The Light That Shines Only on Hillary is Gone

Thankfully for Philadelphia and the US, the DNC has packed up and left. Now Philly can go back to its normal gridlock and infighting.

• Pope Francis fell over the other day at a function and required help to get up. The staff here at ThermionicEmissions hopes he's in good health. We're also thankful that when he fell, he did not land on a little boy.

John Hinckley, the man who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan, will be released from the Happy Place<tm> to his mother's custody. It is rumored that if anyone says, "Polka Dot Dress" to him, his face goes blank and he tries to kill Donald Trump.

• A new debate asks what's the right age for a child to get a smart phone. My informed answer is 53.

A 17-year-old says he is "overwhelmed" after Celine Dion shared a video of him performing one of her hits. The audience, however, stared in mute horror.

• There are an awful lot of people claiming Donald Trump is a racist. Think about it for a second.. this is a guy whose primary interests are himself and his money. I don't think he has time to be racist.

Got an android phone with MS Swiftkey keyboard? There was a slight glitch the other day, where autocomplete was providing suggestions of things never typed or in different languages. Oops. There was a problem for people using The Cloud to back up their settings so they could be shared across devices. Swiftkey turned off cloud replication and email prediction. If you have an iDevice, you're only affected if you opted in to The Cloud.  

     1. Don't use MS anything.

     2. Don't use The Cloud.

And while we're at it, if you have an iDevice and use WhatsApp, your messages are not being deleted securely. This is a problem, as 'professionals' with forensic software can read the messages. Of course, if we're using WhatsApp for secure communication, we have other problems.  Copies of the database are stored on your device and.... wait for it... in The Cloud.

• An Australian sex survey names 33 different genders. How many did you think there were?

This election is historic for many reasons:

1. people are PISSED, resulting in a wildly non-standard candidate with no experience, whose every utterance is fodder for amusement

2. the other major candidate is a proven liar and criminal

3. 2nd party candidates are viable for the first time

4. a newspaper published provocative pictures of a potential first lady

5. a group has emails purporting to result in removal of a major candidate

6. the husband of one candidate was impeached and will nail anything that can't run fast enough

7. the press is concentrated on Minor Bullshit, further Dividing and Conquering

No one could have predicted this. Hold on for a wild ride.

• My wife's phone picked a really bad time to stop sniffing glue. By this I mean she can no longer plug the charger into the phone. HINT: do not force cords into holes. This advice is important for phones, guitars, and, of course, sex.
• With 2% battery left, she picked a bad time to start thinking about backup and restoring data. Fortunately the very aware person at her phone store suggested wireless charging, which worked perfectly. There's also a program to transfer all data from one phone to another wirelessly.  This works flawlessly, except at Ft Knox here, where I have the network so locked down, it requires an Act of Congress to add a phone.
• The most interesting thing learned from this experience,per Mrs lefty, is the sheer bliss that comes from silence. No phone ringing, no constant BLEEPs from notices and email, no one can get in touch. This is technically known as Phone/Email Vacation and might be a consideration when you're stressed.

So it must have been boring for a while.

My mother in law went to a foot doctor for a painful toe. He gave her meds and sent her on her way. The next day she was in the hospital, septic (blood infection) and getting a toe amputated and now in Rehabilitation.

Father in law, who has been dutifully visting his wife daily, goes for a routine checkup, leading to a more specific test. He has a 'minor blockage', which, of course, means he will require a triple bypass. Now. Do not pass Go and do not collect $500 because that's probably his deductible for heart surgery.

The family is leaping into action in an admirable way.

And I'm going to spend some time here and there being a bachelor, along with my co-bachelor, Marshall. This will require cooking, shopping, and Generally Laying About (aboot for my Canadian reader). Fortunately we're both quite accomplished at Laying About.

Got any weird friends? The next time you communicate with them, via smoke signals, morse code, or even email, tell them about ThermionicEmissions. We're the blogosphere's dirty little secret. At our previous location, I made a few pennies from advertising revenue. I make nothing here but the satisfaction of (hopefully) entertaining readers. Please help me gratifiy my ego with a few more readers. Thanks!

Not enough attention is paid to 15th party candidates. Don't forget Vermin Supreme .

Let's Convention This Bitch Up

I feel sorry for Philthydelphia. It's not bad enough they're in a public transportation crisis because they bought poorly-made cars (that they knew about a year in advance); now there's the Democratic National Convention. It's so huge they're holding parts of it at a giant sports stadium. Wait til they find out parking is fifty dollars.  Traffic is murder at any time of the day or night, so imagine how bad it will be when portions of the city's two main arteries are to be closed. The worst will be borne by the poor commuters and people forced to live and work downtown. Good luck there, folks.

Now imagine the arriving politicans. First they land at an airport with striking workers, incompetent TSA empolyees (be fair, this could be any airport in the nation), then they see the parking three-deep at the curb, right next to the No Parking signs. Driving on the always gridlocked I-95 North, they immediately pass the waste recycling plant.. Philly smells like shit for many reasons. Heaven forbid they try to get around via public transportation or worse, by car. It's like New York but without the accent.

As if this fun couldn't be superceded, the security will be insane, especially when Hillary the Prevaricator arrives. I'm all for having it moved at the last minute. To any old state (or country) at all.  I'm not partisan - I feel sorry for Clevelanders too. Just to make things more interesting, you can open-carry guns there. Thus far it has been peaceful, or at least the gun-carriers have.

• A year and a half after I became gainfully employed, I'm still receiving job notices, some for jobs I applied for a year and a half ago. As per warning, the worst are the Indian recruiters, for some unknown reason. Today I received one from some Indian guy, saying he thinks I'd be interested in a one year contract in Toronto, Canada. Well, there's nothing like an eight hour commute to a different country to get the old metabolism going. WTF is wrong with these people?

A young immigrant has attacked people on a German train. With an axe, while shouting "Allahu Ackbar," which means "Oops, I did it again" in Swahili. Germany and President Obama say the motive isn't clear, even after ISIS claimed responsibility.

Meanwhile the Social Justice Warriors have exclaimed that no normal citizen should have an axe and sensible axe control must be enacted. Star Trek's Wil Wheaton, now famous for his "Fuck the NRA" outbursts, when reached for comment, said, "Fuck the National Axe Association!"

• I think we need a party that guarantees inclusion of another minority group: The Attractive Wingnut Party. Members will include Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman, Michelle Malkin and others to be named later.

The Pokemon Go craze is perfect for us... people have been stopping traffic and walking/driving off cliffs. That sound you hear is Charles Darwin laughing.

• I heard some of Chris Christie's RNC speech on the radio this morning. Regardless of how you vote, the guy was entertaining and nailed it.

BREAKING: sources deep within the RNC have discovered that Bill Clinton plans to vote for Trump. Because he wants a chance at Malenia.

• Baltimore police have footage of a driver playing Pokemon Go plowing into a police car. No word on whether the driver was taking a selfie at the same time.

There is now a Krispy Kreme donut-flavored soda. Is this a good thing? Is it the sign of some sort of Kardashian apocalypse?

• A study, using Real Science, shows that Harry Potter fans are more likely to dislike Donald Trump. This is a shame, as Donald was really counting on the Hogwarts Vote.