Silicon City: San Fran - Silicone City: L.A.

If you have a dog, strike up the marching band and march to Dunkin. They have xmas ornaments for us bipeds, and dog toys for our quadrupeds. Penny got a cup of coffee and our cousin got a box of donuts. Penny likes real coffee, as did all the rest of them. It was well known in the family that if you put your cup on the ground, that was the dog's territory and you lost it before you knew it.



Your love is like  gonorrhea

• This rare bird is male on one side and female on the other
• the rose-breasted grosbeak degeneris 

Russian interference in the election continues: many people on social media are blaming the Russians for interfering.

• Ebay would like me to know that the item I won, which was going to take a week to arrive, will only take 3 days to arrive. From one state over.

Today I identify as  one of those things you put your soda can in to keep it cool




Some of the weirdest moments are when the serious Christians and lefty agree on something. By serious, I mean the very singleminded, devout ministry people who preach all over shortwave radio and are now talking about End Times. I heard they refer to 666 as 'the chip', putting numbers on your forehead.

666 just went online and according to these Christians, it's End Times.
I don't believe in End Times, but The Chip should be ringing everybody's alarm bells.
10 years ago, a scientist came across a technology that is so huge, DARPA immediately snatched it up: a Chip, that, when implanted, rewrites DNA, via mRNA. Read the article and decide for yourself.

• Security flaw left ‘smart’ chastity sex toy users at risk of permanent lock-in
• flaw or feature? 

Dear lefty

• The country is in a sorry state, with husband divorcing wife and people divorcing families over the election. What's your solution?
• divorce, although worth it, costs too much and takes too long. Give em guns 

Hellos

John Mellencamp
Kevin Godley - 10cc
Kevin Cronin - REO Speedwagon
David Hidalgo - Los Lobos (La Bamba)


Goodbyes

Eddie Van Halen
Johnny Rivers - "I can see clearly now"
Ginger Baker - Cream
Terry Lavitz - T. Lavitz, Dixie Dregs, Frogwings




When BLM started trashing their own neighborhoods and setting things on fire, I said we never see Jews rioting and setting their Mercedes on fire. I stand corrected...  The New York City Orthodox community had a wild protest over new Flying AIDS restrictions by Idiot Governor Cuomo. In certain places, houses of worship were limited to 10 people. The protesters were so incensed, they lit a fire, which the fire department had to come put out. Estimates say they caused over $5.95 in damages to the public trash bin on the corner. Jewish Lives Matter. NYPD called in SWAT, which deployed LRADs, tear gas, pork chops, and a busload of black people from the next town over, to shake their heads and say, "You call that rioting?"

Fun Fact: Louis Farakhan, 5x voted America's Favorite Antisemite, lives or lived in a wealthy Jewish neighborhood in New Jersey.



So it's Home Office Meeting Time again.  How do I know?
The droning of the power tools from across the street, the leaf blower next door, and the air raid siren for the fire department. Within 12 seconds, the mass transit train noise will start. You can feel it from miles away.

Along these lines, we continue to be bedeviled by our new wireless phone. The features we really looked forward to were that it would speak the caller's name and block numbers. The features worked, and by worked, I mean there was damn near a 25% overall success rate.  Blocking fails, period. It speaks the callers out with a 100% success rate, but the intelligibility is very close to 3%. Our only chance for success here is to be able to understand a syllable or 2 from the voice. We haven't found the speaking choices, but I believe the unit is stuck on a localized slang version of a Swahili-American hybrid, combined with what I believe to be a dead ancient southwest Mediterranean dialect. There's also a tinge of Spanish, discernible as the machine gun staccato speed of the words.

The unit also features a very neat function that wasn't even mentioned: it can throw its ring. No matter where we are, when it rings, we cannot tell where the ring is coming from. This includes when we don't know where the physical handsets are. The fact that we don't understand the announcements does not mean it isn't mocking me when it speaks.


And while we're on audio nuisances, I'm starting to get really angry about my phone ringing. You don't want to know what happens when I get really angry. Last time I scared Iqbal, my service elephant. Do you know how difficult it is to scare a service elephant?

My phone rings about 5 times a week: it's that way on purpose, so I don't get really angry. Lately it rings 10 times a day. And it's never a useful call. It's entirely spam because not a single one leaves a message. Most don't show up on public spam lists and a bunch are from certain exchanges. This is in addition to the democrats texting me unsolicited. I never thought I'd have to go to a system where the phone only rings if it's in my contacts, but it's rapidly heading there. One of the carriers used to offer a service that required all calls to input a code or go directly to voicemail, but that's not offered by anybody anymore. This would have the added benefit of making other people really angry, thus keeping my calls to a minimum again.

Iqbal says hello.

• I recently discovered I am middle class. It came as a bit of a shock, as people always tell me I'm low class.

Eddie Van Halen misc

I checked in with my local expert on cancer....
The spread of Eddie's cancer should not and normally would not go unnoticed. After an outbreak, there are tests to look for this, which will detect a spread. I have had 2 dogs that went through this. No one can say who dropped the ball, but it might have been dropped (whether or not it was curable).

Tributes
Eddie's interview in Popular Mechanics about hacking his guitars
Valerie Bertinelli and Wolfgang Van Halen posted heart-wrenching tweets on Twitter.

Mayonnaise in Relation to Ferrets

So I'm on a conference, using video for the 2nd time, and I see myself in a tiny window up top. At the bottom of the tiny window, it says YOU. Good thing, too, in case I forget who I am.


Your love is like  a kick in the nuts.


Russian interference in the election appears to be heating up: Yuri asked Jesus to make the American elections fair.



Dear lefty

• What would you do if I sang out of tune?
• I would stand up and walk out on you  

• Is Lucifer Satan?
• How the hell should I know? Maybe it's one of those trinity things, with Lucifer, Satan, and Hillary. (It turned out to be Dick Cheney, because Hillary scared everyone too much.

You'll be shocked and sickened, but perhaps not surprised, to learn that Lyme Disease was a manufactured disease, caused by weaponized ticks. The ticks did not just appear by themselves. Once again, Fort Detrick was involved. I would not trust Fort Detrick to manage some spare cardboard, because they'd weaponize it, then it would go missing. This was part of a program your government used, right after the Bay of Pigs, to get even. It involved lice, ticks, and who knows what else. Lyme started in the state of Washington and Lyme, Connecticut at the same time. What a coincidence! Naturally there's all sorts of stonewalling, involving everybody's friends at the CDC and NIH. You know, the people who will be our saviors with the Flying AIDS. Yes, your government is trying to incapacitate you. As described, Lyme is pretty nasty, and that's after you get the diagnosis. Click the link and gain some knowledge. Take it with you to the polls in November.

Your government is trying to kill you. At least in Washington state, where a heat ray was requested against protesters in Lafayette Square. The police requested one from the National Guard, which doesn't use them. The weapon is essentially a microwave oven, to make skin feel like it's burning. Authorities say it causes no permanent damage (unless your fries aren't done and you have to put them back in the beam). Being a huge fan of the right to protest peacefully and the rule of law, police certainly need something for crowd control, when it gets violent (only) but between microwave projectors and LRADS, the weaponization of police via the army has gone too far.

• Harvey Weinstein was stripped of his honorary (British) CBE. They couldn't tell him because whenever you say 'Harvey Weinstein stripped,' he gets very excited.

In yet another vindication, the director of the FBI said it's a mistake to get election information on social media. It would be a lot faster and easier to just quote me.

• Occasionally I need recognition  -maybe a gold star. At no point today did I say that the First Lady had the first set of implants in the White House. I didn't even ask the president if it was true. Just put it on the fridge - this is my first one.

It wasn't bad enough that we had Attack of the Stereo Lawnmowers. Now we have Attack of the Commercial Lawnmowers. Naturally I learned about this during a virtual meeting. The only thing missing was cutting down trees and feeding them into the Chopper Machine. A coworker wanted to feed her husband into a Chopping Machine, but it left too much evidence. Now that I think about it, she was probably right.

The only thing good about this changing weather is that the bleedin' grass will stop growing, so I can stop mowing. It's a gift from God, or whoever controls the weather.


Dear l33t haxors: be careful where you ransom. A German woman died because of ransomware, after she had to be transferred to a more distant hospital. Now you've gone from ransomware to murder. The hackers eventually provided the decryption key.

• Human footprints dating back 120,000 years found in Saudi Arabia
• don't they ever clean? 

In the meantime, right outside my window, is the Commercial Lawnmowers, with that backpack thingie, going VOOM VOOM. There is no mechanical reason for it to go VOOM VOOM, but the mowers really like it and it lets people know there are Professhionels around. If there were any way to make a noise like a 190 decibel plane taking off, they would. VOOM VOOM.



Here are the winners of the 2020 Ig Nobel Prizes to make you laugh, then think.

There's so much going on here, including a bunch of researchers proving that knives made of human feces do not work well.



We visited Ebay, 5 days ago, to order some Stuff. The stuff ordered from literally 5 miles away has not arrived yet. The vendor said this is because it was shipped from Houston, which, according to my memory of high school geometry, is more than 5 miles away from my house. No one knows why Ebay thinks Houston = Philly. I got notice that the next item will arrive early. Yes, the item from California will arrive in 6 days. Everything else will arrive from 9 days to a few months. I still have not received the vibrator female massage device from the last order. Perhaps Ebay does not ship cross-country, which would make sense.  Ebay ships the other way, cross-Russia, hence the delays. Have you ever looked at the delivery dates? It could take over a month to get a phone cover from Nevada. 6 weeks for some electronic parts from Ohio (the next state over). Perhaps this is all a ploy, so they can tell you the purchase is arriving 'early'. I used to avoid ordering from suppliers in China, but that stuff is now getting here faster than the continental US purchases.

My first real job was shipper/receiver, a looong time ago. I remember how long it took and how much it cost to send things all over the country. Let's say the shipping prices have risen exponentially, as has the time to ship things. Worse, some of the expedited shippers use the USPS for the final leg of the journey. So it will take 3 days to get across the country, then another month to get to the final destination. Across the country used to take 5 days, sometimes 4 if you were lucky.

• Every now and then I'm forced to look over the top singles list. I recognize fewer and fewer alleged artists on the lists, and none of the songs. 
• Yesterday someone referred to a Radiohead song as arguably the most important song of the 90s. Oops.... never heard it. And this guy was a guitar player, not a fanboi.
• Camila Cabello is very attractive: haven't heard her music. I'm guessing it's better that way.

This is going to be an historic election.
I'm not sure why, but just keep repeating the above.
Either loser will raise taxes and continue bombing other countries.
At least I'm voting for someone who represents my principles.

With that in mind, here are some voting tips, to make your voice heard

• Vote early, vote often.
• Don't bother - it won't count anyway
• You're American - we don't show up over 50% anyway
• There are a lot of advantages to mailing in your ballot, the least of which is not standing in a socially-distanced line, stretching all the way to the next polling place, and decorated with socially-distanced tape. And your nose sweating all the way. Then there's the USPS, which will always deliver your item, even if it takes 100 years, as recently proven. Start mailing now, folks.
• If you vote by mail, know that you must obtain a form to obtain a form to vote. Then somehow make it all the way to the mailbox, where it might will be picked up by one of the many federal workers assigned to the project.
• Speaking of Federal workers, if you like marijuana but don't partake because it's illegal, just hang around in back of a post office. Second hand smoke is a bitch. WARNING: unless you're a federal worker, take the rest of the day off work.
• If you're in Chicago, don't worry.. there are many dead people whose votes can take your place. If it matters, you may want to find out how they're voting.

SJW Smattering

Lady Gaga says "every American drinks the poison that is white supremacy."
  -Tastes like Yoo Hoo


If all 4 of the Beatles were somehow to reunite, there would be complaints that there were no women or people of color in the band. That they were a band held aloft by white privilege.