we understand they will charge the owner for the return flight from Japan.



SIRI ALERT

I have not verified this but you'll want to read the article, just in case.
How Siri leaks your private iPhone messages, and how to stop her



Slippery Slope Strikes Similarly


YouTube 'conspiracy' videos will get links to Wikipedia and other sources to 'fact check.'  At first, only videos with 'significant debate' will get the text box links. A YouTube spokesman says they're always exploring new ways to battle misinformation. In other words, do not question the established narrative. Google, YouTube's parent, admits to pushing down the 'craziest' content. This has failed, because people like to watch it (if it bleeds, it leads). This is happening with Google search results, as well as YouTube. As one would expect, I have questions:

  • Who decides what's crazy?
  • Lawmakers and media advocacy groups are pushing this. If I understand things correctly, this directly contravenes the First Amendment.
  • Wikipedia's information is crowdsourced - meaning it comes from people. Just like conspiracy theories and fake news and misinformation.
  • You will notice that no outlet questions the fake news and legislation proposed by Congress or Mainstream Media. The CIA planted people at the major news organizations - this is fact.
  • Conspiracy theories quite often turn out to be true. The term was invented by the CIA to make people look crazy and decrease their credibility. Even if we choose to believe that the government just started looking into UFOs, they were a conspiracy theory.


Faceyspaces and Google have actively pushed down potentially fake content. This failed.

Let's call this what it is: an active effort to start the censorship and suppression of content somebody doesn't like. Irony: people will call this a conspiracy theory but it's right here in the links. The content being affected leans mostly to the right. We've already seen this with Reddit, YouTube, and Twitter.

Again, I'm not right, alt-right, or left; I'm free speech. It starts with the right. Then who is left to protest when they come for the left? Some useful idiots on the left will actually push for this. Some useful idiots on the right too, although it's mostly their content at risk.

And it's happening right here, under our noses, dressed up as combating misinformation and fake news.

Do you disagree? Let me know and I'll give you space.




  • Tired of the infuriating popups while browsing? If you have the new Firefox 59, go to Tools > Options > Permissions and check "Block new requests asking to allow notifications” (Windows) or Edit > Preferences > Privacy & Security (linux). It will be similar on Macs. Probably in android too.



Hey, how about that humongous Equifax breach that disappeared from the news, as if it had an anchor tied to it... a former executive has been charged with stock dumping before the breach was disclosed.




  • Speaking of Mac malware, it has risen 270 percent. If you're really comfortable with your Mac's security, you might want to think again. I'm not taking a swipe at Macs, like I usually do. I'm warning you not to be complacent in thinking you're immune. Bad People wait til your operating system or software is popular enough to make it worth their while.





Actual Work Conversation. Names changed to protect the guilty...


ME: Why did they schedule Meeting B the same time as Meeting A?
HIM: Yeah, I see 2. Which one are you talking about.
ME: the two that are at the same time: Meeting A and Meeting B. We have Meeting A every week at the same time.
HIM: At 1:00?
ME: yes
HIM: I had Meeting C earlier. Then Meeting D at 3:00. You're not on the invite for Meeting D.
ME: [suppressing rage and violent urges] We have Meeting A every week at 1:00. Today I got an invite for Meeting B.
HIM: Well.... I got the usual one for Meeting A and one for Meeting Q, but that's it.
ME: [I have to put me out of my misery] Ok.
HIM: I do have one at 3:30 for Meeting H.
ME: GOOD GOD, DUDE - DON'T YOU HAVE ANY PROZAC OR HEAVY MUSCLE RELAXERS AT YOUR DESK?





  • Darwin Winner Pedro Ruiz III planned a YouTube stunt, wherein his girlfriend, Monalisa Perez, would shoot a .50 cal bullet through an encyclopedia he was holding in front of his chest to see if it would pass through.
  • Perhaps Pedro didn't fully consider the implications. As it turned out, the bullet did, in fact, pierce the encyclopedia. Then his heart. Pedro is no more. Perhaps Pedro was suicidal but scared to perform the act himself. Perhaps Pedro did the science and discovered that a .50 would go through an encyclopedia like a fat person through a box of chocolates. Perhaps he was much more intelligent than he appeared. Alas, we will never know.
  • Monalisa, the mother of his two children, will serve a modified jail term. She had better come up with an interesting story to tell the kids.



Let's face it... most productions for St Patty's Day involve alcohol and pretending you're Irish. If it were St Hendrix's Day, everybody would pretend to be black. I just saw the best promotion for SPD ever: 20% off green guitars at Eastwood. Finally, a holiday promotion relevant to me.




  • Why? 
  • Why, Dog the Bounty Hunter?
  • Is the same hair stripper right for both of them? His hair is yellow, while hers is more stripped blond.
  • Will they change the name to Dog the Fatty Hunter?
  • He's about four feet tall. How does he climb over her ample chest?
  • Their minions... what kind of self-esteem issues does one need to follow him blindly, unarmed?




Congratulations are not necessary, but China shipped my new laptop keyboard early and I installed it in short order. This is a process that would've caused Major Panic<tm> two years ago. Have you ever operated on a laptop? Even putting memory in the things is a process. Desktops are pretty easy: open the case (if you ever put it back last time - putting cases back on is the major cause of computer issues) and do what you need. The cases are (were?) pretty roomy and you had many slots to install Things. The worst that could happen was ripping your hand open trying to get around some sharp metal structure.

Laptops are a certain kind of Black Magic, requiring a certain temperament. A temperament with which I was not born. Fortunately I am ridiculously brave (stupid). Although any computer repair involves copious amounts of cursing and airborne objects, laptops are their own special hell. Because they're so friggin tiny, everything must be sandwiched into an alloted space and every manufacturer does it differently. Sometimes 15 screws are involved in adding memory. If you've never had to replace the display, God is on your side.

Fortunately for me, this particular keyboard required about 4 screws and sliding this and removing that. The results are spectacular. I can now see every letter on every key. Unfortunately the cursor still wanders a bit on its own, like my wife in a shoe store.  And unfortunately, there were a few parts left over, but in my defense, there was no place to put them. Now most of the errors are operator-induced, or PEBKAC - problem exists between keyboard and chair.




  • You may or may not be happy to hear that a judge has taken the death penalty off the table for Mitt Romney and former Gov Christie Todd Whitman. A suit was brought by a New Jersey woman, claiming Romney, Whitman, and four others conspired to blow up downtown Newark (this is another one of the 'you may or may not feel this is a good thing').
  • The suit also mentions a county executive and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, with the death penalty specified for all but Farrakhan. No word on what Islamic punishment was mentioned to the plaintiff to cancel the death request. Perhaps they gave her a free bow tie.
  • The judge referred to the suit as "frivolous and malicious." Frivolous and malicious? Isn't blowing up downtown Newark malicious, Your Honor? They have committed the perfect crime. Now they can blow it up without fear of legal ramifications. Double jeopardy: you can't try someone twice for the same crime. I am not a lawyer, but I watched a lot of Night Court.




In case you're still playing along at home, the national debt has hit $21 trillion. With a 'T'. Our presidents and congresses keep blindly adding to it. like they did very recently. As an incredibly large group of See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Watch Tv, we don't really want to be bothered with it. The congresscritters know that they'll be retired or dead so they won't have to deal with the consequences of their actions. And the debt rises. It's great that Trump is giving us a break on income taxes, but the debt still grows. In a bid to appeal to our lack of thought, they're referring to the tax cut as 'costing billions'. Well, no, it doesn't cost anything. It's just less money appropriated from the fruits of our labor.

Sometimes republicans sound vaguely libertarian. They claim to be for small government and less spending. Look around you... is government getting smaller? Are we spending less? Are we revving up for more war? (no, no, yes). What would be wrong with pulling our troops out of most, if not all countries? Cutting the size and cost of government (starting with Dept of Homeland Security). Seriously reducing the debt. Not subsidizing Big Pharma. No more billions in foreign aid.

Don't get me started on the Federal Reserve (oops, too late. I've already gotten myself started). The Federal Reserve is not Federal, nor a Reserve. It is a bunch of private banks that lend money to the US with interest. Somebody's making an unbelievable amount of money on interest and it's not the country. Again, don't take my word for it- do the research. None of this is a secret.





  • I have an idea (uh-oh).  For some reason, I wanted to run it by you before letting it loose. I had the moral obligation to go to a birthday party for a child the other night. I know that nothing I do, including chewing my own limbs off (trust me, I tried), will get me out of this duty. It's not so much the children themselves or their appearance... it's their NOISE. If they could come over and not be heard, I'd be better with it (better, but still won't want to go). 
  • So as the kids arrive, we explain to them that there's a noise limit. As we're explaining that there will be NO SHOUTING, we're affixing a collar to them. As soon as they go over the limit, the shock collar will let them know. Then they can go back to being the quiet little angels you knew they had inside them.  They say it's safe for dogs with the electric fence system - why not kids? Then the adults will always show up and stay to help clean, amazed that the children are so well-behaved. And quiet.
  • Will this one take the market by storm, or shall I budget for legal expenses first?













Let Us Not Keep Up With the Joneses


Bob got married... it happens to the best of us.
He and his bride moved into a really nice place, north of San Francisco.
Being the gregarious sort, he met the Joneses, an older married couple who lived across the street. They became fast friends, despite their difference in age.

Marriage took its natural course and Bob got divorced. As with all divorces, he had to forsake his nice place and find somewhere else to live. I visited Bob, and they'd have to pry me loose from that house. It wasn't particularly large, it wasn't a particularly wonderful or bad neighborhood, but it was a great place.
Being California (or the southwest), people had garages and used them for parking cars, due to damage from direct sunlight. I don't have that worry.

Bob moved closer to work, but kept in touch with the Joneses on a frequent basis.  One cloudy day, Mrs. Jones left, on what one would call a permanent basis. Bob worried for his friend, and how he'd get along. He needn't have worried - Mr. Jones picked right up and continued living, for himself, as there was no family to insist upon it.  Bob drove to see Mr. Jones frequently, roughly an hour in each direction. In California, an hour means you're trying to drive to the next exit on the freeway.

Mr Jones became well known to Bob's family. Even Bob's mother would call out there to chat. They all knew each other. Somehow. Jones did what most people his age do; he kept getting older. He passed ninety, full of health and even some energy.

In casual conversation with Bob, he mentioned coming into into some money recently.  That's nice, if you can do it. Good on him. Because I don't talk to Bob as often as I should, I hadn't heard about his windfall.

"Didn't I tell you?" Bob asked. "It's my inheritance from Jones' will."

Sunday, March 18, 2018

The Torture Will Continue Until Morale Improves

In the last installment of ThermionicEmissions, we learned about one of my Days From Hell, which happened before 10am. An entire week of Serious Agitation, jammed into a few hours. Anyone who has been reading knows this could not go on unappended.

After the bank allowed the mortgage company to take double payments from the  account, the account crashed. I had to get up early on a Saturday, which is somewhat like waking someone at 3am for work, and go there.  Perhaps because of this, one cannot park there. There is a line to turn off the main street, forming a line to park. The parking lot is overflowing, causing people to park on a side street. Even the side street had run out of parking space.  In the lobby, I joined fifteen others in line. I was literally standing by the door, holding it open. In case I got bored, there was a small sitting area where some lady was loudly holding a conversation on her cell phone for all to hear. I swear some of these people were raised by wild animals, although even wild animals don't make this kind of noise in the open.

You have to do some sort of amazing dance of the slips to deposit a check and get money back, so I needed help. While getting help, the cashier noted my account was a mess (really?) and said I wouldn't get much back.

EXCUSE ME?

She was really helpful, though, suggesting I use mobile banking, which would work better in this instance. That was really nice.

Since we were past closing hours, each teller was required to escort the customer out and lock the door, leaving one teller available for customers. I felt bad for the rest of the customers, plus I wouldn't get to hear the Loud Lady finish her conversation. Will he or won't he?

Once home, my beloved started asking me questions faster and faster and more demanding and why didn't I.... Well, if you would've come with me, like I asked, maybe you'd know. But it has to get deposited. Justifiable homicide, of which I did not take advantage.

I went to their website after locating the URL. BE VERY CAREFUL HERE. There are sites set up to spoof or fool the user into giving up their banking information. If the URL to your bank is bobsbank.org, there will probably be a bobsbank.com. Websites are set up by monkeys, who are frequently drunk, leading to sites that vary from Bad to Unusable. This particular site wanted to stress that online sevices would be down from 11pm that night to 6am for maintenance.

The site flatly refused to work on Firefox, so I tried a different browser, which was more cooperative. Nowhere in the menus was Mobile Banking. And why should it be - it's only a service the bank offers. Eventually I found it in the Help section. It took me offsite to Google Play, to get the app. I do not use Google, having removed my account because I don't like their information collection and spying. I gave up. The wife tried. It took her ten minutes to find the app. When two arguably intelligent alleged adults cannot find what they're looking for, there might be a design flaw. Perhaps while drunk, the monkeys dropped their crayons.

Moments later the app was installed. And it flatly refused to work because the network was down for maintenance. Yes, at 11am, the system that was to be going down at 11pm was down. I cannot possibly make this stuff up - it just happens. Wife was most impressed, first by shitty design, second because she had checks coming out.

Do me a favor, please. Leave a comment if you have days like these every few weeks. I truly want to believe this is wrong and does not happen to Normal People like it does to us.

Subsequently the app worked. You put in your name and password, then take a picture of the front and back of the check. The money is then available for use or use at your local bank machine. Note: although you take pictures, they do not go to your picture directory, so if you want proof, take separate pictures or the app will delete them.

This is all extremely handy and I don't trust it. Unfortunately I had no choice in the matter. Interestingly, the stories I read about hacking and theft all occur not at the phone level, but at the bank or business level. Use this info, as well as your own research, to make your decision.




  • When police put handcuffs on someone, they say it's for their protection as well as the person's. As well as the person's? How is the person protected by having handcuffs? What are they being protected from - police shooting people that aren't in handcuffs?



Know what's weird? Aside from me?
For us Americans to see stuff we never see. Ever see a black woman with a Scottish accent? An Asian doctor with an Australian accent? A Philadelphian whose accent doesn't make you want to gouge your own eardrums out?




  • Diet Coke's new ad campaign seems to resolve around making a decision to have a Diet Coke, which will give you the magical power to do anything you want, even as an 80 year old man in a nursing home.
  • Allowing yourself a Diet Coke is not a brave, tasteful decision. It tastes like toilet, with a bad aftertaste. Allowing yourself a real Coke is a better idea. Allowing yourself ice cream or a pound of fudge is a brave, tasteful decision. I don't know an awful lot about advertising, but this doesn't seem like an effective one. Unless people are that stupid, which is a distinct possibility.



With my typing getting worse by the day, I wanted to recommend the Ctrl-Z key combination, which puts things back the way they were before you inadvertently deleted an entire paragraph or inserted four spaces in different spots randomly. This works in most word processors, as well as several other wordy programs.




  • I forget what they're called.. I call them snap off knives. They're segmented boxcutters but when the blade gets dull, you snap it off and there's another sharp one under it. In any case, you better not get caught with one in England because it's lethal and offensive. And you better not have a hammer with it - those are breaking and entering tools. England is a weird place. I guess I shouldn't talk - Americans believe planes were brought down with boxcutters.



Father of the internet, Sir Tim Berners-Lee says regulation of the web might be needed. "Social network have too much power... and their profit motive means they won't act for the good of all."

One certainly can't argue with that. 
Berners-Lee suggests assembling the brightest and best to tackle the web's future.

Talk of regulation makes me bristle. Who creates the rules? Who enforces them? how?



Internet History and Origins

Twenty years ago, F-Secure, the antivirus company, ran a BBS (bulletin board system), which was the easiest way to contact them. This was (hushed silence) before the web. Surprisingly enough, I ran a BBS too.

How did this work? Your computer was equipped with a modem, which used your phone line to make a call to the BBS. The issue here is that, like regular old phone calls, you could incur long distance charges; these were prohibitive if you wanted to call F-Secure, waaaay overseas. People would locate BBSes in their local exchange and have their computer call. They could do file transfer and/or
'talk to' their friends via a text system akin to putting notes on a big board, hence bulletin board system. These ran anywhere from single line to many line systems. Eventually they connected to the 'internet', which at that time was Usenet Newsgroups. There were thousands of special interest groups, from knitting to politics to left-handed guitar players. Due to the initial design of the internet, a good percentage of usenet users were at universities. As we all know, college students know everything, so there was a fair bit of antisocial behavior (lest you think that bad manners were invented recently, on social media). Everything was done in text mode. Yes, text mode. No fancy backgrounds or, heaven help us, emojis.




Since I discovered BBSes, I always managed to have a second phone line so  could I could call out to them, and eventually run one myself. I started with a 286 computer that, through donations, I upgraded to a stunning 1M of RAM. It gets better: I got a special price on a 28.8k modem... I was in the high speed lane! Met a lot of really nice people, including socializing with them. The good old days.




  • The demographics for this blog are such that most readers do not have infants or toddlers. Of course like most of this blog, I'm making it up. I do want to make you aware that there's a SmartDiaper. It will alert you when the child pees. It will also alert Google, or at least the manufacturer.
  • How did our parents ever live without this? Good lord - they had to check manually and be aware of the baby.
  • It's only a matter of time until the robot changes the baby's draper, removing the need for much contact at all with the future ankle biter.




Inclusiveness and the Violence of Being White


A British company is selling gender-neutral Mother's Day cards to make the day more 'transgender inclusive'.

No.

Even if you're not brimming with enthusiasm for the cards, you'll no doubt be thrilled that there are new mannequins with such wonderful real-life features as full-figured (fat), stretch marks, freckles, and vitiligo, which causes patches of skin to lose pigmentation. Planned for 2019: chicken pox, bruises from spousal abuse, and second degree burns from a house fire that's suspected to have been set by the spouse.

Nordstroms has ordered sizes 12+16 and will mix them with the "standard" 2s, 4s, and 8s.  They still refuse to carry size 10, although no one knows why

There is actually a Kim Kardashian mannequin, which was bound to happen, but no one is currently producing a Roseanne. The mannequin companies have been making larger sizes for a while, but the stores are not buying them. With this new inclusion, stores are buying them.

I predict that, as with all the new inclusion, this will fail miserably. There's a reason that the stores didn't order plus size mannequins: no one wanted to look at them. As the husband of a former plus size woman, I couldn't help but notice that just about all of the clothes looked like Bozo the Clown. This was a design error. The plus size clothes on the plus size mannequins looked like something out of a department store nightmare. Pick up an actual paper circular for a store and look for plus size clothes. If you can find any, the sight of them makes you want to back away quickly. My wife agrees 100%. They just don't look right. So don't be surprised when people don't want to see plus size mannequins again.

From inclusion, we go to exclusion: SAARTJ restaurant in Louisiana will charge white people an additional $18 (suggested) per meal to highlight the local pay gap, with the surplus going to black diners (some of whom offered to pay the overage). The only question remaining is whether the white folk will have to use the Cracker Entrance in the back.


The University of Minnesota, Alaska Campus, has invited a professor dedicated to "dismantling whiteness" to speak on how whiteness is an "existential threat" to the US.  She discusses the ubiquity and violence of whiteness in her lecture, which is geared toward administrators, but students are allowed to attend. In other words, she wants to empower colleges to "decenter whiteness".

Don't know about you, but I'm proud to be an existential threat. Unfortunately, no matter how large a threat I am, she will continue to get paid for speaking. Interesting to note that white women are also a threat. We toxic white people should really give the country to non-toxic folks. It's the right thing to do.

Dr. Lisa Anderson-Levy: neither I, nor any of my readers, have to work hard to put forth the case that you are the existential threat to the US, with your race-baiting. We need to come together; you want to keep us separated. Can't we get back to normal college topics, like toxic masculinity?



  • The head of the FBI said, in a ridiculous demonstration of his knowledge of IT, that he doesn't know what a back door is. The FBI does not want back doors, it just wants to be able to access your data, if you're a Bad Guy, and with proper legal authorization.
  • In response, the NSA said, "Yeah, us too!" and laughed hysterically, as they slurped up every bit (and byte) of your data, sans legal paperwork.



A recent study argues that there's no such thing as a "straight" man or woman. It claims we operate on a spectrum.

Errr...this comes as quite a shock to the wife. And to me, for that matter. Even assuming this is true, if I don't find men attractive, wouldn't that qualify me as 100% straight? Does the fact that I take my wife shoe shopping move me further along the spectrum toward kissing someone else with facial hair?

Measurements were taken of pupil dilation, which is a sign of sexual arousal. Or the room getting suddenly dark.  Women's eyes dilated for straight porn, as well as lesbian porn. Men's eyes dilated for straight porn and a guy masturbating. Perhaps dilation also means PLEASE GET THAT AWAY FROM ME. By the way, lubrication, erections, hard nipples, and looking flush are also signs of arousal.

My favorite bit is that the idea of bisexuality as the norm is becoming more accepted when it comes to women, but men are still struggling with it because of, WAIT FOR IT... the Patriarchy!  Stupid patriarchy.




  • CaliBurger recently celebrated its newest employee, Flippy. Flippy, the $60,000 (plus $12,000 maintenance yearly) automated burger flipper would replace those superfluous people who always screw up your order. Unfortunately Flippy didn't last one day. It seems the superfluous humans did it again: Flippy was so efficient that the they couldn't keep up with it. The people were necessary to add toppings and run the registers.
  • The only sensible route here is to pay for Flippy's cousins, Toppy and Cashy.




Within months, Amazon and others will start using drones for delivery.  Amazon has stated that it will not deliver to certain areas, like southern states, to avoid having their drones shot down by overly protective neighbors. Detroit is also off the list, because Amazon wants their drones to return. San Francisco has already lodged a protest because it's worried about emissions from the all-electric vehicles. There is no word from New Jersey, which is either not answering its phones or forgot to pay its phone bill.

Much more interesting, as well as much easier to pass muster, would be to use those vacuum sucking transport hamster tubes they use in banks. People will simply stand there and watch it for hours. Should this happen, the Kardashians will be canceled



  • Twitter is actively censoring the Drudge Report. When Drudge tweets, Twitter, which usually spoilers tweets, makes the tweet unavailable. Speaking as a Twitter user, the place is turning into a left wing hellhole. As someone who isn't left (or right) and hates censorship, this is morally reprehensible. Once again, it's their game and their customers are free to go elsewhere. I suggest GAB.AI, where I signed up, which is dedicated to free speech. They don't even censor nazis.


Lil Wayne, a rapper, found a unique way to endear himself to his audience the other night in Australia.
“We’re I’m from, I think you all know that’s the states, we don’t throw s**t on stage because all my n*****s got pistols and they don’t know who to shoot at,”

Hey Wayne.... do they really call you Sally?... perhaps you should let Security deal with the throwers of s**t. This way you can continue inflicting you art upon your fans.




  • Are you one of the throngs of people who use Paypal? The new GDPR (EU) legislation shows us the 600+ companies with which Paypal shares your information. There's even a handy dandy graphic visualization.



Are you a triggered Never Trump voter looking for love? NeverTrump.dating has your back.  You can find the right (sorry, left) partner for you and not have to worry about them having voted for the president. You can share your delusions and hopefully, love. For a substantial discount, you can be matched with a Green or a Libertarian. Anything but Trump.




  • Live Nation sent me an email titled "Concerts Announced Just for You". Their algorithms are seriously f-d up and produce some hilarious results, like JayZ and Beyonce. Yes, all classic rock and instrumental guitar enthusiasts will storm the gates for JayZ.  The only hope we have for data privacy is that the info shared will be so incorrect as to be hilarious.




Let's Go Guitar Pedal Shopping

People who are not musicians are excused from reading this, however there will be a brief quiz at the end of the blog.

It's been bloody forever since I've bought myself anything more than a few strings. Guitars are still out of the question because of my exorbitant tastes.

Because I was intrigued by Eric Johnson's opener's use of a looper, I decided that might be fun. There are a ton of them, with names like Muku, Getaria, Ditto, Hotone, WALLY, Muzizy, Nux, Mooer, Talent (comes with it?), Road Rage (batters your other pedals), and of course, the Faustus Regurgitator. The Regurgitator probably recharges the lawn scarifier that I just saw on tv.

As with any advertised piece of electronics, the description is sometimes arrived at through translation, resulting in "Chinglish" or "Japenglish" like so: 
  • Pure analog Whole circuit delay, clear, plump and smooth New Delay effect
  • This is the delay pedal with the name of YELLOW FALL
  • Comes with Manuel. Manuel from Fawlty Towers? Manuel labor?
  • Boutique guitar switcher - turns one guitar into another so you don't have to take one off and pick up another
  • Boss EC-2 allows you to record up to 16 minutes - this is helpful when you're onstage and have to defecate. You hit PLAY and run backstage for some relief: excretory or perhaps oral.

Since this is the 2000s, one doesn't simply purchase pedals, one auditions them on YouTube. You don't even have to go to the guitar store, which is good, because most of them suck. This concept is Pretty Damn Cool, as you can get a demo of absolutely anything, including amplifiers than cost more than several cars. You'll never have one, but at least you can tell people you know what they sound like.

You will see all kinds of people demoing all sorts of gear. 
One dude shows only the pedals and talks over the video. You see only a python-ish boot, turning the pedals off and on. He has a ton of videos. I think his name is GearMan. The quality of his boot speaks volumes about his method of analysis. He might be the guy who makes a point of using a curly cord. No one knows why.

GearMan has spawned countless imitators. I had to draw the line at one guy who threw out the boot idea and went with socks.  You simply can't demo pedals in socks. Everybody knows that.

Once you come up with a decision via YouTube, you head off to Ebay and Reverb to see what's available used and new. You can also discover pedals you hadn't thought of and need to check out too. 

What did I do?
I wanted a looper. The research started with online guitar communities and guitar buddies. The depth and breadth of knowledge here is awe-inspiring. Although all of it is opinion, after you get enough of them, you know how to move forward.  Everybody seemed to concur on the Ditto looper as a great first basic looper, although there were stories about footswitch reliability.

So I went to YouTube and started watching and listening. Not only was this helpful - it started to open my vistas and potentially get expensive. This is absolutely nothing new to me, but funny just the same. In addition to basic loopers of all reasonable prices and sizes and capabilities, I discovered loopers that did Other Stuff<tm>. Drum machines, vocal uses, and the killer, Delays. Delays and loopers are very similar, as they both involve memory. Initially I was down to the 
  • JamMan: reasonably priced, has a drum machine. And quite an attractive shade of blue, which was important (if there was a tie). 
  • Electro Harmonix Canyon: great reviews, about 11 different delays, with all sorts of variations and useful settings. 
  • Flashback 2: like the Canyon, but can connect to a pc and export loops, plus a Toneprint input, where you can load presets from other users in an online community.
The JamMan came in a number of models and made a lot of sense with the drum machine. Some had bass too. While trying to loop, these would be very handy, so there's no way I could purchase it. Something about the units that had delay too made them more attractive because I could use them as delays in addition to looping.

The Canyon seemed to be a favorite everywhere in the online reviews attached to the demo videos and Ebay reviews.  Luckily I found a video comparing the two. Most people seemed to think the Canyon was the winner by far, but my ears told me the Flashback 2 had better sounding output (Canyon was cloudy, with less clarity, but still pretty good). The Flashback also had external connectivity and Toneprint. Not that it mattered, but you can install the Toneprints by holding your cell phone up to the guitar and sending it.

Reverb seemed to have the highest prices, which was pretty odd. Ebay was cheaper by a minimum of $10-20. These pedals came pretty close in price, so it came down to preference. One telling item was that there were almost no used pedals. I'm not sure what it was telling, but it was.  I found an open box/demo unit for $20 off the rest of them and bought it. I also got to see other brands and listen on YouTube. Even if I spent more, I don't think a better unit would have helped me more. The next step up involved more 'tracks', which I can live without (at this moment, heh heh).

Here's my complaint about the YouTube demo videos: python boots and socks aside, I'd prefer to listen to these pedals with as generic a setup as possible. Running your 1962 Strat into a Supro amp will not give me a reasonable idea what this pedal will sound like. How about a Strat, Tele, or Les Paul into a Deluxe Reverb or other more common amp? And while we're at it, running a demo pedal with another pedal you like (reverb?) isn't helpful. Nor is your idea of great-sounding distortion. Just make it simple and clean. Use equipment most people are likely to have. Your vintage Strat or custom-made PRS isn't realistic for us Normal Shlubs. One guy who is famous for reviews will not let go of his whammy bar at the end of every phrase. This is not going to help people with reviews, especially time-based effects. Please put the thing away, out of reach, so we can concentrate on the effect.

Don't count me as a curmudgeon (in this case anyway). I truly appreciate the time and effort these people took to give us this great info. Never let it be said that YouTube is completely useless.  Just mostly useless, unless you want to see the latest gossip, songs from current, painful-sounding artists, and Macarena videos. I can scan the entire new video page and not find a single video I would watch. Plus YouTube/Google has decided to start censoring, cutting ad revenue, and banning content they don't like, which generally happens to be more right-leaning speech, like Twitter and Reddit, to some extent. With these four online giants actively censoring, this is no longer someone's conspiracy theory. While I  don't subscribe to some of the right-leaning propaganda, I am thoroughly against censorship, lest they start censoring stuff I like. Being private entities, they don't owe us anything and free speech does not apply (only government/state entities may not abridge free speech).

So that's how I auditioned and bought a pedal. Being a serious musician that doesn't play outside his house, I have given up on cheap equipment. I want something that sounds good, is built well, and is likely to last as long as I use it and further. Yes, in some ways, I'm all grown up.








Thursday, March 15, 2018

The Abominable Snow Span

I don't understand it and I never will.
If I have a late work conference at home, Marshall will invariably have to go outside. I don't know if it's my boss' voice or a stock market fluctuation, but the moment the meeting starts, he appears and starts literally whining to go outside. This is naturally followed by the shrieking and howling to come back in. If I didn't mute my phone, they'd think I was torturing an animal.




  • Two of the largest Denial Of Service attacks ever occurred recently. DOS is when you point so much traffic at a server, it can't get data in or out. These attacks were made possible by a helpful service run on the server. How can an external bastard use this service? The people who set up the server left this service available to the internet. It's bad enough that normal people have to set things up correctly with no knowledge or help... these are the professionals, who are supposed to know.
  • The professionals don't read this blog and therefore don't know about lefty's law: Don't. Don't open that email, don't click on that link, don't leave anything in the default configuration, don't use stupid passwords. This law applies to absolutely anything and everything from home users to top tier experts. The key here is called default deny. Deny absolutely everything on the server internet access. Only allow absolutely needed ports (services and channels). If you don't know this, as a professional, you aren't a professional and have no business near a server or security functions.



According to an IBM study, millennials put less effort into traditional password hygiene than older generations.

"Dude... passwords are so.... hard, man."

It's 2018 - buck up, you lazy shits. There is no excuse for laziness or refusal to consider security. Don't tell me you're Cyber-Stupid to make me do it for you. Don't tell me you don't understand or it's above your level or you can't learn nothin on Tuesdays. Older folks have had enough time to learn how to do things. Younger folks grew up with computers. There is no longer any excuse.



  • The Department of Homeland Security, the agency tasked with securing the nation, “could protect its information and systems more fully and effectively,” according to a damning new report from the Office of the Inspector General. 
  • The agency "protecting us" isn't protecting itself. Such is the quality of the Homeland Security concept. A perfect example of Security Theater.
  • You have to admit that the tragic events of 9-11 spawned a new era in government expansion, personal restrictions, spying, and alleged protection of the masses/homeland.
  • Are you mad yet?



Today's social commentary doesn't need much in the way of commentary...

College librarians argue Christians who say 'God bless you' are Islamophobic.



  • "Don't follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you."  - Margaret Thatcher 
  • she stole that from us!  - Apple



Tarrant County, Texas, has a unique aid to keep things going in the courtroom: a stun belt. This marvel of technology delivers 50,000 volts to the defendant, should he become unruly. A judge used it to 'convince' a defendant to answer questions after he refused.

WHAT?

A higher court found that stun belts cannot be used as punishment in court.

Guilty until proven innocent.
Unreasonable punishment.
Assault.
Sheer stupidity and violation of laws by someone who is supposed to be judging innocence or guilt.

The other side of this is that the defendant is using these technicalities to get out of a charge of "soliciting sexual performance from a child."

The man has rights, just like you and me. Aside from the belief that convicted child molesters should be put to death, psychologists state that they cannot be rehabilitated (like cigarette smokers).


  • Amazon confirms some Alexa devices are randomly laughing and says it's working on a fix, after multiple users posted about it on social media.
  • If there's any random evil laughter in my house, I better be the one producing it.



On National Womens Day, we celebrate the fairer sex.
I don't think everyone appreciates what women have to go through on normal days... the female host of a program was talking to another woman about the show's topic. She was bent forward, exposing her cleavage. All men in the viewing area instantly leaned forward and became completely focused. To make matters worse, they were thinking that the interview should cease and the program focus on her breasts. This is disrespectful and downright rude.

And I promise not to do it again.

In all seriousness, I try to celebrate women every day. They are truly the greatest gift to humanity.



  • This blind lady is walking along, dog beside her, and says good morning to someone else on the sidewalk. How does she know? That dog must be pretty well-trained if he tells her it's Bob.


The Demons of Hell are back

It's been a very quiet, level week. That should've been my first clue.
Because of my wife's conditions, she does not function every day of the week. This week has been particularly non-functional, which probably has some relationship to it being a very quiet, level week.

The second thing I heard this morning was, "the mortgage company took out double payments." Why yes, they did, completely hosing the checking account. The first 'customer service' person said there's nothing she could do.  Gee, thanks. That was helpful. Is this still being recorded for customer service purposes? The second customer service person was actually serviceable, giving us a clue.

Follow along with me a minute... the bank, which processes electronic payments in microseconds, can't arrange to have the mortgage company void a payment. We have to go there, get a letter, Return Receipt it to the mortgage company, which will then light a fire, put on their ceremonial steer heads and loincloths, and dance merrily. This has absolutely nothing to do with our payments; they just like to do this on Fridays. The letter will then go to their Yeah Right Department, where they will Get Right On It. They will then have to call the bank, but not during their ceremonial celebration. This whole thing should take less than a month, and we won't have to pay $900 in bounced check fees when the dancing stops.

And it's a wonderful thing that I happen to have a check to deposit, so we can do boring shit, like buy dog food and, heaven forbid, people food.

Have I mentioned the medicines yet? The nobel laureates at my wife's doctor's office have to call her medicine in. Of course they didn't, in spite of three calls confirming it and sending them reminders via smoke signals and the bat phone. If you can get a human on the phone at all, it will be one with an accent so thick you can cut the clouds over my house with it. They agreed, again, to call in the prescription. Due to Congress and the lobbying power of insurers and Big Pharma, we never know how much this one prescription is going to cost. In January, it's $400. In February it's $300. It tends to migrate and wander a lot, like my single atom of patience. At least the copays can be proven to exist, unlike my patience.

OOPS -  I don't have $400 on me - it's in the bank. Correction - it WAS in the bank.  Hey, how about that money I got back from lending it out? Yeah - here it is! This is another example of what happens when I get money. It goes away. ZOOM. If I make the mistake of physically touching it, it goes away faster. It's that old Money Tease... it lets me touch it, feel it, smell it, caress it, then it's GONE. Poof!  I am not making this up or exaggerating.. this is what happens. If, for some strange reason, I am allowed to keep any more than $50, something will pop up that requires it.  If I don't manage to spend it immediately, the next day will bring another Urgent Need.

I'm told all the money will be returned to me.
Sure it will.
If there's anything left.
And if I get any money back - BLAMMO - something else will quickly come along that desperately needs it.

Since it's a snow day, I'm home, working on some intensive tasks.
Wife tells me she's going to clear the car because she has yet another doctor appointment. If she doesn't have at least three appointments per week, she feels lost. Since she's been in bed most of the week with a bad back, I suggest that cleaning snow from a car might not be the best choice of activities. No, off she goes. We do not learn from our mistakes around here - we insist on repeating them every time.

Five minutes later she reappears with a broom, breathing heavily, to tell me it's too much. Can I do it?  OF COURSE I can do it. Nothing I ever do is so important that I can't stop what I'm doing immediately and deal with the emergencies of other people. Even if I'm in the midst of something important - no problem. I used to have a sign on my desk that said "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." The boss' wife wrote on it "Yes it does". She's a smart lady.

Being furious has its advantages.. I hammered my entire arm on the snow and it broke into city-sized pieces and rolled off the car. Then she gave me the broom and I wedged it under the mounds to get more snow off. OOPS - the aluminum-ish broom BENT in half.

At this point you're probably wondering, as I am, what I did to offend some old lady with two teeth in a cave somewhere. Or perhaps I harpooned an Inuit in the process of clubbing a baby seal. Ran over a nun?

This also begs the question of how to reverse the curse. Do I have to give the old lady $20,000 in hundred dollar bills so she can burn it? Send a shipment of fresh baby seals to Alaska? Make a generous contribution to the nunnery?



But it ain't over yet, no sir.

At the pharmacy, my medicine wasn't ready. Why? I went to pick it up a few days ago and there were no refills - they were calling the doctor. This morning they looked quizzically at my wife and said no one had called. They gave me a few to hold me over.

I got a work email.
Up top it said "what are we going to do about lefty?"  This is no surprise to me, as people have been asking that question for most of my life.  Apparently my boss had ordered software for the entire department by name. Everybody got installed except me. The request very clearly had "leftystrat" listed along with everyone else; even the sight-impaired could figure this out. Yet nothing. Perhaps we've inadvertently discovered the invisible ink of computers! We can all type my name, but the minute it leaves the computer, it turns invisible and you need a special decoder ring to see it. Unfortunately, all the decoder rings vanished when they threw out all the records incriminating the company in a lawsuit I cannot talk about. By mistake, of course. So no one actually knows I exist, outside of my department and hopefully payroll.

This all occurred before 10am.

In the midst of a much-needed nap, I got a call (because I only get calls when I'm sleeping). My beloved had cleaned out the car. And my medicine was in a trash can at Lowes, with the rest of the trash from the car. My eyes hurt because they were both trying to look at each other. She hurried back to discover that Lowes is a very clean organization, having dumped the can 30 minutes ago.


I have two modes: Level, and OMFG, THE CHECKING ACCOUNT CRASHED AND EVERYTHING'S BOUNCING.
Although too much Level would be boring, what would be the harm in the middle of the two extremes?


Every now and then I get a tiny pleasant surprise. This comes in the form of the sweet nectar of validation. Completely out of the blue, someone will say, "Wow. You guys really have way more than your share of crap."  We freeze. We process. We take a deep breath. And sometimes we feel so good.


I ask for so little, and that's exactly what I get.




  • A type of ice not known to be present on earth was recently discovered inside a diamond. It is referred to as ice-VII and is about 1.5 times as dense as the stuff we put in our glasses, ice-I. Next year they plan on discovering ice-VIII, and the following year it's Return of Ice-II, starring water-I.


PELOSI WATCH

On Ru Paul's Drag Race, Nancy Pelosi said politicians could learn from drag queens. If I were a DNC bigwig, I'd quietly insist this woman "retire". The House Minority Leader goes on a tv show where men compete to see who looks best in women's clothes.  Her retirement should be announced today because next week she's competing in a swimsuit contest. She thinks it's the Miss America contest and is working on her weightlifting skills.


The People's Republic of California Speaks:
A coffee shop in Oakland is refusing to serve law enforcement officers for the "physical and emotional safety of our customers and ourselves. We need support of the actual community to keep this place safe, not police." 

Coffee shop workers did not respond to requests for comment on the policy, but a post on their Instagram account showed a photo with writing in Spanish that says, "Talk to your neighbors, not the police."

Of course they're well within their rights to refuse service to anyone and I support that.  I just wonder who they're going to call when the place gets robbed or has an issue with a very irate customer. I have an inkling that the police will be slightly more welcome should this occur. But they will still have to pay for their coffee - it's the principle.


With A Bullet
California's bullet train, that would connect San Francisco and Los Angeles, is now estimated to cost $77.3 billion, an increase of $13 billion, and could go as high as $98.1 billion. What's a few billion between friends? 




  • In Pennsylvania, a family was saved when their cat alerted them to a fire. They became concerned when the cat acted strangely. How could they tell?



Just remember: Julia Roberts' hair costs more than your yearly salary.



  • United Airlines has absolutely gone out of their way to top any news story about anything they ever did to any of their passengers, including the one they physically dragged off the plane.  United, who hired Hitler's public relations company, forced a passenger to put her dog in the overhead bin. The dog died.
  • There are no words for this abject, criminal stupidity.
  • And I will get in trouble when I suggest putting screaming children up there.



RIP Steven Hawking.
The man was a thinker. He was also somewhat of a medical paradox, in that he lived so long with his disorder.

News of his passing came from Reddit, in spades.
Reddit did not disappoint. Within minutes, there were bad jokes and memes. You have to give credit to the forward-thinking people whose immediate response is to get out the horrid jokes and fire up the meme-makers. I have to keep reminding myself to do this, but the thought process isn't burned into my skull as yet. In addition to the already delightful black humor, there was at least one conspiracy theory; that Professor Hawking died a long time ago and was replaced by at least one stand-in. This is claimed because of the pictures looking a little different over the years, with the newer ones looking younger than the older ones. I'm not touching this with a ten foot pole.













In Passing/Passed/Whatever

My grandparents were great people.
As the first grandchild, I could do wrong. I'm told my grandfather would screw up and call other grandchildren lefty.
Looking back, nowhere did this matter more than when I was five and my father died.

As I got older, I isolated myself from family. An uncle told me that one should treasure family. Since I'm always right, I ignored him. But who did I call when I got my first IT job? My grandmother.  She was very proud of me, especially because I was an unschooled, self-made IT geek. She told me in her own unique way.... "I'm so proud of you. You've come so far with nothing." To this day we laugh.

I could've been a much better grandson; I live with this always.

My grandfather passed early from Alzheimers.
The entire family went north for my grandmother's 94th birthday. That was all she wanted: she passed shortly after.

This is the first time I've written the whole thing out. 
My uncle was right: family is important. Cherish what you have. 
Hopefully they read blogs wherever they went.

I miss them terribly.



Monday, March 12, 2018

He's Putting a Colonoscope Up That Ferrari

Just a reminder that the new Faceyspaces facial recognition feature is turned on by default. Because it's urgent that FB get your facial metrics. In addition, this will help you get tagged in photos (and filed appropriately).




  • Today's Fast Fact: voting is compulsory in Australia.
  • Voting is a moral imperative in America.  If it were compulsory, we'd see even less voters.


Major difficulties are becoming public at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, CA. Because of all the glass, people are calling 911 after walking into it and injuring themselves. Only the best and brightest for Apple.



  • Good thing we have the internet. I saw a commercial with the phrase "dilly dilly" in it. How stupid, I thought, and went to look it up. To my surprise, it came from a Superbowl ad for Budweiser. Yeah, there's no way I would know that otherwise. Not many 'experts' can agree on what it means, but apparently it took flight after the commercial aired. Fascinating, in that it fascinates people. We are an incredibly complex and undeniably stupid bunch.


I mentioned Ryan Seacrest being among the throngs of men accused of sexual harassment. Headlines are starting to appear about how he is 'fighting for his life'. I thought the guy had a near-fatal injury... no... he is just fighting his accuser. Hollywood - always in search of a new low.

And speaking of new lows, the Oscar ratings took a nosedive. It could have been an all time low. And who deserves it more than a bunch of back-slapping celebrities, who use any old award show as a platform for their politics and causes.

Jimmy Kimmel didn't even bother being allegedly funny: he advocated gun control and, shockingly, bashed Trump and Pence. 



  • Speaking of gun control, Florida rejected a ban on assault weapons, favoring a vote to arm teachers. This might be the first thing to make sense out of Florida in ages.
  • NRA membership is going through the roof.


Three daycare workers have admitted to giving children gummy bears laced with melatonin to get them calmed down for nappytime. The teachers were arrested. Asked for comment, the children yawned. Melatonin is pretty harmless, but still... it doesn't compare to my idea of valium lollipops.




Meanwhile Back in Rome...

  • Father Luca Morini is on trial for allegations of blackmail, embezzlement, and other crimes. This shouldn't surprise anyone. The new and more fun item is that Francesco Mangiacapra, a male escort, has been providing services to Father Morini, who falsely presented himself as a judge. If the father's belief system is even a little bit true, I hope he comes to understand the power of the judge he's going to meet.  When Mangiacapra (don't these  people have any Smiths?), known to friends as Bob, found out the father's true identity, he questioned the financial source for all the lavish dinners and expensive gifts and reported Morini to his diocese. The diocese lept to inaction, awakening only after the case was shown on tv. The bishop suspended him and imprisoned him in his 200,000 lira house, built specially for him, with bills and maid included.
  • This story has all the elements of a great book: blackmail, homosexual priests, lavish lifestyle, cocaine, orgies, and death threats. 
  • The only honest man in all of this is a male escort. There has to be a biblical lesson here. This will hopefully see prosecution. The top levels of the Catholic Church, along with the pedophile priests, are the largest international criminal gang in the world.



The presidential race in 2020 is heating up, first with Trump's announcement that he will be running. Maxine Waters has just announced that if Democrats win back the House in 2018, she promises financial reparations for black Americans. Is this woman possessed by some insane ghost? Has she missed her meds for a few years?  She better be paying for this personally.




Foreign Aid

  • For more years than I've been on the planet, there have been appeals and television commercials for money for starving children in Africa and elsewhere. Why is it that, despite all the money given, children are still starving? We send federal aid in addition to private donations.
  • I just saw a commercial asking for aid for poor Jews in Israel. I am stunned. 
  • According to an expert on Israel's defense, the defense budget is $15 billion.  The Israeli taxpayers pick up 70% of the tab. Defense Ministry income makes up 9%. The other 21% comes from you and me, fellow American taxpayer, to the tune of approximately $3.15 billion. Most of the aid comes as military equipment, not cash. This makes perfect sense, as the Military Industrial Complex gets a cut before the taxes stolen from the taxpayers go to a different country. We just signed an agreement for $38 billion over ten years.
  • I don't have any means to figure out the financial demographics of my readers, and I don't care (although Google knows). We are barely getting by.  My money is better in my pocket than in the government's, then in foreign countries' pockets. Imagine what you could do with this money... save, invest, treat the family to something nice, pay off bills. Instead we give it to other countries. Is this ok by you?  We as a country cannot afford healthcare, yet billions hemorrhage out of the country every year.
  • If you believe in foreign aid, send the money yourself. It's your money - do what you want with it. I never decided or ok'd or voted for my money going out of the country (or to most of what happens in the country).
  • Which Congresspersons take the most money from pro-Israel PACs? An estimate of total aid to Israel - $138 billion. The Israeli-Palestine conflict has cost American taxpayers $3 trillion. I am not picking on Israel specifically - this is just the most egregious example of our money being squandered without really knowing it. Isn't it about time to keep our money at home, where it belongs, along with our military?
  • If the American taxpayer had any real idea of what is being taken and where it goes, there would be rioting in the streets. After we turned the Kardashians off and finished our beers.



If you have been to Applebee's this year, look over your card's transactions. Point of Sale malware was discovered mid February.  Most US restaurants were hit, but if you paid online or using self-pay tabletop devices, you're ok. Look over your transactions anyway - it's good practice.




  • Even more to look forward to in England: a Member of Parliament thinks wolf-whistling, catcalling and unwanted attention on public transportation should be reportable as hate crimes. Be careful letting them know how you feel, lest you be reported for a hate crime.



Had to pick up some meds at the local pharmacy. Mrs lefty says some of the people there piss her off. Really? I get great service there. Oh well... Walking up to the counter, the nice lady asked for my name. I gave it to her, then mentioned Mrs lefty too. She said ok.  She rang me up and gave me a total. Once again, I asked for meds for Mrs lefty too.

She stood there a second too long. I could see a lone wheel turning. I could smell the winter fragrance of twigs burning, along with the plastic bags from the leaves. She probably has some sort of illness from too much plastic bag burning. Finally it hit her, in Extra Slow Motion, that there were two customers sharing a last name. She pulled up the bag, stopped again, and said there were more. At least we were moving forward, I thought to myself. Finally I managed to pay and  escape the place. I suspect her boss was monitoring her performance... I couldn't see him but I heard anguished cries from the back room.

When you send an email with two questions, only the first one will be answered. It's the rules and I didn't make them. When you call someone, they're not really listening after Hello.  Try this: next time you call someone, after they answer, say, "I'm going to murder your pets Hi Bob, how's it going?" Next time at the pharmacy, I'll say to her, "Hey, those are some prodigious tits Can I have meds for the leftystrats, please?"




Around the Dial

things heard on tv or radio

  • "...he believes that there's a sub-atomic particle, not yet discovered by science, called the pyrotron, that crashes into another particle", causing spontaneous human combustion.
  • Is that motorcycle helmet New Zealand/Australia certified?
  • "Oh no" duhhh duhhhh - a 'special' dog mascot for a UK insurer
  • yur INE als (urinals)




Does advertising reflect reality? Is it manipulated? Is there an agenda besides selling you things? 

I ask because I'm starting to see mixed-race relationships on commercials. This is an interesting item to me because it's never been on tv. It is also antagonizing to some of the alt-right, who see it as an agenda. If the alt-right is getting itself into a tizzy over this, they better stay away from UK tv, where it's absolutely normal. Their heads will explode when they observe the black and white lesbian couple selling whatever they're selling. One was in the bath and the other was sitting on the toilet, clothed. It's amusing to watch groups lose their Stuff over things like this.

What would be interesting to me is UK advertisers using attractive women to sell something. They certainly live up to their stereotype.



  • It's not that I don't trust manufacturers and users, but I don't trust manufacturers and users. I've written of flaws that allow Bad People to access things like pacemakers. Here's a related matter: researchers found vulnerabilities in a machine used to access and adjust pacemakers. Apparently the software used to run it is full of holes. The manufacturer was notified, and took its time in fixing the flaws. Meanwhile the machines were vulnerable, hence the pacemakers too.  Now apply this to The Cloud and Internet of Things. This is the future of security.



Best Headline:
Zebra hit, killed by car near Ostrich Festival



  • Ask yourself this question: does the world need Neil Diamond tribute bands?



The staff and hopefully readership of ThermionicEmissions would like to thank the SE PA weather forecasters for another dead-accurate feat of prognostication. The rumblings started early this time. Talk was over 6" at least. Philadelphia closed schools a day in advance and went to Emergency Mode, where all cars had to be removed from the street on Snow Emergency Routes. This is a very important step for Philadelphia, as it needs to keep routes unobstructed for cleaning and emergency traffic. Also, the Parking Authority loads up on fines and towing fees. The store shelves were picked clean and there were lines of 13 per lane. Full Panic<tm> was in effect.

The forecasts stated that the snow would start the night before. In an exceedingly rare occurrence, they were correct. By the next morning, it was coming down hard. The flakes were huge and wet, adding up to 2" per hour, which is really A Lot Of Snow. After getting the mail, I looked like half a snowman. Marshall, being black, looked like the Abominable Snow Span.

The snow continued for a while, stopping just short of their forecast of 12" or more. And when I say just short, I mean about 2-3" total.

On one hand, we're all glad this wasn't worse. Extricating the cars will be less heart attack inducing (remember - the highest incidence of heart attacks is after shoveling, so don't).

On the other hand, most women will tell you 2-3" ain't 12", with a far-away look in their eyes.

On the third hand, if the local weather forecasters said it will be light sometime in the next 24 hours, I wouldn't put money on it.