Tyre Spanner Care and Feeding

Your love is like a string of Mondays



Vladimir Putin, part time signpost and all around good guy, has proposed a no-hack pact with the US. This should work out as well as gun control: ask the criminals not to break the law.



Dear lefty

• Are you going to watch the debates?
• Oh is that on tv? Shoot - I made an appointment to chew razorblades that night 

President Trump paid $750 of federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, according to the NY Times. Who does the man think he is - Amazon?  Whether he did or didn't, doesn't this expose flaws in the tax system? It's long past time to fix this. Rest assured reps and dems won't bother to do anything but raise taxes.

• In case you didn't know, too much glycyrrhizic acid can kill you. Glycyrrhizic acid, unfortunately, is contained in black licorice.
• The second case in 30 years occurred at a restaurant in Massachusetts the other day. The number of fatalities could be worse: fortunately no one likes back licorice.

Data News

LA Police Department has run almost 30k facial algorithms, in spite of promising it wouldn't. Shocking.

Exercise tracking app Strava, which previously revealed the location of military bases, is now giving your data to 'help urban planners'. Do not use tracking apps. Of any variety. Your Fitbit app is sucking up all your data and sending it up the line. Is this ok with you?

Wanna know what kind of privacy invasion is on a website? Visit Blacklight.
Wanna know how secure your browser is? Visit Panopticlick.

You're not going to like the results. My suggestion is to run Firefox with a number of security settings and addins. While many addins are available for Chrome and Chrome-based browsers, they're leaky to begin with.


The CLOUD

Microsoft Office365 went down the other day, taking down email and Teams.
It also took down 911 systems all over the country.
This is a perfect demonstration of my objection to The CLOUD. Email's pretty important to most people and all businesses, but 911 services being down.... unconscionable and possibly deadly.

Everybody went nuts over The CLOUD, mostly upper manglement, who saw only savings. The hardcore security and availability nazis, like yours truly, rolled their eyes and took more aspirin. This is only a tiny demonstration of what could happen.

• We did well this summer, in terms of sunlight. Unfortunately we're in Gray Season. Plus there's winter coming up, so the Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) sufferers are on full alert, if not already there. 
• Add in the Flying AIDS and semi-quarantines, and you have a less than ideal picture of health, both physical and mental. Now's the time to get on top of it, before it hits. We're not bears and shouldn't be hibernating (unless the doctor tells you to). Check with your doctor or specialist and find out what you can do. I am not a specialist, and this does not constitute medical advice, but I'd avoid dancing naked in restaurants or malls (unless you have a large mask).

WARNING: Pumpkin Spice is here.
Proceed as necessary.
It starts out with pumpkin spice coffee at Dunkin, then spreads like wildfire to thousands of products in thousands of stores. Before long there's pumpkin spice furniture, pumpkin spice pajamas, and pumpkin spice tires (tyres for our spelling-impaired cousins in the UK).

A friend went for an interview for a very important position (VIP) and was served a pumpkin spice muffin. He naturally declined the position, figuring that if they are careless enough to serve pumpkin spice, what other due diligence have they not done?

• Man killed in a dispute over line at Michigan haunted house
• Oh c'mon... how many of us never wanted to....
• "Clearly that argument escalated" Sheriff Mike Bouchard said. 

Sheriff Mike Bouchard wins this week's Captain Obvious award, for the most idiotic sentence that didn't require saying. The award is a golden trophy, with a man falling off a cliff. It's inscribed "That's not good".



Sex after heart attack may boost survival, study claims.

Let's further the science by seeing if it helps decrease heart attacks.
Ready.... set.... boink!

Another study, closely related to the other study, says it's a myth that women don't want sex as they age.       (unless they're married)


Sociology

Parrots removed from UK wildlife park after they started swearing at customers. The five African grey parrots were adopted in the same week and while in isolation taught each other to swear. I think things are starting to surface that people don't want to face: 'swearing' is a natural form of expression that has been suppressed over the years. Look at the AI bot let loose on Twitter, that became alt-right and started cursing at people. Just the other day, a woman went nuts on a plane, screaming curses and jumping on armrests.

We will not progress as humans (or birds) until we acknowledge our true nature. Uncle Fucker.



Astronomers discover possible 60s era moon rocket booster heading back to Earth.
Small wonder the aliens are pissed: not only do we nuclear weaponize every frontier we discover, we trash up the place. Also returning are the onboard coffee machine, waste processing unit (hopefully will burn up on re-entry), and the comfort zebras of each astronaut. NASA went all out on these missions.



Happys

Jerry Lee Lewis - The Killer!
Jean-Luc Ponty - jazz fusion violinist, played with Zappa, among others

from the man Himself

The Lawnmower's Evil Twin

In my last rant, I mentioned cursing being necessary to the process of fixing computers, automobiles and mowers.  As I was cursing last night, these words took a leap out of my mouth: "These f-ing things are inside mowers!"

As one might surmise, either I have no vocabulary other than curses or I spend all my time fixing computers, automobiles and mowers. If one were to surmise this, one would be incorrect. Yes, I do love my verbal explosions and yes, they do aid in repair, but there are yet other repairs to describe. And of course I'm talking about vacuum cleaners.

My mom told me all sorts of stories about stuff I did when I was little (a few years back). One grandfather used to let me sit on his lap and drive the car. Another found it amusing that I stood on the lap of the rear seat passenger and covered his eyes while he drove.  I would assume the rest of the screaming passengers registered their disapproval via other means. I must've been a cute little bastard - unfortunately it has long ago worn off.

Another forgotten bit of lore had to do with vacuums. I'm told that whenever we visited someone's house, I went to the closet and took apart the vacuum.  As we were always invited back, I assume I always got it back together in some reasonable semblance of working order. To this day, no one is sure exactly why this happened.  I can think of a few things... indulge me... [waaaaayback music...]  I despised vacuuming so much that I simply destroyed them wherever I found one. My family and friends felt the same way, so they allowed me to destroy their infernal devices. It may also explain my fondness for vacuum tubes or why I just plain prefer not to vacuum.

Speaking of cars, I am no expert but I believe canister vacuums were very popular a long time ago. They were short, squat little wheeled devices with a hose coming from one end. Electrolux was a big brand. Many things from Electrolux were some sad shade of blue. It's extremely difficult to describe verbally, so I'll just go ahead and use my own patented Verbal Buffoonery: somewhere between dark baby blue and some disgusting shade of green with brown flecks. It was horrid but probably really futuristic looking at the time. As you've seen from watching tv and movies, there's not an original thought left in the world and everything old is new again. A car manufacturer (might be Chevy but who cares) has offered Electrolux Blue (they call it something else, of course) as an available color on their overpriced, gas-guzzling small cars that want to feel they're SUVs, which are nothing more than tall station wagons with less internal space. The problem with SUVs is that you can't see through them. I wouldn't have a single issue with them if they were ALL manufactured see-through from the doors up.  So, while driving along in your new Chevy in Electrolux Blue, drive proudly. Be smug, like a Prius driver, knowing your brand new, very expensive, American-made car is the same color as a fifty-year-old vacuum cleaner. The really bad news is that there haven't been bags available for your car since 1970.

In addition to canister vacuums, there are the normal, stand-up varieties, not to mention the hideously expensive faux-European design Big Ball vacuums and the Turbo Cyclone, Hurricane-like suckers that don't use bags. And one brand that's so expensive you'd think it would do the vacuuming for you. You bought these devices once and never bought another unless someone threw it out of the car in very heavy traffic.

The crux of the biscuit here, which cost you twenty seven paragraphs thus far, is that the new vacuums are made like shit. Total garbage. American manufacturing (via Korea) at its best (worst). Debris by Design is their new motto.  At the risk of sounding like "You kids get off my lawn", I've got to tell you that the new vacuums are incredibly inferior to their ancient vacuum artifacts. Perhaps the manufacturers need to spend some time at the National Vacuum Museum, in Detroit. Perhaps we need a National Vacuum Museum (although not necessarily in Detroit). Perhaps in DC, where everything sucks.

Like most ways in life, we are a special case. With two long-haired bipeds and two seriously shedding quadrupeds, we apparently present an insurmountable issue to any and all vacuums. My grandmother never complained about her vacuum failing to pick up dirt or choking on hair (even though there was obviously less of it Back Then and they had no pets, although they were afflicted with grandchildren). After a few minutes of vacuuming, anything that we have plugged in for the purpose starts making some sort of noise, previously heard only in dungeons and places frequented by Dick Cheney (redundant, I know). After cursing and turning the beast off, we take a look, shake our heads and get out the machete to gently remove the hair which is stopping the beater from moving. There is hair there the likes of which we've never seen. There are hair colors that don't exist in our home. The hair is longer than any of ours, yet the pet hair is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps vacuums operate on (wait for it....) some sort of quantum effect, in which a vacuum is run and it picks up dirt from someone else's house and theirs picks up yours.  In that case, we're both in trouble.

After having removed the hair and other detritus from the beater, we re-fire up the machine. Yesterday I ran it and within one minute of turning it on, I got a huge sucking sound and a warning light on the ground piece. I kept going, cursing even more, and my wife came over, ever patient, and told me to turn it off IMMEDIATELY, as the warning light meant is was either going to explode or the Vacuum Police somehow knew and were on their way (with the Trash Police, but that's another story entirely). So I got out the machete, removing an entire vacuum from the beater and creating a pile on the floor that hid the couch. After the backhoe got the trash to the dumpster, I restarted. I rejoiced in the sound of the Real Vacuum. Two seconds later, the sucking sound returned. It's called a sucking sound because it sucked out the last ounce of my patience (already a seriously limited quantity). My wife keeps reminding me that Vacuum Aviation is completely useless, from the point of view of actually fixing the evil device. So I took off a random hose and pulled out a small utility vehicle and returned the hose. After another two seconds the returned hose produced a return sucking noise.

One anger explosion later, I took off another hose, in the vain hope that I'd discover some obstacle to air flow. Did I mention in vain?  So I took off a third hose, to no avail.  It's a good thing we moved the tv, lest we have some sort of Modern Art attached to some building or other in Los Angeles, called Vacuum TV or some such obscene concept.

Meanwhile the carpet is even dirtier than when I first started this effort, proving once and forever that sitting like a lump is much better and way less frustrating than actually doing something. Better for the blood pressure too.  The wife begged and pleaded for me to stop tortuing myself (and the vacuum) and promised to fix it tomorrow. Tomorrow is one of those bizarre vague terms that can mean anywhere between tomorrow and If You Think I'm Doing That, You're Nucking Futs. Never trust a person who loses more time than an American-made car clock. Since I just don't learn, I fall for this every time, much like Charlie Brown continues to try to kick the ball. I'm married to Lucy. When I eventually get home from work Tomorrow, the vacuum is still sitting where I left it, not so silently mocking me.  At about this point, it came to me in a blinding and ear-splitting realization:  "These f-ing things are inside mowers!"  They're so closely related that there's no way any of us could have seen it. The only difference is that the outside one uses gas (unless it's completely ineffective, by which I mean electric).

We actually purchased (after the remortgage) one of those Very Expensive, always-serviced vacuums. The moment we fired it up, it ate a stocking or something and ground to an immediate halt. We were impressed... normally it would take a session or two to break in (read: break) a vacuum. This one must've broken first because it cost more.

The most effective vacuum we've had to date was the cheapest. After observing its operation, I called the manufacturer to explain that leaving quarter-inch grooves in the beater bar allowed the infernal device to collect  more hair than more expensive units. The extremely helpful phone answerer thanked me graciously and promised to pass this great piece of wisdom along to the engineering department (where it would be ignored with Top Priority, Secret Clearance, Eyes Only status). Extremely Helpful Phone Answerers are a very specialized breed of people who are infinitely cheerful and able to make anyone feel listened to and comforted. They're so specialized that employers need to go off-world to hire them. I suspect they exist on the Planet of the Extremely Helpful Phone Answering Women (for whatever reason, they're all women). These ladies all have three hearts, four ears, and shoulders the size of Volkswagens (the better to hear you, Dearie).

I gotta go now. We have to perform the annual tithing to the Vacuum Store. And my cursing needs a refill.


========================================================

While we're at it, the iDevice people are coming out with something new. BFD you say? BFD I say.
But what will happen is what happens every time they come out with something new: every computer magazine and online outlet will be completely consumed with the news leading up to the announcement.

During the announcement, a release date will be announced.

On the Holy Day of Release, the faithful will be gathered, lined up around the block, in their Preferred iDevice Position: on their knees, drooling, wallets out and open. Even if it's the brand new iToilet, they MUST have it.

Guess What Your Children Just Ate...

I didn't realize it til about half the day was done but I was having a pretty bad day yesterday.  Sometimes it starts with a bang, sometimes a whisper and sometimes, as it did yesterday, it comes by phone.....

"Guess what your children just ate," asked the wife on the phone.

This is never a good question.  They're only mine when they do something bad.  Apparently the cat discovered leftover Mexican food (Chipotle's) on the stove.  In a move guaranteed to baffle Pet Science, he somehow managed to move it to the edge of the stove, then catapult it to the floor, where both of the little buggers consumed it.

Have you ever heard of this kind of inter-species cooperation before?  They could have their own show: Ren and Marshall Rule the Roost, Sundays on Animal Planet.

I got this news right before lunch.  I had to go out for lunch because Ren had consumed parts of my lunch the night before.  Off the eight of us went, because my boss made the mistake of mentioning french toast, causing a Food Avalanche.

Although I complained about this diner, with their twenty dollar burgers, we were on our way.  Up we pulled, only to discover that the diner had gone out of business.  They had the nerve to never even let us know.

Again, off we went, to one of our usuals.  Everyone got their food and exactly what they ordered.  Except me, of course.  The waitress kept telling me it was coming up any minute now.    Ten minutes later my sandwich arrived.  Perhaps they had to grow the chicken to make sure it was truly fresh.

Hours later, back at work, my wife and Marshall came to pick me up.  Ever the demure and classy lady, my wife asked me if I knew what my son just did.

Uh-oh.

"He pooped on your seat in the car, after that Mexican food."


My coworkers fell like dominoes.


Although I'm against them on principle, I suddenly became thankful for car seat covers.  The ride home was less than odiferous and we were relieved.  Not as relieved as Marshall, but still.


After all of that I began to feel that the Universe was having a bit of a giggle at my expense.  It has certainly happened before and I expect it will certainly happen again.

At this point, you know that there could only be one thing left: the lawnmower.

I filled the bastard with gas, as I ran out one quarter of the way through over the weekend.  At this point I need to remind all of my good friends here that there is simply nothing I hate more than mowing the lawn.  There's no logical reason for it but there we are.  I'd almost rather sit in that lovely chair at my dentist's office (Dr. Mengele).

The throttle cable simply broke a while back and I've spent most of my time jury-rigging it to function but the mower had had enough of me at that point; it was going to keep quitting while I tried to keep mowing.

I'm surprised you guys in Florida didn't hear me spend an hour or so screaming at the five horsepower beast.  I would mow a few strips and the beast would shut off.  I would adjust the new wire and it would start, mow a bit, then shut off again.  Then I would burn myself trying to fix it, causing yet another fusillade of Very Nasty Words and a warning from my wife that there are children on the block.

When one is in the middle of a good old-fashioned tirade, the last thing we need to hear is that there are children on the block.  Most of the children on the block, especially the ones produced by the Loud Family, have vocabularied that far exceed mine, especially when they're outside flipping off their parents.

My wife attempted to help but that didn't work out so well.  I suggested she either fix it herself or sit on the steps and supervise: two alpha males cannot fix a lawnmower.  Or much of anything else.

After some more wire and even more screaming, I managed to finish off the lawn, to everyone's great relief.  Having had the pleasure earlier of throwing out the errant car seat cover, I was free to sit down and sweat all over my recliner.

But the joke, as usual, was on me: Marshall's new pool got filled and he was racing all over the house, completely soggy from swimming and sitting on all the furniture.


Yeah, we're a tv show without need for scripting.