Uggs - One Step Above Crocs

 Your love is like  chewing popsicle sticks

Street Work - Day 149 

5 minutes before the alarm went off, the noise started. It was earlier than normal. I'm not sure if I'd rather hear the road equipment or the guys tearing each other a new one. As I set up for work, the air horn started. By this point, these 'coincidences' stopped annoying me - I just shook my head. I think one of the behemoths was in reverse for a while- it kept blasting out BEEP BEEP - BEEP BEEP, which translated, means GET UP, YOU DOLT. This repeated for about 10 minutes. I prefer the less abusive warnings of my alarm, which doesn't really speak to me at all, unless you don't count my sad wail at having to get up now. NOOOOOOOOOOOO! If I could hook their machines up to the coffee machine, I'd have it made. It's only a matter of time til the Great Hammering Device starts. If I have a lot of meetings, somebody's roof will need repairing too.

Wife's internal children rushed to the window, because this is like Christmas for them. They're fascinated by Truck Ballet. They're telling me what the guys are doing and how they are doing it. This is a very different experience than mine...

HER: Well, first they have to rip up the street. They use a truck with a curved arm that dumps into a dumptruck. It's 3 long and 2 short when the truck is full. Did you know they have to call a towtruck if someone didn't move their car?

ME: God, I wish that would get quiet. 

HER: they were talking... one makes $50 an hour and the other guy $120

ME: God, I wish that would get quiet. 

Today I identify as  tapioca pudding

There have been many really talented and funny people who just can't get good roles, like Chevy Chase, Jack Black, and Wayne Brady.

A former eBay security official who pleaded guilty for his role in a cyberstalking conspiracy has asked for leniency in sentencing while blaming his actions in part on a "drinking culture" at eBay that contributed to his alcoholism.

They forced it down my throat! They were responsible for me mailing a bloody pig mask....

Meanwhile, job applications went up 150% at eBay.

• Olympics opening ceremony director sacked for Holocaust joke
• in 1990

Covid: China rejects WHO plan for second phase of virus origin probe

Says that checking if the virus is man-made and escaped from their lab is racist 

• The jungle-trekking Covid vaccinators helping to protect remote Indian villages.
• it may just be me, but if you have to build bridges and cross hazardous trails to vaccinate remote villages, perhaps you can leave them alone, because they're obviously not coming in contact with the Flying AIDS. They're more in danger from the people saving them.

this year alone Huawei has spent $1.24m schmoozing US officials – more than double the $470,000 spent over the whole of 2020. If the current level of activity continues, this year's spending is almost on course to match the $2.99m Huawei spent in 2019.

Never mind the tech that phones home to China - just throw more money at Congress....

UPDATES

• game changer is only getting worse
• ...EVer has let go a bit
• caramel has yet to lose its salt
• that's what I'm talkin bout has jumped the shark, but nobody told it
• future ban: crazy (that's crazy stupid)

Flying AIDS news 

Coronavirus: Was US money used to fund risky research in China?

Communication around masks is still terrible

Covid vaccine: Eight-week gap seen as sweet spot for Pfizer jab antibodies

We. Have. No. Idea.

• A Faceyspaces group dedicated to gardening in western New York state is celebrating a victory over the company's algorithms after having been repeatedly threatened with censure and deletion due to use of the word "hoe".
• Democratic bill would suspend Section 230 protections when social networks boost anti-vax conspiracies

One of these is egregiously illegal and immoral. Guess which.

About the car..... 

Our car remains at the collision place, where they're working on it.

We are still driving the rental.

This satisfactory situation could not be allowed to continue.

Rental place calls and says we should give them $1500 so we'd be paid up.

Errr.... no. In no way should that add up to $1500.

Rental Guy tells me that's true, but the insurance stopped paying for the rental two weeks ago.

Two weeks ago?

Wasn't anybody going to clue me in on this?

Was it some sort of secret and I didn't have a Need to Know?

I called Insurance. She explained to me that we have $1,000 for rental and we were past it. 

That part didn't seem to be Need to Know.

So I mentioned that we'd just be starting on the $1,000 if it didn't take them three weeks to get the car to the collision center.

We have never had a problem with our insurance. 

In this matter, they didn't so much drop the ball as slice a chunk out of it and put it up somebody's nose.

more misadventures as they occur.....

just remember... this could be you. We do it so you don't have to.

Pasta Fazool and Low Gas Mileage

 Your love is like  that kid in 3rd grade who ate paste

You have to know that the rusty oven and demolished car ain't enough....

I have a broken window.

Never had a broken window before.

My house was put together with wood, plastic, and beaver snot. Nails and rulers were too expensive and required too much skill.

All of the sudden my window has a warped metal frame for a window. 

Warped? Yup. It has turned itself into some sort of trapahedronagonal shape. No one knows how.

In addition to its morphing capabilities, it lost its pane of glass. No, really. The glass stayed while its metal frame walked off and changed its shape. It's like how women can remove their bra without taking off their shirt. It will never fail to amaze me.

You can't simply attach the glass permanently without some sort of industrial adhesive, I guess, that will keep a navy aircraft carrier free of leaks on its underside. You can't really do much at all with the glass, especially without its now interestingly-shaped frame.

So the frame hangs there, somehow, mocking us. It thinks I just got a few discretionary dollars, but the joke is on it: the oven already got it. No, wait, the car's deductible got it. 

But the joke is on me: I selected the shop to work on the car, but no one seems to know how to get the car to the shop. The 90 minute wait on the insurer's phone anti-support line only ate up 90 minutes of my life. The local agency, to which we send money monthly, has yet to be of any assistance, aside from being nice people. I expect the car repair to be processed quickly... approximately 4 weeks after/if the car gets moved to the collision place. That beats the actual dealership, which should give it back with a Christmas bow on it.

In actual fact, the frame and window is sitting at such a precarious angle that any bit of blowing on it, whether breath or storm, could send the glass hurtling toward the ground at somewhere near the velocity of hurtling glass.

So Mrs. lefty suggests 4 different species of adhesive she procured from that loud guy on tv who built a boat out of it and unfortunately failed to sink. She loves this Super Tape or whatever it's called, regardless of the fact that I tried to use it once, and it failed quicker than Cardio B dumping her career to sing the blues in dingy little bars, where the smell of stale beer overwhelms your ears.

Mrs. lefty came to the conclusion that I came to an hour before but failed to vocalize: we need professionals for this job. She figgers hundreds (dollars, not professionals).

So the window is now racing the rusting oven, and according to quantum physics, the car doesn't exist.

Today I identify as  Frau Blucher

Are you a California resident and wondering where the latest $100 million glob of your money went?

It went to bailout its pot industry. 

to aid companies that are struggling financially in large part because of bureaucratic delays and missteps in transitioning them from temporary licenses into more stringent permanent ones.

So your money is going to bailout a huge cash cow because your government can't get its excrement together to manage it correctly.

There is no end to the money that comes out of your paycheck to bail out businesses. And everything else.

• Wife is standing there, holding the phone and the coffee cup. Phone rings. Rather than actually answering the phone, Wife turns the coffee cup upside down, and we get to watch the entire contents go to the floor. In slow motion.
• We both often wonder where the person we married went 

If you're in the UK, a Flying AIDS booster vaccine plan is coming in a few weeks.

They never met a tragedy they couldn't exploit 

Smell anything yet?

Just in case you're asking yourself what those seltzer drinks taste like, think of liquefied cardboard that someone walked a picture of flavoring by. Yum.

• I finally found my brand new, non-existent work badge. Sort of.
• I have to take a 2nd day off and go to the place I went on my first day off
• and hope they have it, because there's no way to check
• I think I'm in the army and somebody forgot to tell me

Beginnings of sentences guaranteed to cause problems

1. I don't mean to make you mad, but....
2. I've been thinking...
3. Ya know that [furniture/possession/car]?
4. Remember I said I wouldn't....
5. You're ok with kids, right?

Car Cont'd

I didn't know you could do this, but the last time I rented a car while mine was being repaired, I actually ran out of rental days on our insurance. Because I don't just like, but require pain, I had to rent a car because of this particular car repair. 

So off we went, to the place that rhymes with Renterprise.

I want to specify that the sign out front said RENTERPRISE Car Rental. This will become important shortly.

The over-friendly lady behind the counter asked what she could do for us. Per their sign, I suggested renting us a car.  

"Oh, terribly sorry, we don't have any cars."

Now that sign outside says "car rental," does it not?

"Yes, but we don't have any cars. Do you have a reservation?"

No, I walked in to rent a car. I didn't know I needed a reservation.

"Yes, you have to make a reservation with your insurance."

Oh. Except last time, right?

"Let me look you up. Mrs. lefty? Nope. lefty? Nope. Your insurance didn't make a reservation.

So now my insurance has to make the reservation in advance? Like they knew before the idiot crunched up my car? A psychic insurance company is a pretty good deal for what I pay.

"Maybe we can schedule you."

Ok, I'll play along. How about tomorrow morning?

"We can fit you in in a few days. We should have a lot of returns then."

Should...

"Yes, should. You'll be fine. I damn near guarantee it. And I may not be the manager but I sit next to the girl who's very good-looking."

Ah. I see. Just let me go over this one time, please. This is Renterprise car rental.

"Yes, Sir."

And you rent cars.

"Absolutely."

But I can't have one today or tomorrow because you don't have any cars."

"Yes."

And I need my insurance company to make my reservation before I keep my reservation, on the day that you tell me you expect some returns.

"You got it. See you Wednesday."

Car rental, right?

"Largest rental agency in the world."

Well, it's largely free of cars you can rent, that's for sure.

Why do so many events in my life feel like Monty Python's Cheese sketch?

• Chocolate Eclair day?
• still no left handed history month

Badge Cont'd

Back to the work badge... 

I had to take a day off to get it, because we can't simply get it on-premises.

And I had to go into the jungle of downtown Philly.

And after 2 weeks, I heard nothing, but was advised to make another appointment to pick it up.

Against my better judgment, I took off another day and did.

And naturally, it was not there.

So at least my judgment is intact and accurate.

Still, no one can tell me what to do.

Plenty have told me where to go.

And in the end, we can't get no stinkin badges.

I don't want to give it too much attention, lest it grow and assault me further, but the other morning at 8am, I heard something that sounded like drums. Just drums - no radio or other instruments. Drums are frightening enough, but a drummer who will play at 8am does not bode well.

Drummers are the weirdest creatures. They're the kids you went to high school with, who would tap on desks with pencils all day, earning nasty looks from students and nasty words from teachers. Some carried sticks. After a while, you wanted to carry aluminum sticks and play on their heads. You voted to slip some Adderall in their lunch. While this worked for school, they could no longer play drums.

The really frightening part of the whole drum thing is that for a few houses down the block, everybody's of retirement age. Drumming is NOT a hobby for retirement.

• Canon is using AI cameras that only let smiling workers inside offices.
• in unrelated news, Canon's is experiencing a 95% decline in employees and is hiring

The Teamsters Announce Coordinated Nationwide Project to Unionize Amazon

That's a really huge, profitable business you have there. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it. Things happen, you know. All of the sudden, every one of the delivery trucks have 4 flat tires. Engines break. Explosions happen at the warehouses. These are the kinds of things that don't happen in union shops.

A U.S. Air Force base responded to controversy about a drag queen show hosted by the base by saying the performance was “essential to the morale, cohesion, and readiness of the military.”

"In fact, we were not prepared to defend the country without it"

• Microsoft fixes high-pitched noise bug in Windows 10
• Turns out it wasn't actually Windows - it was the people using it 

Stevie Ray + big brother Jimmy Lee Vaughan

Renting a Life

The phone rings.
This is never a good sign.
Wife wants to know if I want the bad news or the really bad news.
I told you it wasn't a good sign.

Unable to pull over on the turnpike in time, the dog decorated the car seat.
Lovely.
And speaking of the car, it was running very strangely and the Check Engine light was on. This car simply doesn't do that. By the way, the call was coming from two and a half hours away, in Outer Mongolia.

Outer Mongolia was less than convenient for most of us, especially as I needed to perform some job-related errands the following day and the mechanic was near home.

I had to rent a car. Jinkies.
The company that picks you up was the only choice.
I got an Altima, through very little choice of my own.
The largest surprise is that there are no dogs allowed. NO DOGS? Fortunately Marshall doesn't think he's a dog, so that won't be a problem.

My personal car is a thing of beauty, generating no problems. Because of its age, it has none of the things people today are used to. I don't even have an AUX in on the stereo.

The rental had stuff I'd never seen before. These lights kept going on and off. It took me a while to figure out they were 'radar' to tell me there was a car coming up on that side. Great invention. The two zone air conditioning was handy, as Wife prefers arctic air and I prefer to drive in a less than icy state.

I never knew about this, but when you shift into reverse, there's a tv on the dash! The only problem is why should a tv be wasted running only in reverse. And I hate to say this, but the programming was total crap. It was largely about streets and curbs. The audio seemed to be broken.

When you see car commercials, you'll notice there's very little about the actual car: it's more about stupid features and the stereo.  And there was a stereo in this car. It had many controls, which probably makes car buyers orgasmic or terrified. It had buttons and the buttons had buttons. It was a complete nightmare of user hostility. Hooking my phone to it was a delicate dance, but you'll be happy to know nothing got broken, went airborne, or got punched. For some reason it wanted permissions to my messages, which wasn't working for me. There were a few other phones listed.. when I get some time, I'll find the info they left in the car. The long and short of this is the thrill I got, not having to listen to the radio. I got to hear my own music. Yes, this is normal for everyone with recent cars; it's just new to me.

On the other hand, this car's seats hurt our backs. It probably had a tiny engine because it couldn't get out of its own way. The ride allowed us to experience every nuance of the road. In English this means "it's really goddamn bumpy." So our 'old' car blew the very new car away. Fortunately the engine light went out in our car. Everybody knows there's nothing wrong with a car when the check engine light goes out. We can all breathe easier.

A friend related a story about a new car stereo. His wife's new car had all sorts of complex gadgets. She found a button labeled HD. Enthused by High Definition, she switched on the obvious satellite radio and noticed that they played all her favorite music. They played entire CDs of her favorite music. A tiny amount of detective work by my friend revealed that HD stands for Hard Drive, and it played the favorite music because it recorded the CDs she played.



The FBI and other sources are raising the alarm over a type of router malware, called VPNfilter. This can take over your router and potentially be used in a botnet. The long and short of it is that you need to update the firmware in your router and reboot it. Firmware tells the device how to operate. However, trying to get owners to do anything even vaguely security-related is advanced dentistry, like pulling teeth. You should be updating the firmware periodically anyway, and definitely now, whether or not your router is on the possible list. In addition, here are five tips to protect your router.

• Can't Kill This: a Texas man killed a snake while gardening. When he went to get rid of the head, it bit him. He was rushed to the hospital, where it appears he will recover. This is definitely one for Science to study.
• It's also the last time his wife will place two deadly snakes in their yard.

They're baaaaaaack!
The ants.
No idea what's going on here but the past few years have been Ant Crazy<tm>. We used to think it reflected on the cleanliness of the occupants but that was dispelled when the antiseptic OCD micro-cleaning ladies on either side of us got them; one in her tub.

So if you happen to be visiting, never mind Mrs lefty, who is prowling the house with her holster. In one slot is ant spray. In the other slot is pet-friendly ant spray. She has her hands over the spray cans, ready to DRAW at a moment's notice. She hunts stealthily, so those stupid ants won't hear her silent stomping. When she finds them, there's the initial WHOOOOOOOSH, as she sprays them, but the fun's only beginning....  now it's time for Tracking. One cannot just kill the ants - one must track them to their source. See where they came from and how they got into the house. This is Grade A Detective Work, or, as we call it, deteckin.  I dare not open cabinets, lest I find our current supply of ant spray is taking over the house.

When all the (visible) ants have gone to meet their maker, it's time to hunt MOTHS. We did a credible job of eradicating the little buggers, but every now and then we see one. If we're eating, I manage to continue, but not Wild West Mrs lefty. She puts her fork down with a crash, reaches for anything in a aerosol can, and LETS LOOSE. I will not speculate on why there's always an aerosol can handy. If, heaven forbid, there's no aerosol can around, she leaps into action, throwing herself in the general direction of the moth, and clapping her hands together so fast I can't see it happen. Can you imagine dinner with the family, discussing how everyone's day went, when all of the sudden Mommy leaps out of her chair, into the air, and dispatches a moth before gravity acts upon her body?  She's like the Bionic Moth Hunter. All she needs is a Steve Irwin accent and some khaki clothes.

• A soldier has been arrested after stealing an armored vehicle and giving police a two hour tour of Virginia. They were very specific that it was not a tank, for some reason. Naturally, pictures appeared across social media.
• I'd check to see if Joe Walsh wasn't back on the sauce...

According to a Pew Research Center poll:

Almost seven-in-ten Americans (68%) feel worn out by the amount of news there is these days

So we better get on this and cut down the amount of stuff happening.

• Hey - are you on myheritage.com? Data on more than 92 million users were exposed in a breach on October 26, 2017, reported June 4, 2018, because they just learned about it.  Nice job, guys.

Aside from Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, what are Men in Black?
They're are a real phenomenon, occurring after UFO sightings. Out of nowhere, two or more men, typically dressed in black but might also be a uniform, show up at your door. They look like something out of the 50s: black coat, black suit, sunglasses, black hat, getting out of a large, old car, and something wrong. Like a facial feature being a little off. Various things have been reported, including hypnosis, threats of bodily harm if the person talks, telling him he never saw anything, and plain old asking what he saw.

They haven't changed in years and years, since they were first reported. There is audiotape of several people who were visited, as well as stories. There is at least one picture of one of them.

Many possible explanations exist as to who or what they are: our government, desperate to know if 'someone' is visiting. Somebody else from somewhere else. How do they know you were just visited or had a close sighting? Some say in addition to alleged extraterrestrial UFOs, there are ARVs - Alien Reproduction Vehicles, which our government made from capturing and reverse-engineering crashed UFOs. Some of these are alleged to be able to swoop in and abduct people. Since we're veering way off known reality, let's add the theory that the pilots of the (not ours) UFOs are US from the future. I don't know about you, but I don't want to 'evolve' into a Gray.

I have no answers. Just creating more questions.

• Did you buy any of those CloudPets for your kids? The kids record a message and it goes in The Cloud? Last year, more than half a million people had their information exposed.  16 months later, they're being pulled for the shelves by the stores, over concerns that were never addressed. Bluetooth vulnerabilities discovered were ignored. The manufacturer never responded to emails. The parent company, Spiral Toys, went out of business last year. This is the future, people.
• There is yet another Adobe Flash flaw, addressed by an emergency fix. Do the update, folks.

If you lived around 1880, you might run an ad for a wife:

Chance for a spinster. A young man in Aroostook County, Maine, advertising for a wife, speaks of himself as follows: "I am eighteen years old, have a good set of teeth, and believe in Andy Johnson, the star spangled banner, and the 4th of July. I have taken up a State lot, cleared up eighteen acres last year, and seeded ten of it down. My buckwheat looks first-rate and the oats and potatoes are bully. I have got nine sheep, a two year old bull, and two heifers, besides a house and barn. I want to get married. I want to buy bread-and-butter, hoop-skirts, and waterfalls for some person of the female persuasion during life. That's what's the matter with me. But I don't know how to do it."

If he posted this on Faceyspaces, he could have his choice of hundreds of thousands of women, almost immediately.

• Scientists developed Norman, the Artificial Intelligence. They wanted to turn Norman into a psychopath, so they fed it some of Reddit. POOF - Instant Psychopath - just add Reddit!

A lot of people ask me how they can be safe online.
I look off into the distance, thoughtfully, and tell them, "Don't go online."

• new Hallmark card: Sorry I Gave You Chlamydia

Years ago, I was asked to look into a product offered by a huge pc manufacturer, that would analyze firewall traffic. So I called, and the salesdude told me I'd have to forward our traffic to them for analysis. I told the guy our data doesn't leave the building. He acted surprised and got annoyed with me, like I was the crazy one. Remember: if you can no longer touch your data, it's no longer yours.

• Dear Mr. Cameraman: when the guitar solo starts, be sure to focus in on the drummer.

Here's an uplifting story: the story of Badfinger.

You might remember them from "Day After Day", "Come and Get It", "Baby Blue", and "Without You". Pete Ham was the band's chief songwriter and singer. They played locally, eventually getting seen and signed to Apple Records, as the first band. Paul McCartney and George Harrison produced the band and helped out. Stardom followed. "Without You" was covered by everybody from Harry Nilsson to Frank Sinatra. They were all over the charts, touring America and back to England.

And there was no money.

They were hoodwinked by unscrupulous financial people. Eventually the record company wanted their advance back and the band was stopped cold. The guys were despondent. They couldn't get a new deal to pull themselves out. Pete Ham hung himself.

Tommy Evans, bassist and Pete's cowriter, went downhill. He had tax problems and a lawsuit. Eight years after Pete's death, Tommy hanged himself. There were various albums with various members between and after the deaths.

Guitar player Tommy Molland, brought in after the first album was recorded, is touring as Tommy Molland's Badfinger.

All that great music plus the music that never came...

• and when my life is over, remember when we were together, we were alone and I was singing this song to you - Leon Russell

Nigel's OK in My Book

Watching some classic (old) music videos, I found a song called Making Plans for Nigel (XTC). Never mind the song... I just like the title. The video is bizarre.

While we're at it, Kate Bush sounds like she's huffing helium.

• Of note: when the doctor sedated Marshall, he used Propofol; the drug that killed Michael Jackson. Fortunately Marshall experienced a better outcome.

Congrats on 100 years of freedom for Finland!

Finland is known for heated underwear, anchovy pizza, and Finns. 

The national animal is the elephant (there are no elephants in Finland. They imported one from Africa, but it chose to walk back to Africa, rather than freeze).

Finland's national flower is grass.

• 'Music' star Pink will raise her kids gender-neutral. Please make it stop. The Child Welfare Bureau has been called - these kids don't have a chance.

As I continue to tune in old videos, Instant Karma (John Lennon) comes on.. I've never seen it before.

The first thing I see is Yoko.. this is never a good thing. She's sitting onstage, toward the back of John; blindfolded and knitting. This would be delightfully absurd if anyone else did it. With Yoko it's Art, or as I call it, "a screw loose and a pathological need for attention."

There's a British guy playing tambourine. How can I tell he's British? He's wearing a full tan suit and huge, brown, horn rimmed glasses to play tambourine. There are also two bass players, for a reason John took with him to the grave. Maybe Chapman shot him to keep this from getting out.

It's a wonder I never got hired to review videos in the 80s.

• If anything I write fails to offend you for the entire time you've been reading this, I'd like to share something with you, in the spirit of Christmas: "Simply,  Having, a Wonderful Christmastime."  This song has now invaded your brain and you will sing it incessantly for the next three weeks.
• You're welcome.

Many women suffer silently from vaginal discharge and dryness, according to a commercial. Many people don't know I got out of the army on a vaginal discharge.

I would like to apologize, humbly and unreservedly, for the previous paragraph.

• If you're having a Stupid Day today, remember: it could be worse. You could live in Mecklenberg County, where county records are being held hostage for $23,000 in Bitcoin. You could be the genius who opened the email attachment, unleashing the ransomware upon the county.

The Stupid is also great with the authors of a virtual keyboard app for android and iDevices, called Ai.Type. The app collects keystrokes, contacts, phone numbers, email addresses, social media profiles, and locations, among other things. The data is uploaded to, you guessed it, The Cloud. The 577gb database, on 31 million users, was left open to the public, so anyone who could find it had full access to it.

There is no word on whether the app let on that the user's data would be stolen uploaded to the company's (unsecured) server. Everything the user typed would be available, in addition to the information the app collected. Financial information, love emails, sexts, and all those pictures of women with one more penis than provided for in the original design specification.

If you rushed past the text about your data and clicked I AGREE, this is entirely your fault. If there was no warning, the developers should be sued out of existence and fined by the appropriate authorities for theft and negligence. 

I'll say it again: nothing you use is worth the invasion of your privacy and data.

You could also just use the phone's keyboard. This way, your data will only go to Google or Apple.

• 28 senators wrote the FCC to urge holding off their decision on Net Neutrality because of irregularities in the data of public comments. 50,000 comments may not have been included in the public record. Hundreds of thousands of filings featured stolen addresses and there were half a million entries with Russian email addresses. Not included in the data were the rude comments directed at chairman Ajit Pai's nationality. You don't think there was anything suspicious about this, do you?

A lot of people blame the Russians for interfering in the 2016 election (and when I say a lot of people, I mean the losing side). I view this from the other side (of course I do): the Russians are not interfering - they're propping up American  democracy.

Hear me out: American citizens have become so fat and lazy, they can barely be bothered to go out for milk, no less vote. By hacking into our social media and voting systems, the Russians are making it look like our democracy is functional. People blame Trump for 'colluding' with Russia, when in reality, he was encouraging Putin to have his people vote to make it look like the election mattered. Meanwhile, the people who should have voted all stayed home, where they ran into the streets and online to protest and whine incessantly.

A brief investigation by the Boy Scouts of America, Special CyberSquad, turned up a few other places the Russians made a difference:

• a West Virginia little league game
• the decision not to tax online porn in the US
• a $4 billion appropriation for Congressional bathroom remodeling and donations to Dick Cheney's various humanitarian charities

Have you rented a car lately?

If you did, your locations, smart phone identifier, and entered locations (including schools), are all available, if you attached to the car's infotainment system (the radio).  Privacy International rented cars and analyzed the information available in the systems. Personal information was on every single car.

Just to make things more interesting, the rental companies were not able to provide clear internal policies on handling drivers' personal data. The companies that responded said, as laid out in the Terms and Conditions, the responsibility is on the renter. The future is here and we're shooting it square in the nuts.

• In case you didn't learn the first time, Ashley Madison, the website for cheaters, that leaked its database, has... wait for it... leaked its database of private and explicit photos again. So if you're the kind that insists on getting parts of you wet, you haven't learned your lesson. You know what they say - the third time's the charm.

brought to you by Friends of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Chicago, Chicago... it's a Wonderful Band

No matter how I tried, no matter how I used Official Phraseology, no matter how I financially justified, I could not stop my boss from sending me to Chicago.

But I don't like to travel....

But I've already been poorly trained on this...

But the company shoudn't waste their money...

But if I get near the TSA, I'm going to need bail money....

But since the boss asked nicely, I couldn't say no.  Well, I could say no, but I like my job.

WHAT DO JEWISH WOMEN MAKE FOR DINNER? RESERVATIONS

I have traveled all over the country in very strange ways but never have I gone through the blood, sweat and tears required to simply make arrangements for a flight and hotel. My colleague had everything done for her via our employer. Because I'm a different class of employee, I had to make my own reservations. And when I say make my own reservations, I mean get all sorts of estimates and submit them, allowing my employer to decide which fit within the financial guidelines.  My coworker got to stay in a really nice hotel, to which I was refused admittance, due to rate (although I suspect they didn't like my mustache). I booked a four star hotel via Travelocity, which, strangely enough, managed to look nothing like the rooms on their website. In fact, when I opened the door to my spacious suite, I immediately noticed that my room seemed to be missing half of its promised volume: it was a spacious closet with a king-size bed. And when I say spacious closet, it did not have a spacious closet, instead gracing me with a six-inch deep closet that required me to turn my jacket around so the door would close. But at least they had an iron. I knew I had arrived at my hotel when I noticed that the entrance was completely blocked by construction. This was to be a theme.

The room was on the 20th floor and featured a spectacular view of an alley. I dared not ask whose alley it was. I did get a spacious desk on which to work, featuring a chair that I suspect was older than me.

At the airports, I discovered there was a Qatar Airlines.  It turns out they have no set destination: they go wherever they're hijacked to that day.

When friends and relatives ask me how Chicago was, I say "Windy". They're not kidding when they call it the Windy City. Because O'Hare Airport was designed by drunk monkeys, there was no way to get from my terminal to my coworker's terminal, so I had to walk a few city blocks outside. If the direction was away from the wind, I could have let it carry me there, but no, I had to walk Triple Uphill to locate the terminal. The nice policeman I asked looked really confused until his partner told me to go outside and walk a few blocks. This would not have mattered except Work Rules stated only my colleague could rent a car - I couldn't.

Chicago has all the charm of Center City Philadelphia, without the on-street parking. I don't know about the rest of Chicago but our section required a car or public transport to go anywhere, which then required parking. Parking cost a week's salary, but only if you stayed under thirty minutes. Anything over an hour required a title loan, which, oddly enough, one could obtain approximately every two blocks.  In fact, you could not swing a dead cat without hitting a title place, a 7-11 or a Starbucks, most of which closed at six or seven, along with the restaurants. Because who wants to eat at a restaurant at six or seven anyway?

Chicago is also inordinately fascinated with the use of car horns. I truly believe that if a Chicago-an's car horn is broken, he can't drive. My colleague is from Texas and never hears car horns. Why? Guns.  

If you can't afford parking, there's always the elevated train system, which is organized by colors. My local transport was the Brown Line, so called because riding on it causes you to poop yourself. But I kid... I only had to stand for thirty minutes to get to my destination, accompanied by a very talkative blonde, droning on about marketing to her frustrated coworker, who strained desperately to get a word or grunt in here or there. It was like being forced to listen to your great aunt talking to your grandmother about World War Two housing.

The reason I found myself on the Brown Line (if you didn't watch out, you'd wind up on the Red Line, or, heaven forbid, the Pink Line - with stops at all shoe stores, as well as the theater district), was to visit a guitar institution in Chicago - the Chicago Musical Exchange. After much complaining by the internal voices about not staying in, I found myself at the door. CME was blessed relief after years of shopping in Philly, the black hole of music and musical instruments. There were new guitars, used guitars, vintage guitars, amps and a ton of used and new pedals. There were guitars I had only heard of. It was a blast except for the fact that their lefty section was a bit anemic. It illustrated precisely why the Philly area is such a wasteland. As if that weren't enough, their sales staff knew what they were talking about!

THE TSA

Why haven't I flown since we bombed Iraq? Because of the TSA. There were work polls about whether or not I'd get held for Special Screening. I have to admit that the agents of the TSA were quite nice and practical. When I arrived at the line, they asked whether I would prefer the groping or the full cavity search. I went all-in, so to speak. You don't get that kind of courtesy at the DMV. 

You have to take your shoes (sneakers) off, put your bag up and open your laptop. Then you go into the glass whirlwind room, where you stand there with your hands up (because you're being robbed) and some metal thingie moves around you, obviously to graph your tolerance to metal thingies moving around you. When you exit the phone booth, one of the nice, uniformed TSA people watches your image (while several others point and laugh), then it's off to the gate. Except in the case of my laptop, which they needed to sniff very closely, as the excess amount of dog hair obviously set something off. I asked what they were looking for and the fellow said powder. I assured him I couldn't afford that stuff and went about my business, cursing at a volume insufficient to trigger a Terrorist Alert. At no time did I yell 'SECURITY THEATER' or show them the Fourth Amendment I had tattooed upon my nether regions.

FLY BY NIGHT CAR RENTALS

As I mentioned, I wasn't allowed to rent a car, so my coworker and I went off to the rental place. We were greeted by some guy with teeth so white and so large, we were afraid that he would eat his own head at any moment. This does not surprise me, as a certain rental car company that I shall not name (but rhymes with Wenterprise) has the slimiest employees I have ever met. After the obligatory shaking of hands, I had to shower six times, with my clothes on. To be fair, everyone was polite and efficient, although it was amusing to watch two female employees fight over who had all the damn keys (for those of you playing along at home, it was Ashlee).

As we were in a foreign country (Chicago), we thought a GPS would be handy. Wenterprise thought so too, as they charged ten bucks per day to rent one. The GPS on my phone is so locked down I don't think I can ever enable it, so we decided on the rental GPS. That little Garmin did a wonderful job of getting us to the hotel. Unfortunately, it sucked at everything else.  Hungry, we asked it what was nearby and selected BBQ. Off we went, to the closest BBQ place, until we discovered the highway was closed. The Garmin wouldn't take no for an answer, so we went to the next closest place. This place literally didn't exist. The third closest place was fifteen minutes down the road and had changed hands to become a greasy chicken joint.  It took but a moment to figure out what was up here: there is no BBQ in Chicago - only a series of empty GPS promises to get you to visit non-BBQ restaurants.

After this great realization, we figured there would be more and better near the hotels.  Boy were we wrong. We wound up at a burger place on the first floor of a high rise. As it turned out, everything is on the first floor of a high rise in Chicago, with the exception of a very scary round parking garage, in which you back up to the edge, presumably before plummeting twenty stories, ala Fast and Furious 26 and 1/2.  

We quickly discovered that the Garmin was a tremendous tool, provided you didn't use it within ten miles of our hotels.  We were making a right onto my street while the Garmin was telling us to go up a few blocks and turn on a different street. It would recalculate in the middle of a street. In the end I threatened to drop it from the Sears Tower and Wenterprise was nice enough to not charge us for it.

Speaking of modern appliances, I attempted to use several to locate a restaurant near our hotels, to which we could walk (coworker's hotel required 30 minutes' notice to fetch our car). I asked Yahoo Maps, which provided about 1500 restaurants, each of which were either too fancy, too expensive or too closed. They also had the audacity to refer to McDonalds and Popeyes as restaurants.

I don't travel well (or frequently), although you're probably wondering why. The wife and the dog came to pick me up at the airport, but neither would admit to driving. One of them also sat on my lap and licked my face all the way home but I'm going to let you guess which.

I leave you with this wonderful exchange I had with a stewardess:

HER: Warm nuts?

ME: Why yes, they are.

THIS WEEK'S TUNE

I thought it might be interesting to start including links to some music I like. This particular piece of musical proficiency is brought to us by Lyle Lovett. It features some really spicy guitar, as does most of my music. Lyle's really underrated.

The Unemployment Follies (#7) - Dusty White Shirts

[In this post, our hero has amazing difficulty in the act of becoming employed, in spite of major effort.]

COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET

The bedroom closet is a bit shallow but extremely wide.  I'd estimate that it could sleep two people, foot to foot.  Four people foot to foot and breast to breast; twenty-four people if you slice them correctly.  How, you ask, does this relate to employment?  By a damn fine thread, as most of my output tends to go.

When interviewing, I discovered it is strongly advised not to wear Hawaiian shirts.  A wag suggested I flout the system and wear Hawaiian underwear but the jury is still out on that.  After paying an absolutely frightening amount for a new dress shirt in the wrong size, the wife came up with about seven of them in the correct size. From the closet, of course.  I'm beginning to think that this closet occupies several more dimensions than we know of, as stuff seems to appear and disappear when searching.  It probably also does this when we're not searching, but I'll leave this to the quantum mechanics to work out (Shroedinger's shirt?).  Speaking of quantum effects, most everything in the closet has dust on it but only the very top.

So there are seven additional shirts in the correct size. This indicates that at some point, it was possible to purchase shirts off the shelf in the correct size.  Just not anymore, plus they're a lot more expensive.  Ain't progress grand?  I'm not good at math (or history or science or databases) but I'm going to say that these business shirts in the correct size look incredible for what must be sixteen years old.  No, really, they look every bit as good as the hideously expensive new shirt, including one that's almost the same shirt.

Speaking of Hawaiian shirts, I have a strange fondness for them.  Because of their dusty-topped condition, the wife decided to wash them.  As it turns out, I have rather a lot of them.  Really rather a lot of them.  The beauty of Hawaiian shirts (or most things) is that if you hold onto them long enough, they'll be back in style in a few years.  I don't want to say my shirts are old but they have come and gone out of style four times.

THE JOB SEARCH

One of my mentors suggested I arrange the Hawaiian shirts very close to the middle of the closet and the business shirts at the far unused end.  This way the Universe knows I need a job in which Hawaiian shirts are just fine and business shirts are laughed at.  So the Hawaiian shirts are just to the right of center, because if I cross the center line, my wife will bite me in a very sensitive place (and not in a good way).

Having located the jacket, with dust only on the top, I am now officially ready to go on interviews.  That is, if there were any.  According to the ads, there are many jobs available... just not for me, apparently.

The recruiters are driving me up a tree.  The metric tonne of Indian recruiters have called about very old jobs and want to submit me for them regardless of skills or location.  Last week I got calls about jobs in Colorado and Wyoming.  One job search turned up a result for restroom attendant (don't laugh - I applied).  Ok, maybe not.  The local recruiters are a different species altogether.  They call, spend some quality time with me, sound incredibly interested, all but promise me a job and then I never hear from then again.  I suspect these folks are recent graduates from local used car lots.  I don't want to tar all recruiters with the same slime - one of them has actually called me back.

I did find a government job.  I couldn't understand the job title or description, so I figured I'd be perfect for it and applied.

I am going to depart from this blog's entertainment and sarcasm focus to mention that this whole thing is downright depressing.


SUPPORTING THE AUTOMOTIVE REPAIR AND RENTAL INDUSTRIES

No post to this blog would be complete without some new and exciting information about the car.  The collision repair place for the insurer called to tell us the car was ready.  When we got there, we discovered that there was yet another five-hundred-dollar deductible.  This topic has actually gone to the realm of logic: how can an unemployed guy make five-hundred-dollars appear out of thin air?  You might be surprised to learn that my piles of hundreds have been depleted by unemployment and tithing to Dunkin Donuts for the dog's coffee.  And even if I had hundreds in the closet, they'd be dusty up top.

Not being independently wealthy has been complicated by another ironic phone call, this time from the insurance company.  It seems we are just about to exceed the number of rental car days for the year.  I've never even heard of this happening.  So every day that passes is another day we have to pay for our rental.

Causing five-hundred-dollars to appear is no small feat.  Do they expect me to pull it out of my buttocks?  Let's face it - if I could, as my friend pointed out, I wouldn't need a job.  Perhaps I'm just a masochist.

The entire process of getting the car repaired this time has been one of frustration.  I suppose it's ironic that this is the only time the person who hit us had insurance.  There was a huge amount of confusion over whose insurance was going to cover it and if theirs was, why were we paying a deductible.  After weeks and many phone calls, the repair place overruled the insurer and our insurance is covering it.  The lady in charge of the process possesses all the grace and charm of Genghis Khan.

Off we went to pick up our baby.  The wife got back into the rental and just looked at me.  What now? An additional part had to be repaired and the car, which was 'ready' the prior day, would take another hour or three.  And we're racing the clock on the rental.

Know what?  I have to give major points to Hyundai.  As you've undoubtedly read, we have driven a lot of rental cars lately (stop laughing) and my wife still prefers her Hyundai.  There are definitely features on the other cars that surpass ours (seats, stereo, handling) but the Hyundai is still the better car (or close) overall.  The current rental is from a country known for its meatballs.  We have this car because the choice was between it and a Mini Cooper.  It hurts me to even look at a Mini Cooper; my eyes feel cramped and unprotected.  I have never priced the Meatballmobile but I understand they're fairly expensive.  And after driving it for a few weeks, I'm not impressed.  It's bumpy as hell.  Yes, the power seats have presets and lower back support and the engine has balls BUT that doesn't justify its premium over the Hyundai.


WHAT IS LIVING IN THE KITCHEN

We have an issue with trashcans in our house.  By this I mean we have a Dog Issue.  He loves trash, among other things.  After the little monster kept getting into the trashcans, we bought the cans with the lids that you have to lift.  This kept the dog out for all of two weeks.  Between his innate intelligence and my wife's failure to put the lid back, he was back into things immediately.  Failing that, he just knocked the thing over and took what he wanted.

I have no idea whose idea this is or where it was found but we have a new trashcan.  This one is an automatic can, where you wave your hand over it and the lid opens by itself.  Then closes by itself.  Until the dog figures this one out, it's a perfect solution, plus it's pretty neato for the people.

The other night, we heard a weird noise in the kitchen.  Then the dog started barking in its general direction.  My parents would say we had ghosts - I'm skeptical.  It turned out to be the can, opening and closing by itself.  If the dog hadn't barked, I'd swear he just figured out how to operate it.

Bright as he is, he sometimes fails to notice his mortal enemy, the mailman, coming up the drive but the moment you put your coffee cup on the table, he starts barking like a rabid animal and circling the door.  I yell between hysterical barks and he somehow manages to completely ignore me.  If ignoring me weren't a regular occurance with everyone in the house, I'd be upset.