Space Shuttle Curbside Pickup

as featured on nuts.com

Your love is like intestinal parasites

They're watching a show on how things are made, called How It's Made.

HIM: that's an interesting weld

HER: is he wearing corduroys?

HIM: Wow, that's a lot of work

HER: is that a girl or a boy?

HOST: There are 2 huge logs there. A coffin must go between them because it's the most logical thing. Well sure, whenever I see logs I think coffin. This used to get me in all sorts of trouble in the Boy Scouts.

Words To Go Away in 2021

Easy peasy, EPic, EV-er, game changer, covid, cauliflower

Today I identtify as  road salt

Something's up. Sometimes you gotta be pretty observant to catch things and this time I'm on it. I'm usually pretty oblivious, but I smell something.... there are Christmas decorations in view and it's not even Christmas yet. Santas and snowmen. Why would decorations appear when normal people put them up? I'm particularly fond of the decapitated Santa and if asked to fix it, I'll claim I can't. Yeah, something's up. Next thing you know there will be a tree....

Flying AIDS News

REVEALED: Every single US state is being advised to consider ethnic minorities as critical groups for vaccination with HALF prioritizing black and Hispanic residents over white.    

The military leader of Operation Warp Speed, Gen. Gustave Perna, said Saturday that he takes sole responsibility for last week’s confusion over the allotment of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to states...   the military leader?  

Muslims are concerned over the halal status of the vaccine.   Ok, don't get it.

 A record 621 people died of drug overdoses in San Francisco so far this year, a staggering number that far outpaces the 173 deaths from COVID-19 the city has seen thus far.    If Narcan cured the Flying AIDS, we'd be in great shape!

Chaotic scenes as Londoners try to escape the city before midnight lockdown. Police deployed to prevent non-essential journeys.   Restriction of movement... enforced by police.  If it's in London, it's on its way to the US.

Watch out... the republicans and democrats have agreed on something.... this is never good. Whenever they agree, it's going to cost you dearly. This time it's a $900 billion stimulus. Your children and grandchildren will pay for this, with no one to bail them out.

President-elect Biden was given the vaccine today. They told him it was a Special Presidential Shot and gave him a lollipop.

My mom's health aide just got diagnosed with the Flying AIDS.

Mom's doctor hasn't seen fit to order a test. I suspect he printed his own diploma.

We're not sure if there will be another aide.

And I was there today.

Having trouble with last minute shopping? Too many people in your way? Can't get at the deals? Do I have the answer for you: COUGH. Sneeze. Blow your nose. I guarantee you a personal space radius of 55'.  You'll get right to the front of the checkout line and the stampede in the other direction will be good for a few laughs too.

The $900 billion package will send $600 to each adult in the household and $600 for each dependent, all earning below $75,000, and $150,000 for married couples. It will cost $166 billion. Workers would be eligible for $300 per week federal unemployment subsidy. Also rental assistance, child care providers, and Head Start program. The largest percentage. $325 billion, goes to small businesses. Don't forget broadband and banks that serve low-income and minority communities, because cable and banks contributed to Congress' campaigns. $15 billion to airline salaries and benefits. You elected these people.

The snow is slowly going away, no thanks to the clouds, which do their best daily to hide the sun. The miserable drizzle does something to help, but by the time it hits the snow/ice, it freezes because of the cold. If nothing else, it creates fun, watching people slide and fall on their asses. Ass injuries are up %54, according to a statistic I just made up, and vie for emergency room space formerly taken up by the Flying AIDS. So please take care of your ass, and hospitals can treat the Flying AIDS.

Dear lefty 

• Why do you do this week after week, year after year?
• because my wife tells me I'm funny... but she has to, or I'll start to chew the furniture and hump the neighbors garden gnomes...

The Russia hack has been declared an 'act of war.'

The NSA and CIA are putting together a retaliation strategy that includes

• bricking Putin's Bluetooth toothbrush
• with the help of Bill Gates, changing their Windows 10 to Chinese language
• sending over the Flying AIDS vaccine
• declaring Biden the winner of the last election- we'll tell him it's a free vacation
• sending planes full of Internet of Things devices
• sending Ron Jeremy 

I get nothing.

I am not a member of any loud minority group. Even if I identified as black, my shiny white visage would put a stop to that immediately.  I am so pale, there are many parts of my body that have never seen the sun.

I don't get preference, I don't get Free Stuff<tm>, I don't get to peacefully protest by burning down my own neighborhood (or anyone else's), I don't get to make demands of cities or countries. I don't get tests made more stupid because I can't pass them. I can't produce guilt in the majority to get what I want. I've never even blocked off a street to make my demands known.

Perhaps in a few years, CIS hetero white males will become a minority, then I can make demands and get hired for the lack of color in my skin. Maybe my graffiti will become city-sanctioned. Songs will be written about the plight of the crackers. College students will strike (like that's hard to instigate).

My ancestors came from Europe (I think), but that's not an accepted oppressed group. I'm sure at some point, at some time, someone oppressed and slaughtered them. 

I've been working really hard on the left handed thing, but can't get a drop of sympathy from the masses. At 10% of humanity, this means 90% of the world is against us - that should be enough to garner some notice. Nope. PARITY brothers and sisters!

I could bat for the other team, but that would put quite a crimp in my sex life. You see, I don't like men that way and I've got quite a thing for women (get it?).

Wait...it's starting to come to me.....  Black Latinx Trans Lesbians for Allah! We can meet in a synagogue, then burn it down in protest of our oppression. This is why I make the Big Bucks (and put out this award-winning blog)! 

• Very funny, Dear. She thought if she put a Fender logo on the vacuum, I'd use it more.

SJW Strokes 

The $54k per year posh Dalton school (K-12) has developed an anti-racist manifesto, including hiring of 12 full time diversity officers and psychologists to support students "coping with race-based traumatic stress" and abolishing high-level academic courses by 2023 if the performance of black students is not on par with non-blacks.

Readers:

It's almost Christmas. If you can, do something for people in your area who have been hit hard by the Flying AIDS. Donate to a fund or a church that's handing out aid. Help hand out aid. Help your friends on the block. Didn't Bill and Ted say "Be excellent to each other"?

Doctor - Get Me a Sturgeon

The sturgeon has been on Earth for over 200,000 years.
Being the fine group we are, we've overfished ridiculously, requiring protection of the fish. Why? Their eggs are used for caviar and the fish tastes good.

We have a propensity to destroy stuff, routinely shooting ourselves in the foot, driving species to the brink of extinction. We're not a well species.

In cleaning out the Computer Room, I'm finding all sorts of stuff.

Way Back When, when I got the Stuff, it was incredibly handy.

Many years later, it's an episode of Hoarders gone entirely wrong. I found:

• PCMCIA modems and network cards
• RAM from laptops so old, they had built-in floppy drives
• computer cables for police scanners I blew up a long time ago
• several somewhat dessicated assistants and one intern skeleton
• 2 HP printer/scanners that both failed when the scanner's physical drive failed
• several batteries that worked much better when they didn't have that white stuff oozing out of them
• an odd number of speakers
• a box of 3.5" floppies - high density, of course
• a pair of old tube radios that received what was the police band, way back, that I failed to fix. Because when I fail, I like to fail at least twice
• if I look really hard, I'll find a 286 motherboard. I'm keeping it on purpose, for history's sake. Yeah, that's it.

The Great Milk War of 2018

A few days ago, someone(s) finished a large container of milk.

The person(s) who finished it is generally in charge of groceries.

The Department of Acquisitions is taking a bit of a break.

The Department of Acquisitions has asked The Department of the Couch to pick up milk on the way back from his weekly electroshock therapy appointment.

The problem with this is that by the time the electroshock therapy is done, The Department of the Couch can barely remember his name, no less drive home.

So The Republic of Our Place is without milk, which makes cereal way too interesting to eat. Ice Cream is great for breakfast but is also in short supply. We do have these wonderful brownie bites with cream cheese frosting, but we prefer to use them in moderation.

We're looking to establish The Department of Grocery Procurement, but we can't even get anybody to mow the lawn.

• Every Christmas, we see sad stories about people stealing Christmas decorations. It tugs at our heartstrings. Well meaning people send replacement decorations.
• Although the thieves are never caught, ThermionicEmissions managed to secure an interview with a decoration thief. His details have been altered and his voice made really squeaky to conceal his identity.

Mr. Thief; you are the man who steals Christmas decorations, upsetting neighbors and the children, correct?

Yes, that would be me.

Why do you do this? The world wants to know.

Not for the reason you think....I do it because they're f-ing tacky, ugly, and a huge source of light pollution. Have you ever seen those blowup football players and Winnie the Excrement on lawns? Complete with blowup generator noises at all hours of the night and morning?

So in your mind, you're doing the neighborhood a service.

Yes, I am. Yet everybody demonizes me. What's worse is when some bloody do-gooder replaces them, rendering my good works moot.

What is your suggestion to America, as regards Christmas decorations?

Put a few candle lights in your window and call it a day, you gaudy bastards. You don't have to outline each window in bright lights that blink and cause epileptic fits in innocent children. You use enough electricity to power a small third world country.

Now that you mention it, who among us hasn't wanted to throttle a neighbor who has made a neighborhood spectacle of their house?

The absolute worst is the ones with the most lights. They get on the news, which never has anything of value to show anyway, and people get in their cars and drive fifty miles to see the nice lights. Then they get upset when little Johnny starts to spasm and emit foam from his mouth.

Happy Holidays from ThermionicEmissions.

• There's a little box up at the top of this blog, in which you can search it through the power of Google (perhaps because Google owns Blogspot). Every now and then I go to search something and it completely fails to provide an answer. To be absolutely certain it's not me, I ask it if there are any instances of the word "the" in all my blog entries. Nope.
• I'm not all that surprised - after all, the spellchecker doesn't include internet, tv, blowjob, and any technical computer terms. It also doesn't learn, flagging 'internet' every time. It's all about quality control, here at ThermionicEmissions.

Seemingly because I have nothing better to do, I gathered a list of American cities with British origins: 

Devon

Bristol

Carlisle

Chester

Boston

Reading

Croydon

Langley

Lincoln

Haverford

Newtown

North Wales

Camden

Ardsley

Margate

Cleveland

Abington

What's weird is that the majority of them are in southeastern Pennsylvania. Perhaps Pennsylvania was touched in its bad place by the British when it was little.

• Heard on tv: We called the police to report the theft. The police were wonderful; they showed up in a few hours.

While cleaning, we came across a bunch of monoliths. You might not recognize the word, but you know what they are. A monolith is, like in 2001 A Space Odyssey, a humongous piece of something that just stands there. You're cleaning and suddenly come across a 1983 Camaro, parked in your living room.


I believe this happens at the quantum level, but what the hell do I know. What happens is that an object needs to be acted upon (the Camaro) and is put where you can see it (living room) so you can perform an action (change the oil). Life, having the nasty habit of getting in the way, precludes performing the action. Within a short period, on the order of two days, the object (the Camaro) becomes invisible. You may walk around it but it's no longer 'there'. There are only three things that will make the object visible: someone visiting (OMG -there's a CAMARO in our living room) or remembering the task associated with the object (OMG -wasn't I supposed to change the oil? Where did I put the car?). I mention remembering as a theoretical... it has never happened and never will. The third, and most likely, is that you are cleaning and come across it.

When you come across it, you probably don't remember why it's parked in the living room (HONEY - why is there a Camaro in the living room?), and other things start to become clear (I wondered why we had to buy a new car in '93).

So next time some Science Smartypants tries to lecture you on something he understands but you're obviously too stoopid to comprehend, you can expound on the Quantum Level Properties of the Monolith. All because you read ThermionicEmissions.

• Fortunately I was awake before the alarm went off, because it didn't.

If you use Chrome browser, and you shouldn't, as of June 12, support for third party extensions will start to be phased out. In other words, if it doesn't come from Google, it's not getting installed.

Bah Mallbug - Retail Therapy

I have established that I don't get out much.  Here is yet another amusing casualty of my in-ness.

Back before we owned a house, we used to dash here and there on the weekends, on Manic Mall Trips.  After a while we realized we were spending way too much money and had little to show for it.  This was dubbed Retail Therapy<tm>.

One definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.  We realized that Retail Therapy was a failed therapy.  This didn't get a chance to become a problem of momentous proportions, as we purchased a house, thus taking every single cent of disposable income and sending it into some sort of black hole, never to be seen again.

So yeah, I don't get out much these days.

However, I also noticed that working a pair of jobs and never going anywhere was not exactly a recipe for a an interesting life.  So every now and then we leave the house.  Surprisingly enough, we generally wind up regretting it almost immediately, throwing us right back into Stupid.

--------------------

We decided on a mall thirty minutes away, as it had the magnet store which required visiting.  My wife is one of those people stores love; they send her something close to her weight in coupons.

We managed to park in the same county as the store, which I'm told is a good thing.  In we went, to the store I won't name but rhymes with KC Denneys.  BANG, we hit a store full of Christmas Cheer<tm>.  I like to say we celebrate Christmas, but only in the most crassly commercial sense of the holiday.   And there we were, in the most crassly commercial sense of retail.  Holiday jingles, decorations, and outfits.  Santa.  And lines almost as long as unemployment lines.

All this as I'm still finishing up my Halloween candy.  I'm told the decorations were up before Halloween this year.

I loudly observed that I was completely full of holiday cheer (or something), which pleased my wife to no end.  I further suggested that they start putting up Valentine's Day decorations, since they were already doing Christmas.  It pays to be prepared, you know.  The wife shot me one of those concrete cracking looks.

There were lines everywhere, presumably including the rest rooms.  I was informed that this was about normal for a Sunday.  I certainly don't remember the mall like this on any Sunday during which I had left the house.  I suggested turning around immediately but unfortunately there were things we had to purchase.

After six lines and two floors, we somehow managed to procure our things.  In spite of the lines, I have to give credit to the lady behind the counter, who went all out to make our coupons apply all over the place.  It seemed we wound up getting things for free.

We were, however, down one thing.  When I inquired, I was told never mind, we'd shop online.  Why, I asked, couldn't we have just shopped online, as opposed to finding ourselves in this morass of a mall?  Because you wanted to go to the mall.

You certainly can't argue with her logic.

AND THEN THE MALL

Wow.

I've heard all sorts of news about the economy, unemployment, stores closing, and malls becoming ghost towns.   Apparently the economy wasn't all that horrible, at least by the volume of people walking around.  I can't imagine them walking around because they enjoyed the place or for their general health.

So the mall appeared to be on its way to ghost town.  One anchor store had closed.  Most of the stores I remembered had gone away.  I was almost surprised to find a Starbucks.  Merchants must be worried, between the vacancies and the horrid stores that fill some of the spaces.

Even with two floors of stores, I had an incredibly difficult time finding anything of interest.  This did not seem to bother the hundreds of twelve to sixteen year old females flooding the aisles.

Good God, where will they go when the malls close?  There will be an epidemic of displaced young women, presumably with disposable income.  Perhaps we need to forestall this eventuality and open Bieber stores near all malls.

We were stunned.  That's about the only term I can pull up.  We reached immediate consensus that we were never coming back again.


Not even a trip to the adult store would console me - it was that bad.