Your Mother Charges Phones

 

Your love is like blue ketchup

Leprosy: Ancient disease able to regenerate organs

This is tremendous news! I can't think of a down side. Here, try this.

Today I identify as  someone who hasn't had turkey in months

DAMMIT

RIP Christine McVie, of Fleetwood Mac (79), from an undisclosed illness

Your Thanksgiving might have been like many other Thanksgivings all over the world - family, turkey, relatives falling over for lack of a nap, children chasing each other with sharp objects, and some sports. Not mine. Ok, mine had relatives, no turkey (I brought Thanksgiving burgers, and no, they were not turkey burgers), kids with lasers, a few aliens, and more dessert than dinner. The best time of all was right before we left, when someone said the dog pooped on the floor. This started a chorus of experts, saying that it was NOT poop, it was... or.... etc. At one point, there were 6 adults standing around the small brown object, most bent over, staring and straining to come up with an alternate explanation to excrement. I stood back with my aunt, hysterical at the congress of Excrement Experts, performing in their fields, in the field. While they were still guessing, I yelled, "TASTE IT," figuring I'd just be another expert voice. My aunt thought it was funny. Eventually 4 out of 6 experts agreed it wasn't poop. We never caught exactly what the errant particle was, but it wasn't poop, and that was the main thing. Two of the experts, who kept silent, just wagged their tails and walked away. Job well done.

US Supreme Court asked if cops can plant spy cams around homes

With all the damage the Supreme Court is doing, this should be interesting. The suit refers to cameras on utility poles, pointed into homes. The ACLU says there should be a warrant. The ACLU doesn't know we're in the post-warrant era.

I was minding my own business when it became time to leave my couch, for places known. I figured we'd be safe - twas after black Friday.  

Let me back up a second. You see, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing when writing. So after a nice intro, I'm already backing up. Suffice it to say that I have no slippers. I have never had any slippers. I do not want slippers and have actively turned them down. It's some sort of internal reaction, based upon who knows what, maybe in my childhood, or last week, which is kinda the same thing. My grandfather had slippers. My wife has slippers (probably 12 pairs). My dog eats slippers. Unfortunately my feet are cold a lot. Sometimes I feel I need a blanket just for them. So I had to break down and get slippers. I had to surrender my young abrasive man card. No matter how bad I feel, at least I can entertain you, right?

Or I could have done the intelligent thing and kept my sneakers on after work hours. But I don't do the intelligent thing. I come up with an idea and spend way too much time and effort making it happen. Yes, I row my own boat. I also drill ventilation holes in it.

I got an unintended view into how department stores are set up today.

MANAGER: Ok, I want cosmetics and women's clothing here.

Employee: What about the second floor?

Manager: Oh, that's for women's shoes.

Employee: Uhhh.. what about men's stuff?

Manager: Don't worry, I thought of everything. We left a small spot next to the escalators, right by the bathroom. Set all men's things up there.

As we walked, I once again thanked the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I'm not female. The real estate given to pocketbooks was enough to install an olympic-size pool. I can't imagine having to pick out one (is that why ladies have so many, or is that just shoes?). Wife took me to slippers. I told her they are NOT men's slippers. Something about all the pink ones, plus they were next to the pocketbooks, at the deep end of the pool. I was concerned, because I never have to tell her anything about shopping. It's like if we went guitar shopping and she had to direct me to the left handed ones. I figured since the 450 pairs of women's slippers were next to underwear, we'd head to the men's department (only one of us can fit there at a time) and look at underwear.... slippers were bound to be near. Two minutes later, BINGO - I found the slippers. There was a large display. And when I say a large display, I mean a bunch of them thrown about a table. They had quite a variety. And when I say variety, I mean you get the choice of size and color - there was ONE pair and you had better like them. So that's 450 pairs from which women can choose and one for the men. It's worse than I thought. If there were any more, they might get in the way of the bathrooms, or that big red button on the escalator that you hit when the escalator eats someone. 

Meta Reportedly Fires Dozens of Employees for Hijacking Users' Facebook and Instagram Accounts

Meta is Faceyspaces' and Instagram's parent. Sure, they fired some, but rest assured, this goes on daily. Even if they tell you they don't or it's encrypted, they can and do read it. The Prime Directive applies: don't write anything if you don't want it out there. Nothing is private.

The federal government was asked to develop a 5 year plan to fix the climate.

I have a coffee cup that says "Government -  if you think the problems we create are bad, wait til you see our solutions." We are asking the highest office in the land, as well as one of the most incompetent, to fix a HUGE issue that some argue isn't an issue. Hey, let's ask the almost 80 year old guy - he'll have some good ideas!

• a huge Space Umbrella to block the sun 
• "give" everybody big air conditioners
• tax the sun
• ask it nicely
• have the climate sit with Congress for a month

Amazon Alexa is a “colossal failure,” on pace to lose $10 billion this year

I guess it depends on your point of view. While it may be losing money, it's gaining a ton of your information. Remember when Amazon said Alexa only listens when you address it, then admitted that it's listening all the time?

World's Shortest Books

1. Famous Asian Hockey Players
2. What Amazon DOESN'T Know About Me

There is something wrong with my thumbs... perhaps my entire hands. Ever since touchscreen phones came out, I haven't been able to master them. Some of it isn't my fault... I think the 'flowing' text was just put there to aggravate people. The suggestions that come up are just silly and that's not my fault. But if there's a volume control or something like that, I have to sit there and keep trying to move it til my thumb hits the right spot. Other people don't seem to have this problem. I'm sure there are some great uses for huge thumbs (and large hands), but I can't come up with any at the moment (the curse of anyone with a blog). I never saw my thumbs as large; they've been with me since birth (as far as I know). They're original equipment. The fingers' other talent is hitting the INSERT key, no matter what keyboard I use. I'm always typing over things because I inadvertently hit Insert. All of this only became a problem with phones. It's almost like they're clownishly large, but they really aren't. Am I going to need one of those phones for old people, with huge buttons? My cognition is ok, but my thumbs aren't. It would be fun to walk into a phone store and tell the person behind the counter, "Hello. My thumbs are very large," then wait for a reaction. Hey, at least I didn't say 'penis.' 

It has been suggested that I'm the Missing Link, but I look too much like humans for that to be true. Same thing for being a Martian. My uncle has thumbs that can wrap around a glass or a telephone pole. I noticed this when I was little. Now we're both adults and I still think about his thumbs. I'm not sure what that means, but that's for the doctors to figure out. Wife has me put my hands up against hers. I think she has long, slender piano fingers. She thinks I'm an aberration. The joke's on her - she married me. Hendrix had fingers so long, he could to 3 things at the same time. But length doesn't really matter (says the guys)... some great players have tiny little sausage fingers. I'm talking breakfast sausages, not kielbasa or any of those larger sausages. Mine seem to work just fine on the guitar, and for most other things. Except the bloody phone. 

But it's open season for benefits at work. Unfortunately it's also open season for Medicare, which results in more commercials than you can throw an anvil at. William Devane is now shilling for Medicare alternatives, as is William Shatner. Shatner sounds like he has a cold. Some stations run nothing but these commercials (and a few life insurance commercials). What they don't realize is that they're putting everybody OFF their insurance. I won't go to Sonic because the commercials are the most idiotic I have ever seen on tv. And because the alleged food sucks. Have you ever seen a commercial so idiotic that it's offensive? That's Sonic.

So it's time to review your benefits, if you have any. Bless you if you're stuck with Obamacare. My employer had a few plans from which to choose. So I got out the slide rule, calculator, spreadsheet, and my trusty spatula, to figure out which plan was best for me. You're going to laugh, but the most expensive plan was the cheapest. My service elephant, Iqbal, double checked my math and said it was dead on. The only problem was that I could not get coverage for Iqbal, even though he's invaluable to me. Someone suggested pet insurance, but he's not my pet, and pet insurance is even more expensive than people insurance. It also has a lot of pre-existing condition exceptions. If your pet has hair, it can't be treated for anything involving hair or skin. Yellow teeth? Pre-existing. Pees? They won't cover the bladder. Walks into the vet? They don't cover the legs. So evaluate pet insurance thoroughly. Evaluate people insurance even more carefully. 

Speaking of my dog, she apparently considers herself something of an interior decorator. Last night she redecorated my office. All sorts of magazines ripped and moved, plus wires all over the place. This is infuriating because *I* am the slob - I don't need any help. She doesn't even put her own toys away - why should she be allowed to decorate? Even if I manage to get a spot on the sofa, I can't get there because of the dog toys, both on the floor and on the sofa. She just snickers at me, from the chair across the room. So make sure to look at your health insurance, in case anything changed or they're trying to put one past you. And remember: whatever you need, it isn't covered or has a $300 copay ($15,000 for Obamacare). In case you think I'm not 100% serious, the dog also thinks she's a cat. She walks in front of me and slows down. She knows exactly where I'm going. Just like our cat did. Cockers are not a herding breed; cockers are treat hounds.

• Btw, if you're a musician and like to build stuff. Mojotone.com has a sale, for which they send me more emails than air molecules around the planet. They have some pretty cool amp kits, parts, pedal kits, and building aids. They're reputable and won't give me a single thing for mentioning them.

Eli Lilly CEO says insulin tweet flap “probably” signals need to bring down cost

So pricing is arbitrary?

A false tweet got people outraged and the CEO made the above statement.

Pricing like this only happens in America.

Some patients ration their insulin as a result.

Companies obviously have to make a profit to stay in business. Let's hope they make things more reasonable, before DC gets involved.

This is for anybody who says Noddy Holder (Slade) is really Janis Joplin

Thai monks fail drug tests leaving temple empty

Ya know, not everybody is cut out to be a monk. But at least they're not molesting little boys.... 

Analysts predict Elon Musk is set to become number-one influencer on Twitter.

They also predict that the next people in space will be astronauts.