Sale: Deep Fried Grease Bits

Your love is like  flesh-eating bacteria

Flying AIDS Emmy?

Los Angeles has gotten really bored or really stoned and bestowed an Emmy upon New York Governor Coumo for his Flying AIDS updates.

New York is a Flying AIDS mess, with all sorts of unconstitutional restrictions and Hollywood sends an Emmy for updates. Watch out - the next update will feature a beat box in the background and Cuomo will win a Grammy. 

I don't know what organ informs Hollywood's decisions, but it's not anywhere in the cranial neighborhood. Perhaps decriminalization of magic mushrooms is taking its toll... Hey man.... let's give an Emmy for something that doesn't get Emmys. Perhaps they expended too much hot air whining about the president and are acting all sorts of funny.  DOCTOR - we need air in here! Get the masks.

An Emmy Award, or simply Emmy, is an American award that recognizes excellence in the television industry.

ThermionicEmissions has information on upcoming Emmys:

• the chair one of the judges in one of the talent judging shows sat on
• Anything Biden says on tv
• Joe Namath's Medicare commercial
• the most unrecognized people on tv: bailiffs on all the judge shows 
• the people who make the power cords for the 80" tv's
• whoever took off those Little House with an Angel shows
• Oprah's farts

Today I identify as  Jeffrey Dahmer's fork

• Penny is a shredder, from a long line of shredders at the address. Because of this, she has to be watched carefully, lest she steal something and start shredding it. There is a box with a few stuffed animals in it on the floor. Apparently she doesn't feel this is hers, so she's ignoring it. Instead, she managed to locate a fuzzy, expensive shoe-sock thingie and is chewing that. We showed her the stuffed animal xmas box and she ignored it.
• Spaniel Math: the desirability of something = how much People need it divided by availability  D = P/A

In the Utah desert, a helicopter pilot discovered a metal monolith.

At this point, there are no primates banging on it with bones, but no one knows what it is. In hysterics at this point are the aliens who gave Arthur C. Clarke the script for 2001: A Space Odyssey. The aliens are a interesting bunch, and have wicked senses of humor, abducting people and putting things up their butts for fun. They also move things around on the Moon to throw off scientific measurements. They get a pretty bad rap, but people who understand their sense of humor get a kick out of them. Something will happen to people who stand near the monolith for too long, I predict. Perhaps flowers growing out of their heads, or turning into Elvis. The aliens are huge Elvis fans, even though they had nothing to do with him. They gave him his own ship after he faked his own death, and he does concerts for them in the Pleiades. The female aliens throw their gargafransens at him. They also love to make Jesus appear on different things, especially toast.

Just don't mistake their sense of humor for benevolence. If you get on their bad side, you could find something very large up your butt. Insurance specifically excludes removal of anything from the butt installed by aliens...

Now you're probably asking yourself how and why a helicopter pilot discovered the monolith. They were counting sheep. You're probably asking yourself why federal dollars are spent counting sheep, in a helicopter, in the Utah desert, on federal land. And I'm here to tell you I have no flipping idea. I can't tell you anything more than we're probably getting charged an astronomical amount per hour for the helicopter, unless we bought it, in which case we paid an astronomical amount for it. Then there's the federal employees required for the job. John is the pilot. John  is that most rare of federal employees: the one who can do his job really well. Let's be honest, you want a John flying your helicopter, unless you want an incredibly high turnover rate, both in personnel and in helicopters. However, in the passenger seat is Bob. Bob is your most typical federal employee.. the kind who has to be awakened to clock out for the day. Now Bob's job is to count the sheep. Unfortunately, Bob can't count past 9-5, so there are a lot of trips. They take off, Bob counts to 9, they land, then they do it all over the next day. Unfortunately, this never results in an accurate count of sheep on federal land. Fortunately, though, no one needs an accurate count of sheep on federal land... they were given patronage jobs by some Congressman, in trade for flying over a Utah resort and counting the number of bikinis.

But before you get angry and start writing letters sending emails thinking very negatively about this, just be glad they didn't use Jimmy to do the counting. Jimmy is a drummer and count count past 4 (1-2-3-4).

Dear lefty  

• I don't feel really close with my mother. Why is this?
• When you were growing up, did you have a lot of 'uncles'? 

Finnish Prime Minister says trans people have a right to self-identify.

Ideally, yes, but let's stop and think for a moment... what does any of this have to do with their ability to do the job? I didn't vote for you because you were born in the wrong body: I voted for you because I believe you're the best man woman person for the job. The last guy in the position said absolutely nothing about his bitches and ho's. I don't care if you identify as an F-15, both other voters might say it's difficult to do your job at that altitude.

• TIPS for safe online buying this season 
• Don't.

Chess culture is allegedly being changed by attractive women becoming stars.

No it isn't. You'll still have groups of chess nerds, off to the side, talking abut how hot the chicks are, and lacking the courage to talk to them, even about chess.

• a Space-X rocket to the Moon failed after it got behind a Chinese rocket to the moon. The Chinese rocket was reportedly driving with its turn signal on, too slow for Moon entry, and looked like it didn't know where it was going. The unmanned Space-X rocket gave up and auto-destructed.

Experts, and people who are paid to say Important-Sounding Things, are going on about the ills of isolation during the Flying AIDS. It's a good thing they never asked the lefty household... lefty kinda liked his partial isolation. Mrs lefty was more social. During the Flying AIDS, lefty felt very little ill from isolation and Mrs lefty was heard to say, "You really have something there. I'm not all that fond of people either, lefty." I predict most of us will remain mostly isolated, except THOSE people... the former cheerleaders and used car salesmen. The people you just want to stab when you get within 50' of them. And Aunt Bertha, who still treats you as if you were 4, asking if you want a cookie. The sad part of it all is that you do want a cookie, but you're not braving Aunt Bertha to get one.. You wind up telling the family you have the Flying AIDS so they won't expect you at the now weekly family gatherings. If you really value your isolation, you tell them you're a carrier.

• Walmart-exclusive routers and other sold on Amazon and Ebay contain hidden backdoors
• Security researchers sound alarm on smart doorbells
• Told You So. Avoid IoT when you can. Research anything you plan to buy. Avoid Chinese. Keep firmware updated. Ask questions. Even ask me - comment and I'll respond.

Black Fridays are here. And when I say Black Fridays, I mean any day near Thanksgiving. I'm checking out the deals, and because they're all crap, or because I'm horribly depressed, nothing looks good to me. They seem to consist of largely wireless ear buds, the requisite large tv's (next year they'll be wider than your house), and Smart devices. I can't get my head around people buying devices that spy on them. You're paying $49.95 for a 'Smart' speaker that you talk to, allowing Amazon to build a better profile on you. But it's ok, they're only on when you say, "HEY AMAZON."  Oh? They're on all the time? Oh.

Lest you think I'm some sort of tech Luddite, I have a pair of wireless ear buds (and run a multi-million dollar network). I paired them with my phone, and only the right one actually paired. Since I have the attention span of a pregnant gnat, that was as far as I got. Plus, if you think about it, what use do I have for wireless ear buds if I don't get out much? Sure, maybe food shopping, when forced to. I use the wired ones now. They have a habit of tying themselves in knots right before I turn on some music, even though they were perfectly fine a second ago. My phone has a volume limiter, so I don't go deaf, which means I can't hear the music anyway, and am subjected to "Cleanup on aisle 4" and "Where's the tampons?"

Of course I'm expecting no end of fun when I fire up the ear buds. Whoops - they aren't charged. Whoops, where did I put the left one? Whoops, they fell out and are on the floor of the store, and probably full of the Flying AIDS. So yeah, wired phones ain't that bad. Then there are the noise-canceling phones. Although the FDA hasn't examined these yet, they're a bit of a misnomer. They will not quiet your wife or significant other. Or any noise that's bothering you. They work based upon the principle of Sound Forgettance, where they hope you'll get so into what's coming out of them, you somehow ignore the kids playing Miley at deafness level in the same room. 

But rest assured you'll pay quite a premium for them, especially if they're Bose. Bose, founded by Mr Bose, has created a business second in intelligence to only Amazon. Bose started in speakers, on the principle that you'll hear better audio if the speakers were pointed in the other direction. As audiophiles (or audiophools) started to swallow this, Bose went to Plan B: put a lot of individual speakers into their speakers, pointed in the other direction. This drove the audiophools into orgiastic glee, except for the ones who could hear. You had 1speaker box, with about 8 six inch speakers in it, plus one pointing AT the listener, for some strange reason. At this point, people with any amount of hearing wet themselves with laughter, while the audiophools talked about accurate soundstage, the music realistically disappearing into the curtains, and the king's new clothes being simply boffo. So Bose went into headphones, with a completely proprietary design. 8 tiny little speakers point outside your ear, while 1 tiny little speaker points inside your ear. The noise canceling models cost another $300 and are exactly alike, except Bose hopes the 8 tiny little speakers point outside really annoy the noisemakers, so they go away, hence noise canceling. I just can't take them seriously. ymmv.

• I dunno about you, but I feel warm and holiday-like. I got an email from all of my local and federal representatives for Thanksgiving.

Something weird happened to audio quality over the years: it disappeared.

People used to be strangely proud of their stereo systems. They'd save up and buy the most expensive, great-sounding components they could buy. There were physical arguments over whose receiver had less harmonic distortion and whose tone arm on their record player was more dead than the others. People were attaching their players to concrete blocks to stop the jiggling. The race was on for wattage: this little thing only had 4 watts, and people laughed at it. Serious stereos started at 50 watts and went past 200. Have you ever been near 50 watts? It's roughly the level of the front row of a concert or a jackhammer (sometimes the same thing). The receivers became larger and heavier.

Then came the real loonies. These guys had the equipment that if you were blindfolded, you'd swear the band was in the room with you. They were loonies only in the amount of money they'd spend on their stereos. These guys went backwards to vacuum tubes. The really far out ones had separate Right and Left amplifiers. These amplifiers cost about as much as a car today. Each. The speaker technology they used was the start of the technology NASA used to send astronauts to Venus.

When the real loonies ran out of money, they got together with the regular loonies and perpetrated a joke so rotten and nasty, it continues to this day: Monster Cable.  These are the cables that are twice the size of your regular hookup cables. They have special oxygen-free insides, gold-plated connectors, and they roll themselves up of there's too much spare cable. They also cost 9 times as much as regular cable. Many a tear was shed in laughter as they watched people argue over the benefits in fidelity using these cables. After a while the joke started getting old, so they came up with Monster Power Cables. You know, the cord you plug into the wall, that goes to your computer. Yeah, that power cable would provide good, clean, oomph for your stereo. Again, laughter ensued, and all was well. Then CDs appeared, and new arguments broke out. Watching audio formats change was a never-ending source of amusement. Until compression, aka MP3s.

The mp3 was a concept where parts of the music deemed unhearable (or unnecessary) were removed from the song, making the file smaller.  Since hard drive space was expensive, this was quickly adopted. Apple, of course, had their own compression. All you had to do was listen to the song from a cd and an mp3 to hear the difference. Plus it would sound a lot better from your home stereo than the computer, which had tiny little plastic speakers on it (and does to this day). 

Now hard drive space is incredibly cheap, CDs are all but obsolete, music files are likely 'in the cloud', and we're seeing a resurgence of RECORDS. Older folks have to keep changing their underwear from laughing at all this. In order to play the records, you have to buy a turntable. There are plenty out there, and most are plastic crap. The people who used the original turntables to play the original records are amused by all this, with deja-vu popping up all over the place. They remember the specific records now for sale because they had them in their collections. The older people who consumed a lot of ... recreational pharmaceuticals... still think it's the 70s and that the albums never stopped being sold. "Wow, man... didja see the new Zep record? Trippy. We can sort our pot on it- get rid of the seeds." The hoarders among them still have their entire record collection, much of which still smells like pot.

I did a thing a while back.

Someone gave me a tube stereo. I looked it over and plugged it in, in place of my regular old receiver. I was flabbergasted - they were right. The difference was night and day. I heard people talk about soundstage and laughed at the word. Damn if I didn't perceive soundstage. And much greater fidelity. This is the way to go, people.

All my guitar amps use tubes too, but for different reasons.

The US can't make tubes anymore, for environmental reasons, but the guitar amp industry keeps the foreign tube industry alive (China + Russia).

If you pick up a map and ask me where China and Russia are, I'll stare blankly at you. But I can sure tell you the 2 countries still making vacuum tubes and why. I am public school education at its best.

if this guy were my neighbor, he'd be by for dinner a lot