Anvil on the Cat Syndrome

Your love is like   Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius, going over the cliff again

As the Mars Lander landed, it let loose the ACME Mars Explorer.

Was it just me who saw that?  

Ladies and Gentlemen, I come to you today on a matter of great importance: Toast.

I believe toasters specifically are a plague upon our great nation, as well as a conspiracy. The problem is that we're not sure who is behind it. Do we make our own toasters? That would be shooting ourselves in the feet. Is it another handy country on which we can pile the blame?

Let me explain: I have had an acrimonious history with toasters my entire life. A watched pot may never boil, but a watched toaster gives you no useful information. No matter what I put in the toaster or how I set it, everything burns. I could make the perfect piece of toast (no I couldn't) and the next day, on the same setting, it will come out black. I have yet to form a theory on why this is, but I'll do it right now, as I do most things, while I type.

First of all, the toast color knob is a fraud. If you looked inside, you'd find it wasn't hooked up to anything, but it has a happy face sticker on it. This is to symbolize the laughter the manufacturer gets from your toast burning and your overall unhappiness. Even on $400 toasters that people with too much money and odd facial hair buy, the control is there for fun. It gives the user some sense of control, without actually giving the user any control.

The infernal device works on quantum physics: nothing burns until you observe it. You can pop the bread down, wait 3 minutes, then inspect it, at which point you'll see no results. You'll think, "Oh, it must be warming up - I'll just leave it alone" and walk away. Unable to stop yourself, you look at it again,1 minute later, and it's coal. Not wanting to be beaten by a toaster, you put in another slice of something and vow to stand there, observing. A few minutes in, you see a tiny bit of golden color, indicating it's actually toasting! You clap, do the Happy Dance, then look back down, at your toast so black that it can't be identified. Einstein is spinning in his grave at this point. Einstein is getting rather tired of spinning and has had to get industrial grade spinners in his grave because he spins so frequently.

You call your boss and take one of your days off, because you're still not going to be beaten by a machine. This time you put in some wheat bread, which is much harder to burn, but you wouldn't eat if you were starving. We will not address where you got the wheat bread in the first place, other than to say it was hidden somewhere in the car and you're putting a slice in the toaster now. This time, you vow to keep on top of it and get it out before it becomes blacker than all of the emo chicks on the videos on tv. You stand and watch. And watch. And look at the timer, which also has an interesting relationship with reality. You know that if you take your eyes off the toast to look at the timer, the bread will burn. So you focus in on the bread, in a war you're betting you'll win. No matter what the screaming voices in your head tell you, you will NOT look at the timer. Even though the names they're calling you are more rude than the ones your friends called you in 5th grade. Don't worry, your mom told you.. if they didn't like you, they wouldn't call you names. 18 years later, you told your mom that your spouse loves you and doesn't call you those names. You showed HER. Unfortunately, Mom's completely out of her mind and just laughs a bit whenever you say anything.

Hmm... where was I?

Oh yeah, you're still giving your Toast Monitoring Activities 100% of your visual acuity. And it's still not even starting to brown. The voices are getting even louder, now using names your spouse calls you when they don't like you very much. They're insisting you check the timer. Maybe reality has compressed and it hasn't been 20 minutes since you pushed the bread down. Even the voice of Albert Einstein, who momentarily stopped spinning to tell you the logical thing is to check the timer. You can't do it. But you know you will.... your will is being chipped away by your indecision and lack of self-esteem. You can handle it no longer - it turns out to be 3 minutes. Phew. You look back and the toast is burnt. Again.

You go back to the car and get some of that Special Powder that makes the gas all clean and helps you think when you're particularly stressed. Now, you think to yourself, you're in a good spot to Tango with the Toaster.  You decide to switch up and get a bagel. If you live in Philly, it's called a beggle. Your problem here is that no one or no device can slice a beggle so it will go in the toaster nicely. Sometimes the 2 halves are very different in size. Sometimes there are bits of the end which stick out just enough to get blackened before the rest of the round bastard starts to toast. Sometimes you almost cut your finger off because they're too hard to handle and cut at the same time. The real problem comes if they're onion or garlic beggles... most of them are onion or garlic on one side only, which sets you up for failure before you've even got the thing cut. If you can even find it within yourself to get the thing into the toaster, even if you've got it cut perfectly in half, all of the onion or garlic is going to burn, even if the beggle doesn't. Meanwhile you have an onion or garlic smell on your hands for the rest of the day (week?) that's worse than cutting fresh onions. This is why I eat my beggles without toasting them, even if they were in the freezer.

Next up: frozen, pre-sliced beggles. You pry the halves apart without ripping too much of the beggle apart and throw them at the toaster. Realizing this will fail quicker than a Cardio-B 1 hour tv show, you give up and put it in the slots. You set the timer, but this time you beat the voices: you duct taped over it so you can't see, even if you have to. You watch. You watch some more. You watch again. Nothing is happening. Even though it's been 43 minutes, it's not toasting. You know it's plugged in because the toaster wires are red hot. You tested this by burning several of your fingers on it. Still no warm glow of toast. Your phone rings, you grab it, annnnnnnnd your toast is black.

So. A watched pot never boils and a watched toaster never toasts.

You will not miss any more work.

You will not get any toast, unless you learn to like it as black as Dick Cheneys moods.

And you will no longer contribute to Albert Einstein's underground whirling motion.

• How to stop your emails from being tracked

Now that it's (temporarily) stopped snowing, the entire country is worried about what to worry about next. Never disappointing, here's a story of garden variety germs possibly making a comeback. It's nice to not have too much of a gap in our worries, isn't it? You could get a near-fatal nosebleed. You gotta figure there are a whole bunch of nasty things not happening as much, due to the Flying AIDS. So if you find yourself (temporarily) without something to worry about, I'll try to help

• robberies (inside social distancing boundaries)-they may have a gun, but you could have the Flying AIDS
• bus and train person against person rubbing
• long lunch lines
• gridlock
• injuries from sex in public places
• the boring old flu (last year's vaccine was under 20% effective - think about that)
• doctors giving you antibiotics for paper cuts and colds

Today I identify as  a doggie present on the carpet

What Can Your Connected Car Reveal About You?

I've been on about this for a while..... read it to find out what the author did.

.... includes a variety of features. It can lock or unlock the vehicle remotely, perform location tracking on the vehicle, enable the headlights or horn, adjust or activate climate control features, track destinations through the navigation system, provide the status of whether doors and windows are open or closed, and report the current fuel level.

I still have to find the modem and pull the plug on mine. 

• Bored? Tax money just sitting there? Deficit not big enough? The semiconductor industry wants a bailout too.
• In the end, you can't blame business for wanting a boost. The real problem is the government that gives it to them. 
• of course less burdensome taxes would help everyone, as would smaller government

Today the president  reduced unemployment by sending the troops back out to war. Asked about Trump's major steps toward peace in the Middle East, Biden said he wanted to undo all the terrible things done by his predecessor.

• Having more friends may help female giraffes live longer
• of course it does - they get together, drink coffee, and shop like mad
• the study doesn't mention the life span for male giraffes decreases when they get the bills 

Ghana scientists are gene editing sweet potatoes to make them healthier.

I'm all for some of these great gene hacks. But didja ever wonder what the back side of this is gonna be? We could be messing with nuclear fire. Can this bite us in the butt down the road? Will anything happen by making potatoes healthier? Yeah, we'll get healthier potatoes. But.... will it stop certain healthy insects from eating or otherwise interacting with them... causing another blip in the chain...? Is this stuff studied? Does the healthier gene carry anything negative with it? Will it turn us all into Roseanne and get us kicked out of our own family we started?

I worked with a dude from Ghana.

He borrowed a car from the pool over the weekend. A week later there were parking tickets from another state. He swore he wasn't in any other state.

So I'm wondering about this gene-editing scientist from Ghana, knowwhatimsayin?

• If there were ever a sentence that screams NO, It's "Listen to Post Malone cover Hootie & the Blowfish for Pokemon's 25th anniversary"

Today the Russians  hacked some more and practiced blaming it on the Chinese. The Chinese got pissed and sent out the plans for the microwave the Russians are using to cook Americans in the embassy buildings. This thing causes headaches and nausea faster than a session of Congress.

For many, Facebook is their internet. Getting people off Facebook is like clearing a country, village by village; the history of clearances and forced migration is not good.   --The Register

For the 27th time in recent memory, a drone got into Gatwick Airport's airspace. England's 2nd busiest airport has announced that it will stop accepting planes, effective tomorrow, and only play host to drones. "It's the safest thing to do," said Ernest Smeg, Airport Chief of Operations (and janitor). We're powerless to keep these annoying little buggers out of our airspace, and me mum always said if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. 

England's largest airport. Heath Bar Heathrow, replied that it had taken away Gatwick's key to the liquor cabinet and expected airplane flights to continue without interruption (at least until the next drone).

• Imagine if some of the unidentified things flying around in our skies are not ships - they're life forms. 
• That should keep us from falling asleep for a good long time.

House Republicans propose nationwide ban on municipal broadband networks

Claiming it will "promote competition by limiting gov't-run networks."

If you need (more) proof that gov't thinks we're idiots and is not working for us, this is it.

In your city, the gov't may have granted a duopoly to 2 providers, say Verizon and Comcast. This means they own cable in your area and no other company can get in on it to create competition, which would lower prices.

Your federal representatives have just done the same thing nationally. How, exactly, will this promote competition? The same way it did locally - not. And we will suck it up. We have ridiculously expensive cable, compared to other countries. Why? Duopoly. No competition.

Without verifying this, I suspect if you look, you'll discover cable companies are large contributors to these republicans (probably a little less to the dems). 

Time: 1980

Place: Mars

I thought I saw video of something fly by, but it looks like it got shot at and exploded. No one will say anything official about it.

Time: 1983

Hey, remember when something flew by the planet and looks like it got shot at? Same thing today. Also exploded. No official explanation,

Time: 2017

Holy fllizbang - something landed. No shit. Check the video.

If that's an Earthling they're ugly as fuck.

No, wait.. it's some kind of dune buggy. Wonder what it does...

They say it's solar powered. It only moves around during the day.

It seems to pick up dirt. I wonder if it will vacuum my house.

It also drills into rocks.

If that's from Earth, Earthlings sure are weird.

Some of our more 'colorful' citizens waved at it. Nothing happened. We figger it phones home, maybe at night. Tomorrow a whole bunch of us are gonna sit in front of it and sing some Hendrix. Everyone recognizes Hendrix.

Nope. Nothing. I can't imagine it not liking Hendrix. We'll wave some signs at it tomorrow.

Ok, this is getting boring. I'm going back to flibbing my flizerbit.

Time: 2021

Martian Defense Force (MDF) has 3 objects incoming, from Earth. This leaked yesterday. They never tell us shit. I hope it's more interesting than the dune buggy. Hey - maybe it's a response to all the things we said to the dune buggy! Finally, some interplanetary communication? Nope, the MDF says it was just dry surface gas

Wait - here comes another one. And there goes another one, right down the crater. These Earthlings couldn't hit the broad side of a marngt. The news says it's another dune buggy, but a naturally occurring dune buggy. Were they having a sale on dune buggies? Is the 2021 model year that advanced over 2017? Will they still drill and pick up dirt? Man, someone got fleeced on this deal.

Hey, this dune buggy has a helihopper! When it drives somewhere, it sends up the hopper. It's kinda fun to watch. MDF says it's just an insect too close to the lenticular clouds.

Thinking about it, I don't want to go to Earth. If there's anybody home, they don't seem too bright and insist on making the same mistakes over and over again. After taking the dune buggy apart and analyzing the software, it seems they want to send some of them here. Everybody hide when you hear the air raid siren. Maybe if they think there's nobody here, they'll go home. Please.

Meh - they'll never tell us the truth anyway....

• The chief of the Cherokee nation says it's time for Jeep to stop using Cherokee and Grand Cherokee.
• I wouldn't want a car to be called "CIS-Hetero White Guy" so maybe he has a point. Aw, who am I kidding, I'd drive that car....

Redefining ‘flesh-colored’ bandages makes medicine more inclusive

Oh shit, all we have is Eeyore bandages. Does this mean we have to look like Eeyore? 

• Fry's Electronics is out of business - all stores closed.
• Fewer and fewer reasons to leave the house 

This is another billion dollar idea: Using AI, build an Argue-Bot. It will get trained on your phrases plus AI and will argue with anybody anytime. Especially your spouse. I'll be so rich, I won't have to argue. Oh.

The latest version of Firefox has support for multiple out-of-browser video windows. I enjoy 1 on occasion, but can't imagine more. The article mentioned influencers, so that's probably why I don't get it. Essentially, we can now watch more than 1 thing at a time, all over the screen(s). And this is a feature? I can just see Mrs. lefty watching a popup video of true murder crimes, while I watch 1 on escaping murderers. Or a black and white murder mystery and a ufo video. Nah, that calls for 2 different devices and more space between us for the dog.

• YouTube’s ‘supervised experiences’ help parents choose what content their kids can see
• bypassable by not signing in

A Freedom of Information Act query was filed for the CIA, requesting all docs relating to poisoning for covert assassinations. CIA said that's illegal so it wouldn't have any documentation on it.

Stop laughing.

Incidentally, the CIA has no docs on UFOs because it does not collect UFO docs because they do not pose a threat to the defense of the United States. Not even the huge amount that fly over nuclear installations.

The problem here is too many groups beholden to none, running roughshod over everyone's rights. Sometimes in other countries.

• This telehealth thing is wonderful: now you can wait an hour for your doctor in the privacy of your own home.

The US Postal Service has awarded a contract to replace its aging fleet.

The contract had been swinging in the wind for years because of the requirement that it speed up mail delivery. That requirement has obviously been dropped.

Typhoid lefty and the Amazing Weather Event

The new job is going well. No, really, it's going decently. I have very few complaints, with the exception of the heat.  It's traditionally women who complain about the temperature being too cold, so I thought they were responsible for the eighty-degree temps in our humongous office.  Where I work is a bit of a cliche, so I asked if we had to fill out a form 8753 in order to get the temperature down below roasting. Even the women were complaining.

Speaking of women, I work near three women or so, who have apparently been sick off and on for months.  I told them if I got typhoid, it would be their fault. Little did I realize that they had been playing Pass the Germs for way longer than I have been there.

Sure enough, my throat began to feel icky. This was followed, in short order, by my head ringing and being in a vise.  It is difficult to concentrate on your job when you're desperately attempting to fail at falling off your chair.  This all happened in one day.  So I chose to stay at work and irradiate the rest of my coworkers who had not yet become sick.  I'm a giver.

You'll be surprised to learn that I don't get sick like normal people. Being a man, I had to ask my wife if I had a temperature, which she verified. The joke is somewhat on me because whenever I ask if I have a temp, my wife tells me yes. Why we do Fever Theater<tm>, I'm not sure. One day when I'm well, I am going to ask her to feel my forehead, just for fun. And then maybe I'll tell her that's not where my forehead is.  I figured the smart thing to do, aside from consuming copious amounts of ibuprofen, would be to take some Nyquil equivalent to help me sleep. It kept waking me up at hourly intervals, like a seriously snoring spouse with a chainsaw.

By the next morning, I was on our Natural Cocktail: zinc, echinacea and vitamin C. You start taking this the moment you feel sick and it will either help you to ward it off or shorten its duration.  If you don't have trouble swallowing pills, you will when you see echinacea.  It looks kinda like a clear capsule of oregano, only it's the size of a small football (deflated, of course).  And it's a good thing I dumped all this crap down my throat because the relatively simple act of sitting on the couch made my skin hurt. When the phone rang, my head exploded.  When my wife spoke, the hair follicles on my arm contracted and sent pain shooting to my brain (what was left of it).  Even innocent email checking rendered my eyebrows non-functional. My nose does not run but my stomach does: right to the fridge. When I get sick, my appetite goes through the roof. Keep your hands and feet away from my mouth.

SNOW

We're about to get a noreaster, whatever that means. It means PANIC. It means clean out the stores of milk and bread in mass PANIC. Depending on who you listen to, we're getting two or three snow storms. This includes between one and twelve inches of snow, depending on which attractive weather woman you prefer to watch. At least this time they came right out and admitted that there was no way to accurately predict the amount of snowfall, instead offering four different scenarios. This happened on three different networks, as if they were colluding.

The news is calling this the storm of the century. This indicates that total snowfall will be somewhere in the area of an inch to an inch and a half.  Mind you, the news also features shots at grocery stores, where the shelves are literally picked clean. You'd think they weren't going to get out to the store for three weeks. They're now calling it Snowmageddon.  This is why I get my news online.

The real mess is going to happen tomorrow, so naturally my wife asked me to stop at the store and pick a few things up. She is the one who goes shopping, so it's a crapshoot when I have to enter that dark place.  Let's start with walking in: most people have no trouble - not me.  I walk up to the door and it won't open. I strongly suspect it is refusing on purpose, perhaps on principle.  I'd have the store manager come out and explain it to me but as it is, he's busy plowing the lot (or one of his cashiers).

In front of me at the deli counter is an old lady who is apparently feeding a small battleship's complement.  She requires a pound and a half of swiss but it has to be in three packages for some unknown reason. Then some turkey.  No, that's not thick enough. Then a half a pound of ham. That's too thick. I held on well, managing not to strangle her with her own turkey pastrami and half an hour later, it was my turn. Mind you, they didn't have what my wife sent me to purchase. It's friggin' cheese - what's so difficult?

Just to make things more interesting, the Deli Lady wound up in front of me at the cashier. It turned out she had a husband, who kinda popped up when the bags were in the cart. I have no idea where he was the whole time; perhaps he was off trying to convince them to sell him three gallons of milk, but in seven plastic containers.

Once outside of the store, I tried carrying the packages to the car. Fortunately for me, it remained in the place where I parked it.  My wife's creamer took a leap right out of the bag, while I had four plastic bags on me. When I got home, the creamer, which obviously had something against me, had once again removed itself from its confines. This was made more amusing by the fact that I keep confusing the trunk release with the gas release. This won't be a serious problem until I start filling up the trunk with gasoline.

The cherry on top of the ice cream sundae has to be the mayor of Philthydelphia's press conference. It's fun to watch because we like to laugh (we're outside of Philly). He emphasized that they're serious about snow removal.  If so, this would be the first time.  There will be 375 people and 800 pieces of equipment deployed.  Two days later, people will be wondering why there's snow all over the place, as if they had no idea it was going to snow.  Furthermore, do not throw snow back in the street - it's disrespectful. Disrespectful is promising to clear the streets and failing completely.  It would be a fair bet that it's been snowing here for longer than there has been a city of Philadelphia, yet they have consistenly failed to do an even passable job of cleaning up. There are actually cities all over the country that manage to clean up way more snow way more frequently.  Driving in Philly is a nightmare with no snow.

I have to go now. The dog is doing us a favor, protecting us from the last bag of Cheese Jax (by eating them).  After it gets done snowing, the Abominable Snow Span will grace the freshly-washed blanket on the couch, which was washed yesterday because he was out in the rain and mud.