We're Going to Need Something Else to PANIC About

Making the worst of a horrible situation

Talking to friends, I realized what kind of shape we're in: financially, without hope, and looking for some tiny bit of... something... to make life tolerable.
In a nod to positivity, we've said the following:

• The car overheated. It only cost $250 to fix!!!
• The dog got sick. The vet bill was only $375 WITH blood work!
• I opened the curtain and there was only 95% cloud coverage. There was even a tiny spot on the sidewalk that looked like it might start drying...
• I put my frozen dinner in the microwave. Yes, it came out black, but I finally figured out how to set the power level!
• Only 4 of my friends died of coronavirus!
• My retirement account only lost 25% during the Great Coronavirus Panic of 2020!
• the dog only got half of the thanksgiving turkey!

It's kinda sad when this is what we're excited about.

Although it does speak to the resilience of the human spirit...

Please comment with yours.

• Things that are certain in life: death, taxes, and rain on the night the trash has to go out and/or when the bins have to come back. I kid you not.

We continue with news of The Great Coronavirus PANIC of 2020
Today's report is brought to you by Mrs lefty, woman on the street:
It's really dead out there.
Thank you, Mrs lefty.

A brief call to several local businesses had entire malls closed and entire malls open. Restaurants were open, but I wasn't allowed to go outside to visit them. Every website had the same disclaimer:

UPDATE ON COVID-19

We apologize for coronavirus and for being a business and for being open, because our families have to eat too. We want you to know we have taken every precaution to keep our customers and employees safe. If an employee feels sick or has vomited up his intestines, he can get a note from his doctor and miss work that day. He won't be paid, though.

We have engaged the services of the best cleaners in the entire state. They show up in a nuclear green pretty serious-looking truck. They all wear hazmat suits and carry bottles that have 'Coronavirus Eradicator' written on them, in crayon.

I'm not kidding... they all say something to this effect. Ok, they don't say nuclear green - that was.... what's that thing called? Poetic license.

Wait, we have a bulletin from Mrs lefty:
Mrs lefty, I understand you were out checking on your mother in law today.
Yes, lefty, I was.
And how was she.
Well, lefty, she was in a panic.
Why is that?
She didn't have any bottled water.
A quick check on her yesterday revealed 6 one gallon jugs of water under the sink.
Exactly, lefty, but that's not enough for her. She drinks water, you know.
6 gallons?
No, but she wants to have it there just in case.
Good thing she doesn't need any toilet paper.
Heh heh heh, lefty. Back to you in the studio...



All of the past and current democratic primary candidates released a statement, blaming President Trump for the virus.

They were going to blame Hillary Clinton, but changed their plans when they started to disappear, one at a time. The coroner reported that they all committed suicide while handcuffed, shooting themselves twice in the back of the head, then hiding the gun.

• Know who's suffering the worst from The Virus?
• Hypochondriacs - the people who always think they're sick. They're feeling left out (and sick, of course) and are jamming emergency rooms across the country.
• The National Guard has been mobilized, and have been authorized to shoot these people

Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-Uranus) is pleading with the president to mobilize the military to fight coronavirus. Do you want to explain it to him or should I?

In an attempt to stop a Hawaiian lava flow, the army bombed it in 1935.
WTF is wrong with us? We also bombed the Moon. There are other options... we don't have to bomb everything we see.

• Everybody could use a little more cash. Since I don't make anything from blogging, I do what I can. I stand out on a corner, selling toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Mrs lefty ho's me out and calls me 'her main bitch,' whatever that means. She said if I do over $5,500, I get my own corner. If I do under $5,500, I take a beatin'.

A spokesman for Hollywood said that they are losing $20 billion, more or less, each weekend. As a result, Meryl Streep, Robert DeNiro, and Rob Reiner have released a statement, blaming Trump personally for the virus.



Things are pretty good at the lefty mansion.
Mrs lefty lets me out every 6-8 weeks (whether I want to or not).
But now that she's keeping me indoors because of the Flying AIDS, I suddenly want to go out. Why is that?  Maybe if I get her to tell me we're going out, I will calm down and go back to sleep in the basement.

• What do you have when you find an open pie container, with most of the pie hollowed out but not the crust, and a spoon in the middle?
• Kids

Israel takes step toward monitoring phones of virus patients.
Monitoring? We call that spying when the CIA/FBI/NSA does it.
Now is the time to watch carefully. See what goes on with restrictions and official reactions. Don't let it bog you down - just notice it.
Israel has some technology - they also use it to spy on us.

In his address, Netanyahu acknowledged the technology had never been used on civilians. But he said the unprecedented health threat posed by the virus justified its use. 

In the US, this would be largely the same, except it would be 'for the children.'




Today I identify as  Dolly Parton



List of Free Software and Services During Coronavirus Outbreak

• Creepiest headline: What is a smart diaper and how does it work

In case you slipped and clicked the MS Edge browser icon...it's also sending serious data back to MS. Win 10 wasn't enough...

• Apple bans COVID-19 games.
• what an odd little company

Next time you complain about your period, remember MRKH Syndrome: the girl that was born without a vagina. Not kidding and not giggling.

• Data of millions of eBay and Amazon shoppers exposed
• Haven't we had enough of this? It's the same cause every time..

If you've got a few million to burn, check out McClaren's ELVA - it has no windshield.   For that price, it should sexually gratify you too.

• Now that we're all working from home, let me give you my first tip
• turn off... ummmm... anything you might be watching... when the boss calls.

Please use birth control - you don't want your kids to be known as coronavirus babies

Operation Dirty Navel

Philly denizens are in a bad place (besides Philly).
We're coming up on three days in a row without rain. This tends to confuse the hell out of the people, who run outside, sometimes frolicking, without jackets. To add to the confusion, it's 20 degrees outside, causing frostbite on unfortunate body parts and setting off a mass flu epidemic.

Pennsylvania: the state bird is a cloud

• Faceyspaces fined $11m in Italy for misleading users about how their data will be used. They're unhappy that the account defaults are set at the most invasive, and that features are opt-out, not opt-in.
• Heh heh heh, Faceyspaces. You know they're feeling that $11m hit. That's a lunch bill.

A second major bug in Google+ is hastening its demise.

Google: It's ok, we have your data.

• Bravo to the city of North Bend, OR. They managed to get infected with ransomware demanding $50k and did not pay because they had everything backed up and could restore it.

If you're unfortunate enough to use Twitter, you get promoted tweets. This is another phrase for advertisement. Why does a jeweler advertise to technical people (professional geeks)? This is all part of my Mess with the Metrics campaign.

Dear lefty

• Rita Aaaaaah of Lincoln, Lincolnshire, asks why is your heater so small?
• Dear Small: you should have your dreams analyzed. 

We are headed up to The Holidays, as one would expect in December.

A long time ago, I moved into my house. It was a time to make my own traditions, starting with decorations. I bought one of those Charley Brown Christmas trees, about 2' tall and fake as they came. It took a while and some interesting hook techniques, but I eventually had the only tree in the neighborhood, possibly the state, with floppy disks, CDs, and vacuum tubes hanging from it. Wish I had the pics. Now that I'm married we have either a large fake tree with dog ornaments or nothing, because we can't quite get it together to put one up. Aren't you lucky that I still get the blog updated?

• For some reason I don't even want to know, Wife watches Wendy. She says she can't believe Wendy has been on for ten years. I say I can't believe Wendy has been on for ten minutes.

College Hijinks

A small group of male students are attempting to remove porn from their colleges: this started in Notre Dame, and migrated to Georgetown, Harvard Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania.  When they say 'get rid of porn', they mean install a porn filter on the school's WIFI.  I think they should start urine testing.

The Great Porn Panic of 2018.

This is sick. 

Does it sound familiar? It should... 

The Great Alcohol Panic.

The Great Marijuana Panic.

The War on Drugs.

Baron von Frankenstein - pitchforks and torches

Society has an annoying tendency to cycle. This isn't seriously different from other panics, past or present. What they all have in common is one loud group attempting to control the behavior of others.  If you have a problem with porn, don't go to porn sites. Stop trying to tell everyone where they can and can't go. 

You're going to be shocked by this, but most of the people and groups pushing for a ban are religious. This is in spite of studies' inability to link porn with the bugaboos the religious claim.  These throwback zealots give religion a bad name. Perhaps their time would be better spent doing good in their communities.

This would be an incredible teaching moment for the schools. "We are not going to censor what you can access and here's why...." Of course if they did this, there would be SJW Rioting, the likes of which we haven't seen since conservative speakers attempted to speak on campus. Oh yeah, a loud group attempting to control what students have access to.

• But it IS Christmas, when the fancy of all young men turns to sex and guitars. 'Turns to' is a little misleading, as young men think about sex and guitars ALL the time. Or is it just me?
• Not that it matters - my toys are way too expensive.
• Although I found a great deal the other day: only $15,000 for a lefty 1958 Stratocaster. It's really cheap because someone refinished it. I told Wife I will gladly live with the refinish because this is such a great deal, and I saved her tens of thousands of dollars. Fortunately she learned a long time ago to humor me.

Emergency Update:

Three students at the University of Pennsylvania have attempted to get horseradish mustard banned from campus.

Are they allergic?

No, they just don't like it and think no one else should be able to eat it either.

Dear lefty

• Long time reader (2 weeks) Rita Ummmmm, of Bristol, PA, and Bristol, UK, asks why this blog is so ugly.
• Your opinion is very valuable to us: hold your breath while we fix the ugly.

Hollywood has stuck again: this time with the fourth version of A Star is Born. Add ten more and they'll be in competition with Rocky. They will.

The original featured Boris Karloff (because everything during those years featured Boris Karloff), and one of those black and white actresses. The second featured Barbara Streisand and Jimmy Stewart, as Rollo. The third featured Barbara Streisand and Kris 'Kris' Kristofferson, as Kris.

The latest fiasco features Barbara Streisand and Lady Gaga, as Steve. It has already won several "You're F-ing Kidding Me" awards, plus some other award with a statue.

Little known fact: The latest fiasco was supposed to be called A Star is Porn, but the University of Pennsylvania protested and mailed a white powdery substance to Harvey Weinstein (who wasn't involved with the picture). 

In other Hollywood non-news, Transformers is back for the 43rd time, rivaling Rocky. They have cleverly left 'Transformers' out of the name, hoping people won't think a huge yellow thing that turns into a small yellow Volkswagen has anything at all to do with Transformers. Harvey Weinstein's only question was were there any little boys in it.

• Definition: fireplace - a hole in the bricks that sucks all heat out of your house.

The always on the ball ticket agency wants to know if I'd like to become a member of the Slayer fan club.  Dammit... if I weren't busy chewing razorblades, I'd jump on that sweet deal.

• I saw some kid with a mullet the other day. It's just as funny now as it was ten years ago. Now, back to man buns.

While you're out gift shopping, make sure you pick up a pair of Purple brand headphones. They feature unlimited playback time, due to their battery-free design.

This is brilliant. This is also a real commercial.

• The new Chevy Econo features unlimited heat, due to its air conditioner-less design.
• Google's new Mega 3.57 phone features incredible savings on airtime, due to its tendency to completely fall apart in the user's hand.
• Not to be outdone, Samsung's S33.47q features almost unlimited battery time, due to the fact that you can't turn it on.

Say - what do the blog stats look like, lefty?
They look like a real f-ing nightmare in comparison with every other blog on the planet. This is actually a good thing.... Firefox is the biggest browser (62%), linux is the biggest operating system (67%), and there are 98 people who visit from somewhere that even Google can't identify. Oh yeah, I generate 34% of the traffic myself.

• It's holiday time and sadly, the singing Amazon boxes are back.  Mental health advocates worldwide are lodging complaints. The commercials cause two reactions: murder and medicine (raise the dosage).

At some point in the year we have National Mental Health Day.
Christmas has to be one of the saddest days of the year for people suffering from loss, loneliness, depression, and too many people trying to talk to them, rather than emailing. Please do a true good deed this season and check in on people who could use it.

Also make sure to shoot any of those bell-ringers outside stores. Do it for the children.

The Day After the Day After

Our friends over at Volvo have stated that hackers are the real problem for self-driving cars. Really? Not crappy code that doesn't take security seriously?

• Trans-species Transvestite Dog: Marshall has recently trained us to respond to his every whim via loud, urgent whining, whether it's needing water or something serious. At roughly 3am, the Marshall Alarm went off again. He was in the corner of the bedroom, with a dress wrapped around his neck. Kinky? Autococker Asphyxiation?

My buddy has had cancer two times. He's now working on number three. He has no sense of taste. While getting chemotherapy, he walks to and from a full time heavy job. He does not utter a syllable of doubt, regret, or upset.. he just goes on.  I need to remember this next time I have a backache...

• Celebgate 3.0: Yes, once again there's been a breach, resulting in photos from the phones of celebrities being leaked. This time it's Miley Cyrus, Stella Maxwell, Kristen Stewart, Tiger Woods, Lindsey Vonn, and Katharine McPhee. This attack starts with phishing. Don't click on stuff, celebrities and real people. Ramp up your security settings. Don't use THE CLOUD. Don't use iDEVICES - this hack was 100% iHACK.
• In the interests of science, we shall attempt to locate the site that published the pictures, so you know what kind of material to avoid putting in THE CLOUD from your iDEVICES.

Are you currently a college student? Did you attend college? I got a queasy feeling while reading this article on your information being available from the college itself. There doesn't seem to be any good reason for the information to be out there but of course there's legislation behind it: The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. As we know from reading ThermionicEmissions, every piece of legislation works the opposite of its name. Since it says privacy, you have none. There is an opt-out and it's up to you to find it. But wait - it gets better... if medical records are requested, they lose HIPAA protection!

• One hundred percent of government IT workers said employees are the biggest threat to cybersecurity. PEBKAC: Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.

Charles Barkley has been labeled a white supremacist for telling black people to stop killing each other. He sure is going to look funny at the white supremacist rallies.

This will backfire when almost everyone is labeled a white supremacist and white supremacists start getting praised for their inclusiveness.

• It was inevitable.... Starbucks has introduced the Chicken Sushi Burrito.
• Speaking of which, there are now calls for boycotting Starbucks, ESPN, and the NFL. Always ahead of trends, I have been boycotting them for a long time, just because I don't like their products.

Best wishes to affected parts of Texas during the flood. I hope your lives are property are ok.

• US Government Cybersecurity ranks 16th out of 18 industry sectors. This is an improvement over last year, when it ranked 18. Let this be a lesson to you people who say the US is capable of nothing.

Happy birthday to linux Linus Torvalds' baby. Here's an appropriate quote from Mikko Hypponen, of F-Secure: Linux distributions are really lacking in their support for some of the most common Windows software. For example, most malware won't work.

• In the continuing struggle of man's inhumanity to man, I find this most appropriate.

The majority of breaches are caused by unpatched software. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough. My friend's office got hit so badly, it took out the entire system, including years of data. Patch it. And stop clicking on every goddamn link you see.

• Hollywood has rushed to help Houston and it's heartwarming:
• Beyonce: Texas, you are in my prayers
• Kelly Rowland: Houston changed my life- everybody send out prayers for H-town
• Lady Antebellum: thoughts and prayers
• Ellen DeGeneres: the whole country is thinking of you
• Sheryl Crow: you are in my prayers
• Country music singer Chris Young donated $100,000
• let words and actions stand by themselves

Breathing is Overrated

A Philadelphia Jewish cemetery was vandalized the other day. Because, you know, there's nothing more dangerous than a dead Jew.

• Subway chicken has been revealed to be only 50% chicken - the other 50% is soy filler. Semi-vegetarian chicken!

On today's news: guitar strap pocketbooks. As a guitar player, I have to go and shoot myself now.

• My coworker, who uses very complex equipment, just requested training on the Windows Snipper (screenshot) program. Oh, my head...

I often recommend keeping your passwords in password keepers. Popular password keepers have just been found to be leaking personal information. Read it and weep.  I recommend Keepass, which wasn't studied.

• I don't often touch Hollywood, except for the funniest and most egregious nonsense, but this one really bowls me over: Kaley Cuoco and Big Bang Theory co-stars 'offer to take $100,000 per episode pay cuts so actresses Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch can get raises.' 
• Meanwhile, Mrs lefty is annoyed over Kaley's constant calls to me since she got divorced.

Unless someone is doing a monumental job of trolling, there is now a connected CampStove that provides real time data about the strength of your fire. And now, Chinese hackers will be the first to know you've hit 200 degrees! Folks, this will only get more stupid...

• Today is World Book Day. Books were incredibly important to me as a child, as I preferred their company to people. They allowed me to escape whatever I thought my life was and I'd stay up til all hours of the morning escaping. Here are a few favorites:
• Douglas Adams; Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, a 5 book trilogy of hilarious, abstract humor, from a master of the language. Also read his 2 book series, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (there is currently a tv show on BBC America). Douglas (RIP) is my absolute favorite and I'd pay to watch him pace around a stage, saying whatever came to mind.
• Robert A Heinlein: I think I've read every one of his Future History series (with Lazarus Long), as well as everything else science fiction-y that wasn't oriented toward dragons. This man's writing and worlds truly kept me up til strange hours, instead of doing homework or trivial things like sleeping. He had a remarkable sense of the future and a very enlightened attitude towards sex for his time.
• Samuel Shem: House of God is an informative and hilarious story about residents in a New York hospital and their guru. It's difficult to make this sound funny, but read it. There was a sequel and a movie too, although I've never seen them.
• How many of these 20 classics have you read? It's British and I don't agree with every book listed, but I (embarrassingly) come up with two. You?

 Both fascinating and terrifying is a nondeterministic universal Turing machine using DNA molecules, as candidates for future organic computers. They will use DNA instead of silicon. The DNA can replicate itself to perform more calculations as needed.  Mark this date... SkyNet is becoming reality.

• despite Microsoft's touting of its latest OS as its "most secure," Windows 10 had the highest proportion of vulnerabilities of any OS (395), a 46 percent jump from Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 (265 each).

My wife just brought home a package of table grapes. I didn't know these existed and am a little scared to try one.  If possible, I'd prefer couch grapes, as they're much better-suited to my lifestyle.

YAHOO!!!!!

Yahoo, the company to watch for routine security breaches of up to hundreds of  millions of users, in an SEC filing, blamed the 2014 - 500 million account breach on unnamed senior executives and its legal team for failing to properly investigate. This was a state-sponsored attack (in the current climate, we blame Russia for everything, but I'm thinking not). "...certain senior executives did not properly comprehend or investigate...". Further, Security discovered that the attacker had taken copies of the user database backup files with personal data of Yahoo users. This same attacker was busy again in 2015 and 2016 but this was not investigated, resulting in 32 million accounts being exposed.

At this point, if I were a Yahoo user, I'd be screaming, closing accounts, and ceasing all use of Yahoo products. If I were a shareholder, I'd be screaming for the heads of everyone on the board. Speaking of which, the counsel is leaving without severance and the CEO will not receive a cash bonus for 2016 and will forego her 2017 annual equity award (more than $10m). There are 43 consumer class action lawsuits, with possibly more to come.

These guys are truly The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. You will notice that the senior executives went unnamed and they managed to insert some uncertainty by claiming executives did not understand, slightly tinging the Security team. Other reports indicate the board simply ignored Security.

Hey Dum Dums... security is everybody's business. Companies need to lead in top-down manner, where everybody up TOP practices good security and it gets reflected down, making it part of corporate culture. So long as those up top don't understand and/or care, this is going to be a problem for all companies. Apparently Yahoo is too dim to learn from their multiplicity of mistakes.

Once again, close any Yahoo accounts you have and don't use any of their other products

Hillary Trump

If you think carefully about your presidential candidate, you should go out and vote. If you're voting for someone because of their internal plumbing/gender, please stay home; you're not qualified to vote. I heard a teary-eyed interview on the radio about how great that a woman is running and how historic this is. I want the best person for the job and so should you.

• The FBI is stepping up its use of ISIS stings, with little public or congressional scrutiny. Translated into English, the FBI is locating some poor slob who claims support for ISIS, arming him, then making a huge deal about his arrest.

Most notably absent from the wannabe presidential speeches is any talk of the national debt.

• My wife and I have found the Ultimate Relationship Secret: sleeping when the other is awake.

A dispute over Ramadan meals in Duesseldorf resulted in a fire that gutted a shelter for 282 asylum seekers. The portions were too small, so they set the place on fire. Let's import some immigrants, shall we?

In related news, a Pakistani woman was burned alive by her family for eloping. She was obviously asking for it.

• Microsoft founder Bill Gates launched a campaign to help extremely poor families in sub-Saharan Africa to raise chickens. Unfortunately the poor will discover they can't raise the chickens because the chickens will automatically keep trying to upgrade to Chicken 10.

David Beckham, famous for f-ing the anorexic-looking Spice Chick, says "You need to wear a condom in the fight against HIV." I'm doing my part by wearing a condom as I type this.

• To protest rampant sexism in Hollywood, Ghostbusters is being remade with women in the title roles. Because that's not sexism at all.

With all the huff and fluff about transgender bathrooms, don't you wonder how many people will benefit from this?

Read it and Weep

I have long heard stories about pedophilia.

I have long preferred not to pay them much notice.  It's because this is one of the very few ways I'm pretty normal: I'd just rather not face the truth.

Within the last few years we have all started to read stories of people being arrested for child porn.  It started with small, isolated groups.  A few individuals, maybe.  An online `club'.

Then we read about pedophiles in the ranks of police.  And government.

Some of my online friends told me horrible stories about this.  Some pointed out that this went all the way to the top.

But like 9-11, to believe the emerging truth is to have to face some genuine unpleasantness and ugly facts about our fellow man.

For the longest time we have had seats to the sick opera that is the Catholic Church's abuse of children; the subsequent denial and hiding of the perpetrators.

Very recently we were treated to the Jerry Sandusky story [Local Boy Makes Bad at Penn State].  This is spawning other admissions.

Last night I came across a piece of ugliness and horror, detailing sexual abuse in Hollywood.  This breaking news is disgusting and it's true.  The very title of the article indicates this is the tip of the iceberg.

Now it's truly time to sit up and take notice.  Look at the sickness and devastation these subhumans have wrought upon children.  In the name of entertainment.

And this is indeed the tip of the iceberg.  The stories my friends told me and the stories I read about institutionalized pedophilia going all the way to the top.

Our eyes are wide open and our first step is to choose to see.